Mobile detailing: nobody warned me the hard part is where the water goes

Tom Reilly· Mobile auto detailing idea; still doing customer interviews from my truck· Idea stage, Automotive·Jul 11

Still in the truck doing interviews, and the thing I keep hitting is not demand. People want it. The problem is water.

I had been picturing a pressure washer, a tank and a trailer. Then a guy who has been detailing six years told me to call the city, and the city told me that wash water running into a storm drain is a problem, not a technicality. Storm drains around here go to a creek. So either I capture the runoff on a mat and haul it, or I go mostly waterless.

Then the second wall: where my customers actually are. Two office parks said yes immediately. One apartment complex told me their management company bans washing anywhere on the property, and a homeowners association person told me the same thing in a much longer email. So a chunk of my imagined customer base is unreachable in their own parking space.

Right now I am pricing two versions of the business:

Waterless and rinseless only, small van, no tank, fast setup, limited on genuinely filthy vehicles
Full setup with a reclaim mat, 65-gallon tank and a disposal plan, heavier, slower, more expensive, but I can do anything

I keep going back and forth. If you are mobile, which did you land on, and did the water rules turn out to be enforced or theoretical where you are?

4 replies

Rob Mackenzie· Open·Jul 11

Enforced is the wrong question. The right question is what happens the one time someone complains. Nobody is patrolling for a guy with a bucket, but a property manager with a runoff stain and a phone number will absolutely make it your problem, and then it is not a fine, it is the account.

From the wash side: reclaim gets cheaper the more volume you do, and the mat is a hassle on every single job. If your realistic first year is a handful of cars a day at offices, start rinseless and keep the heavy setup as a decision you make when a fleet account demands it.

Tom Reilly· Idea stage·Jul 11

The account, not the fine. That reframes it. Two of my three interested office parks are managed by the same company, so one complaint is not one customer, it is most of my pipeline.

Rinseless first also fits the money. The full setup was pushing $14,000 before the van, and every version of that number needed a loan I would rather not sign at the idea stage. I would rather be slightly limited and solvent. What I still have not figured out is how to say no gracefully to the genuinely filthy truck without sounding like I cannot do the work.

Miguel Alvarez· Registered·Jul 11

From the shop side, there is a version of this you might not have priced: detailing done in somebody else's bay. I have two bays and a drain already permitted for it, and I would happily rent you Saturday mornings for a flat number if you were local, because Saturdays are dead for repair work.

That solves the filthy truck problem without a tank. Worth asking a couple of independent shops near you. Most of us have dead hours and a building we are already paying for, and a detailer bringing his own customers through the door is not competition for us.

Jamal Carter· Open·Jul 12

Plumber, so only on the drain part. The distinction that matters where I work is storm versus sanitary. Storm goes to the creek, sanitary goes to treatment, and they are not interchangeable no matter how similar the grate looks.

If you do end up hauling captured water, the question to ask your city is where you may legally discharge it. Some places have a designated spot, some want you to use a facility, and the answer is local enough that anything I told you would probably be wrong for your town. Get it in an email from them. A phone call you half remember is worth nothing later.

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