Considering Change of Career: Car Valet

[vulgalour]

You've all seen what I can do and how well I can turn a car around with limited materials, just imagine what I could do with some slightly better materials! I don't think I could make it work as a business just yet, I haven't the capital to invest in it for my own premises &c, but I would like to make a change of career and I think this is the direction I'd like to go in after many months of consideration and practice.

 

I fancy dipping my toe in the water, getting a bit of feedback, that sort of thing. If anyone has experience of this line of work, I'd be interested to hear from you. I'm thinking of starting small, doing a bit of mobile work whereby I go to a punter's house and give their vehicle of choice the once over with some proper deep cleaning stuff. I know roughly how long it takes to clean a car now and how much materials I use. I know that I need one or two more products that I've run out of and I need to get a new polishing machine and mops, that's what I need to raise capitol towards.

 

As a rough guide, I reckon a deep clean of an average car would be in the region of £60-100 for a full inside and out job. Really filthy cars will obviously need more time and materials and thus be more expensive to sort out.

 

As I see it from what I've learned so far there would need to be an initial assessment of the car so I could figure out how much time would be involved, this is particularly important for things like paintwork which can look great in a picture but actually be very dirty in person, usually given away by the feel of the surface. The same goes for interiors. Seeing the car in person is usually pretty important to gauge the amount of time needed and thus how much it's going to cost the potential customer.

 

The valet would include a full vacuum of the interior, cleaning of all surfaces including glass and particularly grab handles, steering wheel and buttons. Where required, upholstery may be shampooed or in the case of leathers, fed with suitable products. The exterior would receive a deep clean including clay bar, G3 type cut and polish if required and a final top polish, cleaning of all glass and scrubbing of wheels. I would not, at this point, be offering paint touch-ups but would be planning to perform minor scratch and paint swirl rectification as can be achieved with polishes, cutting compounds and machine powered mops.

 

An average car washed one every week or fortnight doing a few hundred miles a week in good condition should take no more than 8 hours to clean inside and out and may take as little as 4 hours depending on the final result required. At the other end of the scale, a car that has been in storage or use for a very long time without ever being cleaned can take in excess of 40 hours to clean properly. At a rate of around £8-10 per hour this can very quickly become prohibitively expensive.

 

I would expect as a minimum I'd have to charge £50 per car to clean it properly, so Autoshite is probably the wrong market for this service. But perhaps there are people here who have been in or are in this line of work that know otherwise? This is really a case of me putting the thoughts out there and seeing what you make of it. I suspect the work is more in Audis, VWs and the like than it is with Renault 12s, Dacia Denems and Talbot Solaras.

 

Anyway, I'd welcome your thoughts on this. Feel free to be brutally honest about it, I'm not even sure it's a viable business model yet so this is just a small part of my market research, call it consumer feedback. There will be an opportunity for a very cheap/nearly free full valet of some Shitist's vehicles if I go ahead with this.

[Wilko220]

Given your obvious natural talent for it, wouldn't getting into the body shop repair/respray trade be a more viable long-term move?

[robinmasters]

Personally, as soon as it becomes paid work it stops being fun. As long as you're prepared for it to become less enjoyable, go for it. You've clearly got a talent for it, and as businesses go is got relatively low start up costs.

 

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Washing cars couldn't possibly be any less enjoyable, and the initial outlay as a mobile outfit won't be immense so you should definitely give it a go while you can!

[holbeck]

You mean that you live in the one town in England not sinking under the weight of gang's of Eastern European blokes doing the same thing for thripence hapenny?

 

Seriously, don't let me put you off, but my car has never been so clean since a gang of men come and clean it inside and out for £12.

 

 

Edit, just re-read your post and they don't do all that for £12, but it's a cut throat business. Best o'luck if you do it mate.

