You have £X to start up and build a round from scratch tomorrow. How do you do it?

[Teddington Window Cleaners]

 

[Dave B]

Everyone has a different method which will work for some and not for others

For me get yourself a nice van you will be in it 5-6 days a week its your office and workhorse 

First impressions count, turn up to quote in a nice van customer thinks successful make out you are really busy they dont know they will be your first customer

You did say you had the budget for this

Others are happy in a s**t van that works for them

Everyone has a different method       

And then you realise this game is not for you with the saturation of windies in your area due to the employment situation currently and you have blown loads of money.

Or get out working for cheap and when it does work out buy all the nice stuff.

 

[mike007]

No matter what budget you have for a van , gear etc....you have to have enough paying customers to make the business work. You can have a £20k outlay and go under as easily as you can with £5K set up. Course reverse also true....but critical part is having enough customers.!!!!!!

 

[Iron Giant]

And then you realise this game is not for you with the saturation of windies in your area due to the employment situation currently and you have blown loads of money.

Or get out working for cheap and when it does work out buy all the nice stuff.

Yes!! far easier to start out on a budget and see if you can make it both you and me started out trad which is as budget as you can get. I foresee loads of people blowing their redundancy on a pipe dream and having nowt left in 6 months and back to paye

 

[Part Timer]

When I started, initially it was going to be a business for my son, I bought a 2 year old Vivaro and a 2 man 650l hot water system with booster pump, circa £20k.

Didn't  have one customer and had never cleaned a window. Fortunately I had the cash available to pay for it and a succesful business to subsidise the new business.

My area is saturated and without my other business it would've failed

 My advice is don't spend all of your money on the best gear and leave some money to live on while you build your business.

 

[dmw]

Yes!! far easier to start out on a budget and see if you can make it both you and me started out trad which is as budget as you can get. I foresee loads of people blowing their redundancy on a pipe dream and having nowt left in 6 months and back to paye

Agreed.  I call the window cleaning van sales pages of Ebay and gumtree  "the pages of broken dreams" and they'll be more with all this redundancy money sloshing about because many who fail to research end up there.

 

[P4dstar]

I'm advocating prioritising marketing over buying a fancy van, when you're starting out.

I did make it clear in my previous post that you should buy one in a reasonably clean condition, meaning it's not necessarily an old banger, but it looks decent and is reliable. You don't need to spend £10k to buy a working van - it can be a few years old, but looked after and presentable.

As for how you do the marketing, I can't recommend you to do Google Ads, if you don't have an advertising budget, hence the reason why door knocking is absolutely fine, as it costs you nothing apart from your time.

Well that was an easy catch ???

 

[harunh]

Any good sources? Ebay and Auto trader seem very expensive at the moment.

Look every hour, the good vans tend to get snapped up straight away, if a van was listed 3-4 days ago and is still not sold then be wary, always buy private , always look for vans with 1-2 owners if possible

 

[sundance]

Look every hour, the good vans tend to get snapped up straight away, if a van was listed 3-4 days ago and is still not sold then be wary, always buy private , always look for vans with 1-2 owners if possible

If you buy private you have no warranty or any guarantees ( you pay your money you take your chance)

If on the register, outstanding finance, cloned, clocked etc the list goes on

You have a big headache

I have bought private many times but be careful 

If you by from the trade you have the law behind you if things go wrong

Also if it seems to good to be true (  selling for a family member just want it gone ) it is normally something wrong

 

[harunh]

If you buy private you have no warranty or any guarantees ( you pay your money you take your chance)

If on the register, outstanding finance, cloned, clocked etc the list goes on

You have a big headache

I have bought private many times but be careful 

If you by from the trade you have the law behind you if things go wrong

Also if it seems to good to be true (  selling for a family member just want it gone ) it is normally something wrong

Both private and trade sales have there pros and cons.

If your a person who knows about vans and has good mechanics around u then private is the way forward or auction it can save u a lot of ££££

If your a person who doesnt know about vans etc and want peace of mind with a warranty then buying from trade also makes sense ££

I got 6 vans unfortunately ? absolute nightmare, once u fix something on 1 van u get another problem on another haha

 

[scottish cleaning service]

If you have the work and are getting busier then you buy from van dealer with warranty because without the van one has no business. I was out today looking for a new exhaust for my Crafter and its a hard task. So many different types out there and that's with supplying my reg number. Ordered one on internet so I will wait and see if it fits when it arrives. If I continue to get the work then my next target is a new van with a small 350l tank for the add-ons.

