Opening your car service is often a very good and promising undertaking: there are a lot of car enthusiasts, and their number is only growing, while independent car maintenance often requires certain knowledge and the availability of a special tool. However, in most cases, entrepreneurs open a car service designed for cars, often at such service stations they also deal with small vans and small trucks (such as a GAZelle), but the repair and maintenance of large trucks is a completely different direction. If only because another tool and large areas are required.
Therefore, an entrepreneur who decides to open his service station can seriously consider a more complex, but in some way more promising business for the repair and maintenance of trucks.
In any large city, there is already not one station that deals with trucks, but their number is much less than simple service stations. However, often the available offer on the market is enough for the beginner to experience some difficulties with entering the market. Freight transport is used mainly for the transport of goods, buses and other large-sized cars of this kind - for the transport of passengers, therefore such transport is almost always owned by companies, it is rarely seen in the ownership of private individuals - it is simply meaningless.
In this regard, the principle of work in this area has its own characteristics, first of all, it should be noted that cooperation will often have to be established with large transport companies, engaged in the maintenance and repair of a large fleet of cars at once. Undoubtedly, competitors also seek to work with all possible transport companies, and it can be difficult to convince consumers of the need to change their service company. However, a competitor does not always offer quality service, so you can, by offering a lower price or a larger list of services with better service, entice a certain part of customers to your side.
Before starting work, you need to carefully study the market, evaluate the offers and opportunities of competitors, learn about the needs and expectations of potential consumers. Quite often, truck service stations deal only with certain brands or offer a very limited and meager range of services, so you can play to bring to the market a completely new offer, which has no analogues.
To start your work, you need to register as a business entity. The easiest way to become an individual entrepreneur is that it does not require a lot of time and money, and a simplified taxation system will be available that allows transferring to the state’s benefit no more than 6 percent of revenues or 15 percent of operating profit. If there is a need to register a legal entity, then the preferred form is a limited liability company, because in this case the STS will also be available. Such activities fully fall within the definition (OKPD 2) 45.20 Services for maintenance and repair of motor vehicles. Some special permits for carrying out such activities are not required only if certain services, such as installing tachographs, are not expected (which is very important for trucks).
Next, you should search for a place to place your truck maintenance station. A sufficiently large area will be required here, the garage should not only have a large area, but also sufficiently high ceilings. One can seriously consider renting empty warehouses and hangars, because only in such rooms it will be possible to fully service and repair a large truck. You need to count on a site measuring several hundred square meters, only then is it possible to place several machine service posts at once. You should also make sure that there is a zone for the maneuver of trucks, for their convenient access, because the turn of such a machine sometimes requires a large platform.
As for the location itself, that it is not always advisable to be located in the central areas of the city or in passageways, it is sometimes much easier to open your service on the outskirts of the city or even in industrial areas, where there are a large number of factories and industrial enterprises, which for the most part contain a large fleet of trucks. In this case, the rental price in this case usually becomes lower, in the industrial quarter it will also be easy to find a suitable warehouse or hangar. However, this option is only suitable for those entrepreneurs who want to service truck repair only under contracts with companies, those entrepreneurs whose main area of activity will not be the maintenance of individual orders. A truck that crashed on the way is a difficult to transport machine, which in many cases is almost impossible to fix on the spot. In this regard, usually the owners of freight vehicles pay very much attention to the prevention of breakdowns, constantly send cars for diagnostics, examine them and carry out even minor repairs at the slightest risk that the car may malfunction at the right time.
Some entrepreneurs combine work on servicing cars of any size and type, therefore, they work with individuals who bring cars and small trucks to them, and also cooperate with transport companies and service their cars only by prior arrangement. However, as in any other business, it is better to start small, become a professional in only one area, and only then begin to expand your activities and provide additional services aimed even at consumers of a completely different level.
The next stage is the equipment of your premises and the purchase of devices and mechanisms for work. This will require specific equipment designed to work with freight vehicles. In essence, this is all the same car service equipment that is familiar to any user and which can be seen at any service station, only having great power and designed for heavy loads. There are suppliers and manufacturers of such machines, so there should not be problems with the purchase, but here the entrepreneur has several options.
The cost of equipment differs primarily in capacity, but the manufacturing country also has a significant effect on it, European devices are always more expensive than Chinese ones, but in the first case there is a guarantee that the machines will not fail in the near future. In general, either price or quality. First of all, you need to buy powerful lifts for trucks. The cost of 1 is several hundred thousand rubles, in order to organize several posts you need to have about 1 million rubles. In addition, funds will be needed for the delivery and installation of this equipment, but usually they are initially invested in the sale price, or are insignificant. Tire fitting equipment will almost always be necessary and for wheel alignment, in addition to the main machines, many auxiliary tools are needed. You can also fully equip a place for mounting for about 1 million rubles, although in some cases it may require more money, especially if you plan to open two or more such places.
