Mobile Oil Change Business Model and Personal Car Market Segment

Previously before retirement, I ran a franchising company and one of the business models we franchised was the Mobile Oil Change venue. We’d made some mistakes building our prototype models, and with our marketing strategy, but we recovered quick enough once we understood the challenges and adjusted our market segment. We learned that the money was not really in the personal car market, rather it was in the fleet business where it was steady, and easy to maintain efficient workflows and take advantage of the reduced costs of inventory, namely the filters and types of fluids and oil.

Last week, I was discussing all this with an individual who’d like to get into the business, if it pencils out, so he was busy making a set of proformas and a rather serious business plan. He needed some insight and advice. He wanted to concentrate on the personal car market, changing oil at large corporations and large downtown parking structures. Yes, that could work, except still, there are challenges with work flow and inventor, meaning more cost, labor, and challenges – all of which must be passed onto the consumer – the higher the price the fewer takers.

Indeed, I explained to him; “remember I am recommending against this for you, strongly, I do not believe that the personal car market is wise, unless you keep the capital costs, and expenses way down. I recommend concentrating on the fleet business.”

Consider this, you get 20 new customers, and you complete that work and collect the money. Now you wait for 3-4 months to notify them by email or iPhone/Android App that it’s time again, but now only 10 people are interested, and you have to try to re-schedule them all. So you now have 10 customers instead of 20 3-4 months later, and you have to keep getting more, when only half or less become repeats.

Therefore, you can spend a ton of money on sales, and yes, you can get customers, but you need to be at 10-15 oil changes per day to make money. The more you charge the fewer sign-up and the even fewer are retained as regulars. That’s why fleets are best, lined up in a row, guaranteed customers, low-cost high-volume business model. Now then, I don’t wish to condemn anyone for going the corporate oil change personal car route, I’d just advice they augment this with fleet business, let’s say at a 80{da74ea48cec7d1c659e4125ffe517180d7bd6cbbe5631d32f11d21c45900f39b} fleets to 20{da74ea48cec7d1c659e4125ffe517180d7bd6cbbe5631d32f11d21c45900f39b} personal car ratio. Please consider all this.