 

[Iron Giant]

Depends on how good the warranty is as well as some don't cover everything, I got mine from Van Monster their warranty does or did cover everything apart from the radio I think it was. 

 

[P4dstar]

It's weird, I paid £4200 for my citroen dispatch 3 1/2  years ago.  If I sold it now after an extra 30000 miles I recon I'd make a profit ?

The pandemic has stopped the supply chain for new vehicles and pushed the price of older vehicles up. It will balance itself out eventually but there are some garages charging new prices on low milage used vehicles because you can't get the new ones. I guess the domino effect follows down the line.

 

[Part Timer]

The pandemic has stopped the supply chain for new vehicles and pushed the price of older vehicles up. It will balance itself out eventually but there are some garages charging new prices on low milage used vehicles because you can't get the new ones. I guess the domino effect follows down the line.

I was looking around for about 6 months and nearly new Van's were only a couple of thousand £'s cheaper then new ones. So I bought a new one. I started to look around nearly 2 years ago so second hand Van's were expensive then. I think the new emissions and the Euro 6 engine caused the problem and it has continued.

 

[P4dstar]

I was looking around for about 6 months and nearly new Van's were only a couple of thousand £'s cheaper then new ones. So I bought a new one. I started to look around nearly 2 years ago so second hand Van's were expensive then. I think the new emissions and the Euro 6 engine caused the problem and it has continued.

A customer of mine runs a car sales place, he reckons the local Peugeot dealership are selling brand new for £100 more than 2 year old with 20k miles on it because there's such a wait. If there was already issues in the supply chain this will have just made things worse ?

 

[scottish cleaning service]

A customer of mine runs a car sales place, he reckons the local Peugeot dealership are selling brand new for £100 more than 2 year old with 20k miles on it because there's such a wait. If there was already issues in the supply chain this will have just made things worse ?

All comes down to supply and demand, with the manufacturers temporary closing factories then the stock will be wiped out and will take months to recover.

 

[P4dstar]

All comes down to supply and demand, with the manufacturers temporary closing factories then the stock will be wiped out and will take months to recover.

Yeah and they still need to sell new vehicles so there is a supply of used vehicles further down the line, thats why they're doing such good deals on new vehicles. If ever you wanted to own a brand new vehicle now is the time to get one I reckon... Assuming you can afford it of course.

 

[scottish cleaning service]

Yeah and they still need to sell new vehicles so there is a supply of used vehicles further down the line, thats why they're doing such good deals on new vehicles. If ever you wanted to own a brand new vehicle now is the time to get one I reckon... Assuming you can afford it of course.

My brother leases a new one every 2 to 3 years and the dealer wants his 2 year old lease car back for a new one. I think they have a seller lined up by the sound of it.

 

[P4dstar]

My brother leases a new one every 2 to 3 years and the dealer wants his 2 year old lease car back for a new one. I think they have a seller lined up by the sound of it.

More likely just a general lack of stock man. @spruce would know what the craic is on the inside.

 

[ched999uk]

I think the new emissions and the Euro 6 engine caused the problem and it has continued.

I think there are some more regs coming in within London early next year effectively banning non Euro 6 vans!! So hopefully supply of non Euro 6 vans will increase early next year.

 

[spruce]

More likely just a general lack of stock man. @spruce would know what the craic is on the inside.

Could be. A leasing business should have a 'handle' on their actual stock holding and what is imminently due in with the end of lease contracts @scottish cleaning service.

The sales team should get a list of what is coming due as this is the time to 'strike' to sign up their existing customer for a new lease.

The used van/car team should also be aware of whats coming in so they can talk to their customers in advance.

Often we had a new van 'sold' and the used van sold to a different customer before the new deal was finalised. There are a lot of vans bought and sold that don't touch a dealer's forecourt. The vans that come in that are battered generally get shipped off to auction or traders who deal at the lower end of the market.

In the trade a used car salesman would do a search of the vehicles booked into the workshop for service or repair. He would then contact that customer with a replacement offer and trade-in without the customer requesting that. Often the sales manager would be able to search the records for outstanding finance etc to put a deal together they believed would be bait to sell another vehicle.