The equipment also differs from one another in terms of functionality, and this must be taken into account when buying. There are machines that are designed for manual tuning, a fully automated system is much more expensive. The diagnostic equipment is also universal, which is used in many processes and, as the name implies, in the diagnosis of almost all components and assemblies of a car. You can manage 300 thousand rubles when purchasing such equipment. In addition to this, stands for testing the brakes and optimal tuning of the entire brake system are purchased, this is about 500 thousand more. Next, we need hand tools, an oil change device, tables for disassembling and repairing engines and transmissions.
Quite often, a large car wash is also organized at the truck maintenance station, which may require about 500 thousand more rubles. An offer of bodywork to its customers may be relevant, which will require not only the purchase of additional equipment, but also the involvement of specialists in this matter.
Finally, you can organize your post painting; For this, a special spray booth is purchased and installed, in which it is possible to paint and dry parts and the car as a whole. In order to organize such a post, you need to have the sum of the order of another one million rubles. As you can see, the organization of a truck maintenance station requires a fairly large investment.
It should be noted that quite often equipment for a car service of this kind is made only to order, so you need to calculate your time, because sometimes the production period can be several months, and you need to add time for delivery and installation of equipment to it. To save money, you can try to find used equipment, in this case, in addition to saving money, you can count on fast delivery; There are special companies and even Russian manufacturers that are able to quickly provide their customers with the necessary devices.
The staff is determined depending on the size of the station and on the list of services provided. It should be borne in mind that not all specialists can carry out repair and maintenance of trucks, or rather, a person who has previously been involved in passenger transport will not necessarily cope with truck maintenance. It should be borne in mind that to work with such a transport requires a little more power, including more labor, in order to even remove some part and move it. But in general, these are car mechanics who have sufficient experience, and people who are involved in bodywork and painting are also hired if necessary. If a car wash opens, additional people must work on it.
In addition, you need to take care of specialists who are able to work with customers and attract them, in other words, sales managers who will negotiate with the enterprises about the service at the station. An entrepreneur himself can take on such work, especially at first, and he is able to cope with this task alone for the first time. All business processes that are not related to profit-making by the organization are outsourced, this is primarily accounting and security. The second should be given special attention, because often cars will remain at the station for several days, and they must be monitored. To do this, the alarm system is carried out on the complex, and at night a private security organization sends its people for duty.
When organizing your car service, you can choose a slightly different format of work. If you plan to conduct your business in a large city, you can contact the truck manufacturers and offer you cooperation. This is relevant if the brand of cars is common among potential consumers. Thus, its own truck maintenance station will operate as an official service offering comprehensive services and scheduled diagnostics, but which only works with cars of the same brand. However, in this case, it will be possible to obtain a contract for the supply of parts necessary for repair, while the consumer will receive only original spare parts and official service; a machine manufacturer can also provide training for service station employees. This direction has its advantages and disadvantages, and therefore, in each case, the entrepreneur carefully weighs the pros and cons.
In this type of business, it is often necessary to independently look for clients for their work, because the percentage of drivers who drove to the service just along the way is extremely small. For this, employees are hired who will contact transport companies, industrial enterprises and private owners of freight vehicles. A good contract can be obtained from automobile transport companies because, due to the specifics of their work, they are forced to maintain a large fleet of passenger vehicles (buses, trams, fixed-route taxis, etc.), and many of the cars quickly wear out and require constant repair and maintenance . Thus, the entrepreneur receives almost daily work from one enterprise. It should be noted that most automobile transport companies have their own repair shop and do not need the services of a third-party company.
Perhaps the easiest way is to sign a contract with small enterprises or individual entrepreneurs who own several freight vehicles and make money by renting them out because they are all interested in working with a repair shop and are not able to independently organize a technical station service. However, such business entities are primarily interested in low-cost services, so the service station, which offers the lowest prices, has an initial advantage over its competitors. In general, it can be noted that, compared to a car repair shop, a truck repair service is a business in which it is more difficult to gain a place in the market, but if successful, you can count on a more stable and constant income, because the work is done under contracts with companies, and the entrepreneur has a job because of this.
Such an undertaking is distinguished by a rather long payback period, the amount of starting investments is several million rubles, and if it is planned to buy out the territory and build buildings, then the bill goes by tens of millions. At the same time, the first time you should not count on a large number of orders, you will have to spend several months on the development of the client base. It is very important to maintain the reputation of a company that performs its work very efficiently and on time, if you neglect this, you can lose several customers at once, and the loss of even one of them threatens with a sharp reduction in the number of orders. This business has its own development prospects, you can expand the list of services offered, switch to servicing other vehicles (for example, agricultural machinery) or just start working on trucks of different manufacturers, if initially work was carried out only with certain brands.
Matthias Laudanum(c) www.clogicsecure.com - a portal to business plans and guidelines for starting a small business 08/18/2019