Car Insurance

If you own a mobile car washing or truck washing company and are considering your sales goals for the year you may wish to check into rental agencies as potential new clientele. Why you ask? Well because rental agencies do pay their bills on time and they have unending amounts of things, which need cleaning all the time.

To find potential customers, get a clip board and then go to the phone book and look up car rental agencies and truck rentals and start making a list and then go online to those companies websites and do a little historical research before going in to make the sale. It helps to know the history of the company before attempting to get them as a client. Let’s take an example such as doing business with Budget Rent-a-Car or Rent-a-Truck. You see, Budget Group Inc. is a huge rental company with revenues in 2000 of nearly 2.5 billion. Budget Group is part of Ryder TRS.

They work in about 120 countries and have about 3200 rental locations. Budget was formed in 1958. Ryder has been renting trucks since 1942 and now has over 3300 locations of truck rentals. They have two-way and one-way rentals like U-Haul. Budget Rent-A-Car was acquired by Ford in 1997 and in 1998 Budget bought the rental fleet of Ryder TRS. Different from Ryder Leasing, but still connected with multi-use locations and synergy driven businesses.

Budget has 500 franchised offices, which are owned and operated by 200 independent franchisees. Budget’s current president was also once a franchisee for Budget’s Truck Rental Business. Budget Car Sales Division are also franchised. Budget dealers sell fleet vehicles new and used, leases, special purchase vehicles and their former rental cars. Some Budget lots are huge but most are around 60-100 vehicles, but they can order anything you want

If you own a mobile car washing company you should consider cleaning van-pool vans, as they are usually parked at nights and all weekend long in park and ride lots. Perfect customers, which will not screw up your schedule at all and good paying customers as well. Many of these van pool companies own 100’s of vans and will often help you do the selling or give you lists of their clients, as it helps them to have these vans cleaned.

Let’s take the Enterprise Van Pool Program for instance. You see the Enterprise Van Pool Program is a month-to-month rental and it comes with insurance, roadside assistance, emergency drive home program, and service and maintenance for one price. One driver takes the van home and can use it for a certain number of miles taking kids to soccer practice, etc.

Also they get two washes a month as part of the deal and are allotted $10.00 for each wash. We have found when washing these vans we give the driver a receipt and he may give us an extra tip. We usually wash on the corporation’s lot where the drivers work and this leads us to the contract to wash all the employees’ cars too. Typically 7-15 people ride in a van so they get dirty inside, but most have plastic flooring or low shag type carpet which is relatively easy to clean.

Sometimes the driver will want to put the wash on their fuel card or Enterprise credit card, which works like a Visa or Voyager card. Most of these costs are deductible against their tax return as incentives to car pool. So the driver wins, the traffic in town goes down and many people can ride for about $75.00 per month in a van-pool and have no stress on the freeway. Contact Enterprise to see if they have a van-pool program in your area and find out if you can wash for them. It is an easy sale. If you own a mobile car wash business or auto detailing company you might consider all this in 2006 if you are wishing to increase your clientele

The transportation sector is under a bit of stress with high fuel prices. Does this mean there are less trucks on the road and thus less trucks to be washed? Actually, no there are not less trucks on the road, actually large truck fleets are making more money by adding fuel costs into customer pricing.

What about competition during a squeeze to save costs and streamline the sector, more money for fuel means less money for other expenses right? But the larger trucking companies generally sign up with Blue Beacon for $30.00 washes with a corporate discount and they have 90 plus truck washes plus their side brand Hand Wash Charley’s.

Now then the smaller trucking companies, which have long-term contracts cannot react to the increased fuel prices as fast like a FedEx, Swift, JB Hunt and they are really hurting. Small Trucking Companies and Independent Truck Drivers do not have the economies of scale to allow them to raise their prices and if they do they can lose contracts and if they don’t they can go bankrupt due to the increases in costs. Either way they lose and typically the Independents are the highest paying truck wash customers you see? Independents are more apt to be the best customers for $55-70 Truck washes, taking pride in their ride.

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Bio Diesel is making headlines in the South in Georgia and South Carolina. In fact a North Carolina Firm is putting a Bio Diesel Bio-Refinery in Middle Georgia. NewGen Technologies is building a 60 million dollar plant in Columbus GA. The State of Georgia already has two-bio diesel plants and both are expanding capacity rapidly as we speak.

Meanwhile at Ft. Benning GA the US Military is also a buyer of Bio Diesel Fuel. In Georgia they have many things to make Bio Diesel out of such as poultry fat, soybean oil and vegetable oil. With the huge poultry farms in and around Georgia and the huge chicken processing plants it makes sense to use poultry fat to make Bio Diesel out of.

The Department of Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for almost 4 Billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2006 and almost 8 billion gallons by 2012 and the Georgia is enjoying the industry growth and capital flowing in, as we all enjoy the benefits. As it has been said America must break their addiction to Middle Eastern Oil and this is a positive step in the right direction says the Governor of Georgia and the States Economic Development Director.

The Atlanta Business Journal Reports; “The company plans to use a variety of materials to produce biodiesel, including soybean, sunflowers, palm, rapeseed and canola.”

One of the great on-the-road ironies is that while you’re sitting comfortably in your seat driving along, the seat itself is going through a huge amount of abuse. From dirty clothes to wet swimsuits, slobbering pets, kids eating in the backseat and the harsh sunlight shining in, there are a lot of potential options out there to ruin or wear out your great looking seats. And if something horrible has happened to your interior you could be looking at a very expensive re-upholstery.

One proactive solution to all of these problems is to find yourself some good custom seat covers for your Chevy. Protecting your seats with a snug fitting seat cover will take away the worry of staining your car seats or being embarrassed by ripped, tattered and unkempt upholstery. Not only will you be taking care of your seats now, but they will look great too!

There are a couple things that you want to know before you start shopping your Chevy seat covers.

The first thing to figure out is the type of seat that you have in your vehicle. For Chevy trucks there are only a couple of options. The front seat application usually fits into one of these descriptions: Low Back Buckets w/ Adjustable Headrests, Low Back Buckets w/ Seatbelt Through Seat, High Back Buckets, 40/20/40 Split Bench, or 60/40 Split Bench.

For any type of bucket seat, make sure you know if you have adjustable/removable headrests. Also, note the number of armrests on each seat if there are any and if the armrests are attached to the seat on the outside, or inset to fold up into the seat.

The 40/20/40 and 60/40 benches can also come with Pull Out Arm/Consoles. Make sure that you note this when ordering to be sure that you receive the correct custom pattern to fit your seat.

The rear seat applications are generally going to be one of three types: 60/40 Split Benches, 50/50 Split Benches, or a Solid Bench.

Once you have all of this information, you’re ready to move on to the next decision which is “What type of covers do I need?”. Now you need to decide what it is that is your main concern when protecting your seat covers.

Are you using your truck for industry work and moving a lot of tools and guys in muddy work boots around? If that’s the case I suggest looking into either OEM or Vinyl seat covers. These are the most popular type of covers for industry vehicles, with many fleet & maintenance managers buying custom fit OEM or Vinyl seat covers to help maintain the vehicle’s resale value.

Or, are you more worried about the wet kids jumping in after a swim or spilling drinks on the drive? In this case, you might be more interested in a waterproof Neoprene seat cover. Or maybe for a bit more fun look into Hawaiian seat covers