[vulgalour]

There are the Kosovan Kar Wash places around here, I would be hoping to offer a more personal service with a better finish. I really don't like the way those guys do things, you can see where they've been sloppy and cut corners. A car is never really clean when they've done it, the customer just gets dazzled by Magic Trees, cockpit shine and a good inch of Turtle Wax.

[Des]

Would it be worth offering your services to car dealers as well, the high end ones, tell them you do all the cars for 'The Doctor' but you've fallen out with him.

[vulgalour]

Lols! My brother suggested the same thing actually, less the Doctor info. I don't know, it might all come to nothing yet, but I've got to do something and so far this is the only sensible idea I've had to keep me self employed doing something I'm good at rather than going back into the suicidal 9-5 grind of office work with shiny faced twats.

[Lord Sterling]

I say give it a go, you never know until you try. I am facing the prospect of being out of work after next week, I'd rather not go back to a tiring 8-hour shift job with no/false prospects, breaking my back for peanuts, I've had enough of it. I have been made an offer by the British car specialist you met Angyl. I am hoping to work with him and try and make something out of it, I know I am pretty much walking into the unknown, I dont know if it'll work but its better than nothing.

 

I worked at an IMO/ARC Car Wash for a spell, a full valet, including wash/wax, hoover of interior and boot, cleaning of all surfaces, door bins/grab handles and glass cleaning cost £50 and still does, but of course, we have all the materials to hand. Where we are located isn't exactly a very well known area and is rather industrial, yet we still averaged around 2 cars a day for full £50 valet. When we used to be based at a shopping centre, we'd average around 7-10 cars a day for a full valet, on top of the huge amount of people using the normal car wash.

 

As long as advertising is far reaching you may be surprised how many people are more than willing to hand over £50 notes for something they can't be bothered/have no time to do themselves.

[SambaS]

I just left a job at a valeting company. They diversified into breaking cars. That was my job. In the 6 months I was there I valeted 1 car, my Samba. I did a few hand washes to help out on occasion. He did really well untill the foreign ones opened up. He had the only one in town at the start. From what I see the best money came from local contracts, going mobile to valet fleets of lorrys and the like. But the £450 a day would take a team of 3 or 4

[andrew e]

Not worth it for £50 a day. Go for 8 hours minium wage instead. You have to run a van for that £50 a day squire. Even my very good local pro valet firm is thinking of running a kosovan kar wash in tandem with the specialist work.

 

http://www.clean-image.co.uk/index.htm

 

I'd say rather than local valet go for the just beneath bodyshop decommissioning market, and buy a dent repair bag or tools to go with it. Regardless of my view - good luck!

[whitevanman]

In my opinion, most people will not pay enough for the job to make it viable, they will want a £30 job for £5 and bitch about everything you do......I like the idea about speaking to main dealer/specialist companies or perhaps a tie in with the Kosovo mob...they get £5 for every car they send around to yours for detailing etc, etc

[Mr Lobster]

I reckon it can be done but you might need to rethink it a bit.

 

Theres a market (but a small one) for high end detailing - the people running prestige stuff 'could' spend decent money on a proper detailing session every so often. I think thats where your business might be. That way you can charge more money and make it profitable.

 

I'd largely forget dealers tbh. Most dealers subcontract valeting to outside companies and pay a relatively small amount per car and whilst you would probably do a better job than their existing contract valeters thats not what they want - they just want a wash and polish with the tyres and plastics done as quickly as possible to get it on the forecourt. Most main dealers won't be interested in having a full clay bar run over to get the paint perfect, they want it looking superficially shiny and no more. That said, any specialist dealers (classics and rare stuff) might be potentially interested as they do go to town on prep in order to get the best prices.

 

The overwhelming majority of people are not going to spend £50 on a deep clean of their car even if its a fairly new one on anything like even an occasional basis. Most are happy with a wash and vac and an occasional polish and thats as far as it goes. Theres little or no point trying to compete on price with the Kosovan Kar Wash tbh. If you could do two a day then thats (say) £100. When you think about what you have to take out of that (materials, vehicle cost, fuel, public liability insurance, income tax and national insurance, marketing) you'd be on minimum wage at best. Allow for the fact that some days through winter it'll be too cold to do any polishy type stuff and you're not making any money all of a sudden.

