Mobile oil change businesses are very difficult to succeed

There have been many people who have come and gone in the mobile oil change business. It always looks easy on the surface and is relatively inexpensive to start with minimal investment compared to most other businesses. But most mobile oil change operators rarely make it past the first year. In fact, most do not survive the first few months. One has to wonder why such a good idea ultimately ends in failure. Let’s take a closer look.

First, the profit generated from oil changes is not enough to sustain a healthy business. After calculating the cost of goods from the total bill, you rarely get more than twenty-five dollars net profit from your typical oil change. And that figure doesn’t include the gas used to drive to the actual location. You have to do many oil changes per day to make a decent profit to support your business and personal expenses. Most fast lubes produce even less due to their substantially higher overhead, but make up for it in sheer volume. The most successful fixed locations are doing 60 oil changes on one bad day. A mobile oil change company, with one or maybe two people working most of the time, doesn’t have that luxury. The most a typical mobile oil change van can do is ten oil changes a day, and after that the operator is exhausted. And even if a person could consistently do ten oil changes a day, he still has to source those oil changes from somewhere. They don’t magically appear. Do you have a plan how to do that? Most start out thinking that corporate campuses will provide tons of business, especially if companies market it there. In reality, it rarely works as advertised and you’ll be lucky if you get 10 clients in a year from a large corporate campus. The bottom line is that the net change per oil is too low to make a viable business without a lot of volume.

Second, many mobile oil change operators are not very good salespeople. They are usually very honest people and passionate about what they do and you have to love that but I have found that most mobile oil change owners are terrible at the sales end. They’re usually the type that tries to charge much less than the going market rate and thinks they can tell a few people about their “amazing service” and wait by the phone. That never works. You have to go out looking for them. You have to do a lot of cold calling. You have to talk to many fleet managers and sell yourself first and your service second. Most in the mobile oil change business don’t fully understand this or it never really applies to this side of the business. It is probably the most important part not only in the mobile oil change business but in any other business. I will go out on a limb and say that if you are a great salesperson, you will do well to run a mobile oil change business or franchise. If you know cars but not sales, I recommend you work for a new or used car dealer for 2-3 months and gain experience. It will be tough and scary, but that’s the fastest way to get good, hard-core sales without a lot of “fluff.” Then open your mobile oil change company.

Third, the weather cannot be underestimated in limiting what mobile oil change operators can do. There are few states that have decent weather all year long. Half of the states are very cold for several months of the year and the other half are very hot for 3/4 of the year. Both are equally daunting. A fixed location can turn on the air or turn on the heat. Its operators work in a controlled environment. You don’t have that luxury. You may have multiple fleets planned for one day and it may be pouring rain that day. Have you thought about changing the oil at 0 degrees. Your hands won’t be able to grip that oil filter or it’s as hard as a rock or you can’t feel them. Or changing hot 150 degree motor oil in humid 100 degree weather on a vehicle where the oil filter is in the middle of a hot engine sump and you have to burn to get to it? Do you clean it and skip it or do you burn yourself to get to it? That will pass.

Having mentioned these three main obstacles, and there are more, I will say that it is not impossible. I have made a success of it. But I wish someone had been honest with me before my partner and I spent over $80,000 to get into the mobile oil change business. Jet Set Life Technologies sold us many unrealistic hopes and dreams of great wealth using a flawed model involving the extreme end of oil. They installed a good van for us and their product is good but their entire system is flawed from the bottom up. We found a way to make it work, but sadly 90% of commercial mobile oil change operators don’t do it. The success rate is very small. Understand what it really entails and if you think you can push yourself and not make any money for 2 or 3 years, go for it.