Does anyone here own or work at a lube place?

[Johnny]

Well, since I was responsable for opening up over 400 lube centers during my stay with Pennzoil I will give my opinion.

1. Do not be apart of anyones franchise. Be independent. You can do this with many oil companies.

2. Do not use lifts. You want pits to drive over.

3. You need at least 3-bays.

4. You should also have a car wash if possible.

5. You want to be close to a high traffic area like shopping malls etc.

6. If you are going to be on street frontage, be close to a traffic light or stop sign. You do not want to be on a street where the speed limit is above 35 mph.

7. We use to say in the business that you had to do 10 cars per day for every $100,000 you had invested just to break even.

8. To do it right, at a minimun, you will need to invest in $350,000 depending on where your located. DC with a car wash your looking at $550K to $1M.

9. If you do it right and it's in the right location, you can get filthy rich doing it. It takes a lot of hard work. You have to run as many promotions as McDonalds does.

10. One of the main problems today is the market is over saturated with lube centers in most areas.

11. The last thing I would do is open a mobile lube center. I've seen several try and none of them worked out.

That's my 25 year opinion for what it's worth.

 

[Pablo]

Now there is some serious (experienced) input. Thanks Johnny.

Interesting ratios....I would think you would need more volume than that to break even.

So can you tell me why the mobile lubes don't work out? I'm assuming people just don't know they want this service? I can envision one large enviromental headache.....

 

[Johnny]

That ratio is at least 10 years old so I'm sure it has changed since then.

Enviromental issues are a major headache. Most communities look real hard at you when you want to build a lube center. They really take a hard look at you when they think of you hauling waste oil around all over their city.

And it's not so much selling the individual. You have to go to where the people are, and that's office complexes. You have to convince the owners of the office complexes and the owners of the businesses in them to let you solicit their employees. It take a lot of foot work on your part. Then comes the rainy season and up north, the winter season, which no one seems to think of in the summer. Last place I want to be is on my back in a parking lot when it's 20 degrees outside. Plus the other downside believe it or not is the investment. You need some kind of truck or a large van, so just to start with your looking at $30K to $40K. Now you have to install storage tanks for your oil and waste oil and you have to have pumps and metered heads to pump this oil so there is another $10K to $15K in equipment. Now you need a place to store bulk oil to replenish your stock. Can't do it at home so you have to rent some kind of storage place, and the price keeps going up. And, before someone says just use quarts or gallons, that won't work. Cost to much and takes up more room than you have, plus you have to dispose of all those darn plastic bottles. Oh, along with storing that oil, you will have to have a pretty nice inventory of filters, ATF, gear oil, and grease, plus other top off fluids. It's a tuff way to try and make a living. Again, just my opinion.

 

[Gary Allan]

The only modality that I can think of where a mobile lube setup would work is in heavy equipment. Most larger construction outfits have their own mobile lube operation. I imagine that someone could figure a way to be a contracted maintenance provider for several or one big outfit. Naturally, it would have complications ..but it's already complicated. Some may be receptive to NOT buying their own $200k mobile setup for a premium price that would save them much in capital investment. Naturally, you will have to overcome the fact that many already have their own deal going. But find the smaller outfits that are more into the work than the maintenance ..where their labor makes more in terms of $$ ...and they don't want to hire someone or pay overtime to get it done

You would still have all the environmental issues to deal with ..but so does the contractor.

 

[Lonnie]

Here is a mobile oil change service business deal you can go to for a reference. I went to dinner with the owner last year and they have lots of these mobile vans running around doing on site service. At least you can get an idea of what it takes to get things together. I think this type of business is more dependent on marketing than knowing much about lubrication.

http://www.oilextreme.com/pitstop1.html