Guides

Written for the one-van operator, not for a company with a fleet. Every price links to where it came from.

Everything in this section

• A booking page that converts — Most operator booking pages fail on the same four things, and none of them is design. What a customer needs to see before they will book, in the order
• Before-and-after photos: evidence first, marketing second — Most operators take after photos for social media and no before photos at all. The set that settles a dispute is different, takes ninety seconds, and
• Cancellations and reschedules — A cancelled slot is not a free afternoon, it is revenue you cannot resell at short notice. The policy worth writing, how to enforce it without losing
• Card processing fees and surcharging — A card payment costs you roughly 3 percent before it is profit, every time, and that fee is easy to forget about because it never shows up as a line i
• Chargebacks and how deposits prevent them — A chargeback is not a refund request - it is the customer's bank reversing the payment through the card network, and it happens after the money alread
• Choosing what to offer — A short menu of well-priced services beats a long one. How to decide what goes on it, what to add later, and the three services that look profitable a
• Maintenance plans: what to charge, and the mistake that makes them lose money — A maintenance plan is a discount you give in exchange for certainty. Most operators price the discount and forget to collect the certainty. How to str
• Contracts and liability waivers — Most solo operators run on a text message and a handshake, which works fine until the one job that goes wrong. What a written agreement actually needs
• Commercial and fleet work — Commercial work pays differently, buys differently and is bought by someone with a job title. What they actually require, how to approach them, and wh
• Getting reviews: the timing, the ask, and the rules — Reviews are the highest-leverage free marketing a local service business has. When to ask, what to say, what you may not do, and how to answer a bad o
• Getting paid faster — The gap between finishing and getting paid is a choice, mostly made by accident. Five changes that shorten it, ordered by effect, and the one that rem
• Getting your first clients without paid ads — What actually produces bookings for a one-van business in the first six months, ranked by cost and by how fast it works. Nothing here requires an ad b
• Hiring your first helper — One extra pair of hands changes the pricing, the scheduling and the risk at once. What has to be true before you hire, what it actually costs, and the
• How many jobs you can actually fit in a day — A calendar with eight one-hour slots in it is not an eight-job day, because drive time, buffer, and the jobs that run long are not on the calendar. Re
• Filling a quiet week — Six things that produce work within days, ordered by how quickly they pay. Every one is free, and the first is the one almost nobody does.
• How to price a ceramic coating — Ceramic coating jobs are long, size-sensitive and prep-dominated, which makes them the easiest job in detailing to underprice. The block maths, the pr
• Pricing engine bay detailing — Engine bay detailing is priced lower than it should be almost everywhere, because it looks like a quick degrease-and-dress when the real job is doing
• Pricing headlight restoration — Headlight restoration is a fast, high-margin add-on when it is priced as its own line item - and a quiet loss when it gets bundled into a detail "for
• Pricing paint correction — Paint correction is sold by the stage, but it is priced by how long the paint actually takes to fix - and you cannot know that until you look at it in
• Raising your prices — Most solo operators are underpriced and know it. The arithmetic that shows how much churn you can absorb, the notice that works, and why raising price
• Insurance: the four covers, and the gap most operators have — Personal auto insurance usually excludes business use, and that is the gap almost every new mobile operator is carrying without knowing it. What the f
• LLC or sole proprietor — A sole proprietorship costs nothing to start and puts your personal savings behind every job you do. An LLC costs money and paperwork to set up and se
• Offering more, without being pushy — The add-ons that customers actually want, the moment they are easiest to say yes to, and why "would you like anything else" is the worst possible ques
• Pricing a first-time deep clean — The first visit for a new recurring client is not a maintenance clean, no matter what frequency they book. What actually drives its price, why quoting
• Pricing a move-out clean — Move-out cleans are the job most likely to run double the estimated time. The three variables that decide it, why a walkthrough beats a phone quote, a
• Pricing a recurring cleaning contract — A recurring contract is a discount you trade for a booked slot and a customer who stops shopping around. Most operators price the discount and never c
• Pricing a same-day or rush job — A same-day request costs you more than a booked one even when the job itself is identical, because it displaces planned work and breaks your route. Wh
• Pricing an interior-only detail — An interior-only detail is not half the price of a full detail, because the interior is not half the work - it is usually the larger and less predicta
• Quarterly estimated taxes — No employer is withholding tax from a self-employed operator's income, which means the IRS expects it paid quarterly, in advance, on your own initiati
• Quoting fast without underpricing — Slow quotes lose jobs and rushed quotes lose money. The structure that lets you answer in minutes without guessing, and the four questions that make a
• Quoting without seeing it — The quote you give blind is the one you regret on site. Six questions that make a phone quote safe, the two-number technique, and when to refuse to qu
• Planning recurring cleaning routes — Recurring work is the whole economics of residential cleaning, and route density is where the margin is. How to build a week that holds, and what brea
• Revenue per van-hour — Total monthly revenue goes up when you just work more hours, which makes it a bad measure of whether the business is actually getting better. Revenue
• Scheduling two vans — Adding a second van does not double your capacity if you schedule it like your first one. Routing by geography instead of time slot, the classificatio
• Seasonality: the months that do not pay, and what to do in them — Every mobile service business has a slow season and most operators treat it as a surprise. What actually changes, what to do in the busy months to sur
• Service area and travel fees — Drive time is unpaid labour unless you price it. How to set a radius that does not eat your week, when to charge a travel fee, and how to say no to th
• Texting customers legally — Unregistered business texting on a local number is now blocked rather than throttled. What 10DLC registration involves, why transactional and marketin
• Tracking business mileage — A mobile detailer or cleaner drives for a living, which makes vehicle mileage one of the largest deductions available - and one of the most commonly d
• Water, power and access — The three things that turn a booked job into a wasted trip, and none of them appears on a booking form. What to ask, what to carry, and how to price t
• Fully booked — A permanently full diary is a pricing signal, not a success. The four options, what each one actually does to the business, and the order to try them
• What to pay your first hire — Hourly, per-job, or a percentage of the ticket - each one changes what your new hire is incentivized to do, not just how the math works out. The feder
• What you actually net per job — The invoice total is not what you keep. Product cost, drive time, and payment processing come out before profit does. A worked example showing how a $
• When a $29-a-month tool pays for itself — A monthly software cost is easy to judge against your bank balance and hard to judge against what it actually buys back. The right comparison - time s
• When a customer does not pay — Most unpaid invoices are not disputes, they are drift. The sequence that collects them, the point where you stop, and the three changes that stop it h
• When a job goes wrong — Something gets damaged, or the customer is not happy. What to do in the first ten minutes, when to redo and when to refund, and the policy worth writi
• Bad weather — Weather is the constraint nobody prices for. What to decide in advance, how to move a day without losing it, and the services that keep earning when t
• The first week — What to set up before the first job, what can wait months, and the four decisions made in week one that are expensive to change later.