 

If you were working from established premises that are already operating (as Lord_Sterling said above) then its easier because you have the premises and materials already and its not your only income stream. But on its own as a mobile operation then it looks difficult.

 

I'd reckon that cleaning (as opposed to paint detailing) on trucks, plant, airport run minibuses and that type of thing could be viable but I guess you'd rather be doing the paint rectification / detail stuff. Personally I'd go for the high end stuff - more expensive classics, and newish high end sports / performance stuff, the type of thing that hardly gets used and the owner lavishes car (and money) on.

 

As a slight aside, I've seen a few of the car wash / valet type thing in big carparks at shopping centres. Wonder if its viable to rent a couple of spaces and have people drop their cars off whilst they do a couple of hours shopping and get it valeted.

 

Hope thats useful and not too negative!

[RedSparrow]

Don't wish to put a downer on things but I think you'd be surprised how little it pays, very competitive market. As others have said there are so many people doing it now you really have to graft hard for quite a long day to make it worthwhile.

[Justin Case]

As others have suggested, go for the higher end of the market. This should give you a clue as to the services you should offer and the equipment and materials that you will need. Nothing like getting other companies to do your market research for you :

 

http://prideshine.co.uk/index.html

[Joey spud]

My son was working for a company that covered the valeting needs of various main dealers. (pro cleanse).

 

He was doing the job on a self employed basis,and out of his wage he had to pay them for insurance,materials and uniform.

 

A big Full valet on a trade in was £39 and could take most of a day it there was thick make up/grime to remove off the controls etc.

A wash over/leather dry and interior once over of a car was £8. This was for a Audi dealer and so they were fussy buggers,any damage not pointed out and recorded prior to taking the car to the cleaning bay would get blamed on them and taken out of their wages.

 

He was expected to be on site for a minimum 8 hours a day,and on quiet days he would be lucky to earn around £25 (before all the claw backs).

 

You would need to find your own niche in the market,i guess if you live somewhere with detatched houses and big gravel drives then maybe you could start up a round of general car valeting and see if it progressed to more detailed stuff.

I was self employed for 12 years (garage)and obviously you have to factor in fuel,insurance advertising etc..,but if you can get paid doing something you enjoy doing then there is no better feeling...

[Albert Ross]

It's a thankless business, and the companies you will be in competition with, are cutthroats indeed. You'll find the customers that will pay are incredibly finicky (as you'd expect) and WILL find a fault, even if there isn't one, therefore refusing to pay you. The ones that don't care about stuff like that, won't be interested in the services you offer.

I would tentatively suggest trying high end Football clubs, and you can then get all the players cars to do...... perhaps, if you tried a low end club, you'd get all the sponsored Kias and Hyundais though.....stay with them as they get better, and therefore better cars! Seriously though... what about one of the big office complexes, where all the big cheeses park their Porkers and Bentleys too.

[Pete-M]

I pay £10 every few weeks to Ali the Afghan to get my car cleaned.

 

Wash, hoover,. Chamois, plastics dressed, alloys cleaned properly, glass cleaned, door jambs, air freshener.. Takes about half an hour and four lads do the actual work. I tip them if they do a decent job.

 

Ali's mob did the 604 when it came back from the welders. Thing was under about 1/2" of cat hair, filter dust and iron filings. £45 brought that back to life.

 

It's a thankless task, valeting

[Alexg]

Just to echo what has been said about maindealers. They're not interested in detailed immaculately presented cars. Cars that look acceptable for least amount of coin is their goal.

