ecent survey indicated that clean Taxi Cabs Fleets have higher
tip rates and repeat customers. How do you wash a taxicab? You do them
four at a time and you go up and over and up and over when you are
drying them. If they have a little taxi cab sign, dry that last. But you
do the rest of the car the way you do a regular car. The only
difference is you are going to spray three, four, five, sometimes six
cars at a time. Then another crewmember is going to follow behind you
and do all the windows really well. You do a quick vacuum with a
taxicab. Seriously, you do not want to be in that taxicab for more then a
minute or a minute and a half. Now most taxicabs are usually scratched
and they look like crap. This is something you are going to have to deal
with. This is just the way they are going to look which is good for you
because they are not expecting a perfect job. They just want them to
look clean because they have their logo on them. Taxi companies are very
low budget operations and low cost will get you the account. Some
taxicabs are owned by independent contractors. You will need to charge
more since the volume is not there. Staging areas at big airports are a
good place to find lots of taxicabs.
Rent-A-Cars
Rent-a-cars
these days are mostly small, tiny cars that get really good gas
mileage. They are Toyota Tercels, Ford Contours and Dodge Neons and
things like that. You can wash a Dodge Neon in your sleep in about three
minutes. Really easy to clean, really, really easy and that is
important. You want some accounts that are easy. Three dollars is fair
for exteriors, five dollars for in and out is fine. It is important to
have efficiency when washing rent-a-cars. No more than two minutes for
vacuuming. You only want to clean the windows that are dirty. You do not
want to clean all of the windows on a rent-a-car, just where you see
fingerprints. You want to wipe off the dash really quick, wipe around
the center console and use cleaner on the sticky stuff. Hit the inside
windows that are dirty, wash the outside. You want to do them five, six
at a time and you want to dry them off real fast, make sure the windows
are clean and go to the next car. Rent-a-cars are really good money. You
want to charge an extra two dollars for taking out carpet stains. Use
some Folex cleaner or advanced carpet stain remover, some kind of a
little carpet brush and a towel to wipe up whatever you precipitate at
the top of the carpet after you have got it wet. The carpet remover
should come off on the towel. There will always be trash in rent-a-cars,
a lot of trash. You should have a bucket ready that you just put trash
in and move it from car to car. Dump it before you leave. Usually
rent-a-cars will have a Dempsey Dumpster around the back where you can
dump all of your trash.
Rent-a-car companies are very careful and
exacting as to what times of day they want their cars washed. They may
have a whole bunch of vehicles in on Monday mornings and want you to do
cars on Monday mornings. You are going to have to do the cars at that
time. They are probably going to want them done before eight o'clock in
the morning. So if you are doing the cars before eight o'clock in the
morning and there are twenty or thirty rent-a-cars, it is quite serious
that you get them all done in time. The rent-a-car company is paying you
so they do not have to drive them to the car wash. It is rather
important that you get them done on time. It is really easy to get them
all done if you work efficiently. You are doing them six at a time. If
you have twenty cars to do, you need to have them done by eight thirty
to nine o'clock and you are doing them six at a time, you should have
twenty-four cars done in an hour if you are really flying through them
and you have the right crew. So pay attention to this. You can afford to
do the cars for five dollars each because the job comes out to about
one hundred dollars an hour. Think about this for a second. Think about
the time and efficiency and how fast can you do them. This attitude is
what will help you pick up the rent-a-car company accounts. If you can
do them very, very quickly and you can do them not perfectly but good
enough to make them happy, there is a lot of money in rent-a-car
washing. Our crews in other towns already wash for: Budget, Avis,
Dollar, Hertz, Enterprise and generally can afford to wash them and
retain a profit at only $5.00 per vehicle.
Police Cars
It is
time to talk about police cars. We just saw a police car go the other
way with his lights on. In any case, police cars, how do you wash a
police car? Well first of all, you wash it like you would wash any
normal car but you want to make sure you clean the light bar really
well. You do not want to spray water inside the light bar, you will
screw up the electronics. You also do not want to, but some of our guys
love to do it, spray water inside the PA speaker on the front of the
police car that is mounted by the bumper. The reason they like to do
that is because it burns them outs and gives them a short. So, you
should not do that. Now under the seats of a police car you find all
kinds of cool stuff. Best to hand it over to the authorities and not
smoke it yourself. You will find crazy stuff under the seats of a police
car where you are going to have to clean. Depending on how you feel you
can either vacuum the stuff up or put it into a little bag and give it
to the watch commander. You need to dust the radios inside of the police
car, but you have to be careful not to turn any knobs. There are always
bugs on the light bars, but you cannot blast off the bugs as much as
you would like to. You really need to soap them off and not blast them
off. Sometimes the light bars get real brittle on the older police cars.
You can actually blast right through them. I have done it before.
For
some reason police like to go 4 X 4' ing when they are going through
center dividers in order to catch a terrible criminal such as a speeder.
They will go off road and do whatever; maybe they are just having fun.
So you have to make sure that you clean all the mud off the police cars,
they are a little bit muddier then most cars. The bottoms of the police
cars are always muddy and they are going to need hand soaping. Police
cars are often black and white. Usually the white part is where the door
is so the policeman knows where to get in. The rest of the car is
black. Now the part of the car that is black, remember it is black. If
you are doing police cars in the sun and you are trying to do them three
at a time, you may have a little problem getting to all of them. Some
cities have police cars that are all white cars or all green cars or a
mixture and that makes it a little bit easier.
There are certain
additional things you have to watch for when cleaning police cars. Do
not have a bunch of stuff out of your truck when you are washing a line
of police cars. Someone may run out of the building and want to take
their car. If you cannot move the truck in time you will really
frustrate that officer. He wants to look official and squeal the tires
out of the parking lot so you may as well just let him do whatever he
wants to do.
Driving School Cars
Driving school cars are
basically just like rent-a-car companies. The only difference is you
want to spend a little more time on the dash board and a lot of time on
the windows. You probably need to get five or six dollars each. This is
giving them a deal because normally you charge ten dollars for in and
out
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