The advantage of mobile detailing is that you go to them. The cost of mobile detailing is that you go to them.
Every mile between jobs is time you are working and nobody is paying for. It is the single largest unpaid expense in this business and it almost never appears in anybody's pricing.
Why it hides
A shop owner sees the cost of an empty bay immediately. It is right there, taking up space, not making money.
You do not see the drive. It feels like part of the job. You are moving, the truck is running, you are on the way to work, so it feels productive.
It is not. It is the most expensive part of your day and it produces nothing.
Do the week
Before you run any numbers, write down actual drive times for one week. Between every job. Including the trip back for supplies. Including the run to the car wash to dump water if that is part of your setup.
Almost every detailer who does this finds two to three hours a day. On a six hour working day, that is a third of your capacity gone before you touch a single vehicle.
Price out your windshield time
Hours behind the wheel, what your hour is worth, and what the vehicle costs to run. What comes out is the money your service radius quietly takes off the top every year.
Your numbers
What that means
Cluster jobs by area, book same-day neighbors together, and stop letting the schedule get built in the order calls came in.
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This is an estimate
This tool returns an estimate based on the numbers you entered. Your real result depends on your own costs, rates and conditions. Check it against your own records before you make a decision with it.
How to run it, step by step
- 1Track a real week, do not estimate. Write down the drive time between every job for one full week, including the run back to restock and the trip for supplies. Estimating this always comes out low, and by a lot.
- 2Use your billable hourly rate as the cost. An hour spent driving is an hour that could have been detailing. Value it at what a detailing hour earns you, because that is what you actually gave up.
- 3Add the vehicle cost on top. Fuel, wear, tires, the payment and the insurance spread across the miles. The time is the big number but the vehicle is not nothing, especially with a trailer behind you.
- 4Run it again on a tighter radius. Cut the radius, or cluster jobs by area on set days, and re-run it. The difference between the two figures is what routing is worth to your business per year.
How to read what it gives you
- The annual figure is the price of your current service area. It is almost always bigger than owners expect and it is paid entirely out of your own time.
- Divide it by the number of jobs you did and you have the hidden drive cost baked into every single ticket. That number belongs in your pricing.
- If the tight-radius version is dramatically better, the fix is not a price increase. It is a calendar change, and it costs nothing to make.
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What the number changes
Your pricing. If drive time is costing you a meaningful amount per job, it belongs in the price. Not as a surprise fee. Built in, quietly, the way a shop builds in rent.
Your service area. A wide radius feels like more opportunity. Run the math and it is often less profit and longer days. The detailers making the best money are usually the ones who went deep in a tight area rather than wide across a county.
Your day. Cut an hour of driving and you can add a job or go home an hour earlier. Both of those are worth real money and neither requires a single new customer.
The fix that costs nothing
Zone days. Pick areas, assign them to days, and book customers into the day that matches their area.
You will lose a little flexibility. Somebody will want Thursday when their zone runs Tuesday, and sometimes you will make an exception for a big job. But the default is the zone, and the default is what your week is built from.
The result is that consecutive jobs are minutes apart instead of half an hour. Detailers who do this consistently report getting an extra job into the day without working any longer, which is the same as a raise that arrives without a price increase.
The other lever
Cluster with intent. When a customer books, ask if a neighbour, a family member or their office wants theirs done the same day. A second car in the same driveway has effectively zero drive cost and is close to pure margin.
Fleet and dealer work does the same thing at a larger scale, which is why detailers who add commercial accounts often find their profit improves faster than their revenue.
What to do this week
Track the drives. Run the number. Then look at your calendar for next week and ask one question about each job: could this have been on the same day as the one nearest to it?
If the answer is yes more than twice, you do not have a pricing problem. You have a calendar problem, and that one is free to fix.
Questions people actually ask
Should I charge a travel fee?
For jobs outside your normal area, yes, and say so up front rather than adding it at the end. Inside your normal area, build the drive into your price instead. Customers accept a stated travel zone far more easily than a surprise line item.
How do zone days work?
You assign areas to days. North side Tuesday, south side Wednesday. Customers book into the day their area runs. You lose a little scheduling flexibility and you get a large chunk of your driving back, which is almost always the better trade.
What if I say no and lose the job?
Work out what the job pays after the drive and decide with the number in front of you. Some long-distance jobs are genuinely worth it, especially high-ticket ceramic work. Plenty of others are a two hour round trip for a maintenance wash, and those are the ones to price properly or decline.
Does a bigger radius grow the business?
It grows the map. Whether it grows the business depends on whether the extra jobs cover the extra driving. Most detailers who tighten up and go deeper in one area end up with more revenue and shorter days.