 

Most of the general public think a £12 jet wash, vacuum and liberal bullshit spray creates an immaculate car, so those searching for better at a vastly higher price are limited. If there is a market in your area for a high-end super-detailed car valeting service then you must consider the following:

Premises: you can't clean outside all year round.

Insurance: what happens if you break something?

Transport: how will a guy willing to spend £££ on a top quality finish to his Maserati feel when you turn up in a snotty old BX? Plus any oil on his new driveway will be your fault.

Dicks: Do you have the patients to deal professionally with someone who speaks down to you?

 

I'm not wanting to be negative here mate, I really hope you can make a go of it. But be under no illusions it will be a lot of effort for perhaps unsatisfactory earnings.

[kinkersaab]

we have a self employed valeter that we use about 40hrs per week, he is good, very good, he is, like you (i imagine) a weee bit ocd, and likes it perfect. this is fine in some instances, but when busy a less fussy, or less thoriugh job is needed so get through the numbers. I would imagine to make a living doing it, you would have to cut back on the ocd details, joe public more than likely whilst apreciating the shiny underside or his rear door hinge, probable wouldnt want to pay for it. I suspect this would lessen the pleasure for you in doing it, as you would feel you could have done it better. but hell, go for it, there is deffo a market for it, people hate hate hate cleaning their cars. i suspect there would be endless amounts of the £20 mini valet work out there if thats what you wanted to do.

[vulgalour]

And all of the above is why I made the post here and not on, say, the blue forum or the CYC forum, realistic opinions from realistic people. Sometimes I do forget that while I'd happily pay someone else to do a high level job on one of my cars and appreciate the effort, joe public probably wouldn't, and what people say to your face is very different to what they'd mean because they have this annoying habit of being polite and supportive. Happily, you guys aren't like that

 

I hadn't considered doing trucks and the like, I don't think I'd derive any job satisfaction from that at all because they'd never be properly clean, just wiped over. I don't want to do the bob-a-job style valet work, that's just another grind job that will pay a small wage, require a lot of effort and not enthuse me to turn up to work every day. Though cleaning stuff in museums could certainly be something I'd be interested in, particularly the old commercial stuff some have on display. I doubt there's much to be earned from museum curation either, though that would be remarkably satisfying.

 

Given the views above and the extra links provided I'd say I'm back to the initial thoughts of prestige, classic and collectible cars as my market which is even smaller and more competitive than the average valeting world and I've certainly got a lot more work to do to be up to that standard. I need to do more research, get some facts and figures, ask some questions at some car shows this year and go from there. I think starting small and doing one or two cars to get the advertising out there is the best way to go at the moment, whether or not it becomes a full blown business thing we'll have to see.

 

It's funny, you can spend ages reading up on other companies, looking at the competition in your area and getting a feel for what's out there, but it's only when you start to ask people that you understand what you're really up against. Market research is probably the most important part of any business venture, it stops you making TERRIBLE decisions... usually.

[autofive]

valeting?

 

whats that?

 

i just remove the biggest bits of rubbish every couple of weeks

 

if the footwells are not covered in dry mud and small stones it doesn't feel like home

[Station]

After giving the 20th car it's wash for the day I'd throw in the rag literally.

You'd have to be seriously into cleaning cars on the cheap within a time limit to do it - meaning a 2005 insignia who just wants a car wash, that spray on wax stuff and a quick hoover, a percentage of these cars are fleet and get filthy again after 2000 miles down the M6 within a week and the drivers no longer care as its not brand new anymore. I don't there's a market for detailing prestige cars either.

Unless you want to offer mega cheap, no profit cleaning just for the love of it, you've got your work cut out either way. Sorry to be negative but I think that's how it will be.

 

Have you thought about a 'Chips Away' type venture?

[RedSparrow]

Having worked in museums I can say they are almost always short of cash and have an army of volunteers to clean exhibits.

Sorry, more negative waves!

 

I hope you can work out something though.

[purplebargeken]

I certainly applaud your motivation and the results you get with your own cars are really good. I have to echo what others have said that for any meaningful return you would have to focus on the high end work and that means a totally pro approach; van, equipment, insurance and product. I seen to recall a forum for detailing; auto detailing world or similar. They had a video clip of one bloke detailing a brand new car with the stickers still one, I think he used some far fetched wax costing thousands and had light readings taken to measure the difference. Interesting but odd.

 

I also have done done some volunteering for the local car museum and whilst it is down to your time, they reimburse you for the cost of materials, so that might be a place to start. You might also offer to do a top end/footballers car or two for free with a proviso that if they like the work, they could pass the word along, maybe. You would get to work on some cool cars and maybe they could give you a couple of testimonials, etc. Otherwise it is going to be hard, hard work for not a huge amount of reward (financially). The KKW folk have really obtained a strong foothold and they do the job. I really do wish you luck whatever you decide and you know that we will support you on here. Happy for you to spend the day on my MGF but I'm in London

 

Ken

[cobblers]

I would imagine to make a living doing it, you would have to cut back on the ocd details, joe public more than likely whilst apreciating the shiny underside or his rear door hinge, probable wouldnt want to pay for it. I suspect this would lessen the pleasure for you in doing it, as you would feel you could have done it better.

 

This is basically it - the difference between being "very good" at doing something and being a professional who earns a living at it is that the professional knows what corners to cut so that the job gets done well enough, but in 1/3rd of the time.

 

I know quite a few professional valeters (some self employed, some work for carcraft etc) and while they are all somewhat OCD with their own vehicles, their real talent is knowing what they can get away with not doing rather than being actually particularly talented.

Between the self employed "cheapy" valeters that scoot round dodgy used car lots and self employed "prestige" guys that aim for real fancy stuff, the main differences are the label on the tub that they store their bulk buy cheap car polish in, and how low their trousers hang. Both end up earning similar money for similar hours, the guy who does cheaper stuff has a steadier income but cleans normal cars for arsehole car dealers instead of cleaning nice cars for arsehole estate agents.

 

As people have said, it's a fairly low cost to start the business, but as a result of that there are lots of people doing it so even if you are good/cheap/both, you'll struggle to earn a living without having a load of contacts in the trade.

[oldford]

The car cleaning market is somewhat saturated, you can go to virtually any super market and get your car cleaned while you shop. Maybe you could try something different like plastic headlamp refurbishment or offer a specialist service like paint correction - removing the fine scratches that the super market car washers make, you could even progress to exterior trim repair on cars .

 

If it's specialist, not widely offered and requires a bit of skill, then you can charge a bit more.

[Akron]

Hey VA my daily could do with an interior deep clean this year PM me if you are interested and how much?

[beko1987]

This question is asked on DW alot, with mixed answers, most of which tend to revolve around insurance, the quality of the job and weather etc. Do you want to be washing cars in 4ft of snow, and have no choice but to do it, rather than look outside and think 'fuck that' and go back to bed?

 

http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=9987

 

I do it as a hobby, rarely charge and spend far to long doing it! I'm helping out with a charity fundraising car cleaning day on Sunday morning, with deadlines for each car, so it'll be interesting how that works as I can meander on for days (I took a week off work when I got the Puma to clean it).

 

Either way, good luck, as you obviously have a talent. However, I reckon, like me, you'll never be happy with a quick flick of a washmitt and rinse, having to get rid of the watermarks, ghosting, water traps, then get a good finish, good layer of sealant, dress the plastics etc. That's what I have never perused a career in valeting!

[trigger]

Personally speaking, if you enjoy cleaning cars and fancy doing it just to bump your money up then I'd be looking at putting some adverts in your local supermarket and getting some private customers (Thinking the more wealthy types with Land Rovers etc) and driving round their's every fortnight to clean their car for £30 or so.

 

If your looking at doing it as a full time job, then I wouldn't bother.