Starting a mobile mechanic business

Insurance comes before the first job

Your own car policy does not cover you to work on other people's vehicles, and an ordinary van policy does not cover you to drive them. Discovering that after an incident is the single most expensive mistake in this trade.

Motor trade road risk is the cover that lets you drive a customer's vehicle, for a road test or simply to move it off a driveway. Without it, a road test on a customer car is an uninsured drive, with everything that follows from that.

Public liability covers injury or damage caused to a third party while you work. Most business customers will not let you near a fleet vehicle without it, and a growing number of private customers ask to see it too.

Employers liability becomes a legal requirement as soon as you employ anybody, including casually or on a weekend. Do not assume a mate helping on Saturdays falls outside it.

Talk to a broker who genuinely does motor trade rather than general trade, and be precise about how you work: roadside, customer driveways, business premises, whether you store vehicles overnight. Each of those changes the cover, and a policy bought against a rough description is a policy that may not respond.

Waste oil and the duty of care

Waste engine oil is classified as hazardous waste. It cannot go into a drain, a household bin or your own domestic waste, and the penalties for getting this wrong are not trivial. Oil filters, brake fluid, coolant, batteries, tyres and old brake components each have their own handling requirements.

You have a duty of care over the waste your work produces. In practice that means using an authorised waste carrier, obtaining and keeping the transfer or consignment documentation, and being able to show where the waste went and who took it.

If you carry your own waste, including moving it from a customer driveway back to your own premises, you are likely to need to be registered as a waste carrier yourself. Registration is handled by the Environment Agency in England, SEPA in Scotland, Natural Resources Wales in Wales and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency.

Sort the disposal route before you take the first sump plug out, not afterwards. Most garages and some factors will take waste oil from a registered trade customer, and an arrangement made in advance costs far less than a problem solved in a hurry.

The registration categories and the rules around them do change. Confirm the current requirements directly with the agency for the nation you work in, rather than relying on what any web page says, this one included.

The van and the tools

Start with what the jobs you can actually sell require, not with the tools you would enjoy owning. Servicing, brakes, batteries and diagnostics cover most mobile work and need far less than a full workshop.

The items that pay for themselves first are usually a capable diagnostic tool with the subscriptions that keep it current, a trolley jack and proper axle stands, a torque wrench you trust, a battery support unit and a power source that lasts a full day away from a socket.

A mobile mechanic cannot do everything and should say so early and clearly. Anything needing a lift, wheel alignment, a press or a spray booth is a job to refer on. A working relationship with a local workshop for those is worth more than equipment you would use twice a year.

The van is your shop front. Racked out so you are not emptying it onto a driveway, clean, and signwritten with the service and a phone number. Customers stand and watch you work in a way they never do in a garage, and an untidy van loses the follow-up job.

Think honestly about conditions. Rain, no lighting, a sloping driveway or a residents' parking bay are real constraints. Turning up to a job you cannot safely carry out costs you the customer anyway, so it is better to ask the right questions when the booking is made.

Pricing the first jobs

The commonest mistake is pricing against a fixed garage while forgetting three things: you are paying for the travel, you cannot run two jobs at once, and there is nobody else to pick up the slack when one overruns.

Count the drive. An hour on the road between jobs is an hour of your day that nobody is paying for. Either build travel into the rate or charge a call out that covers it, and be clear about the radius you work within.

Three or four jobs a day is a realistic ceiling once travel, parts collection and the conversation on the driveway are counted. Price on that, not on eight billable hours, or the figure will look fine and the year will not.

Do not open as the cheapest in the area. Customers who choose purely on price are the ones most likely to argue about the invoice, and undercutting is the hardest position to climb out of once your name is attached to it.

Quote before you travel wherever you can. A registration and a description is usually enough to price a service, brakes or a battery. Arriving with an agreed figure avoids the worst conversation in the trade, which is the one about a number the customer was not expecting.

Getting found locally

A Google Business Profile set up as a service area business is the most important listing you will have, because it is what appears when somebody searches for a mobile mechanic near them. Set the area you genuinely cover rather than the area you would like to.

Reviews matter more in this trade than in almost any other, because the customer is letting a stranger work on their car on their own driveway. Ask at the end of every job, by text, with a direct link. Twenty honest reviews will do more for you than any advert.

Local community pages generate a real amount of mobile mechanic work. Be useful in them rather than advertising in them, because the recommendation that converts is the one somebody else writes about you.

The repeat customers are the actual business. A mobile mechanic with two hundred vehicles on the books, each with its service interval and MOT date recorded, has a diary. One without that has a permanent hunt for the next job, which is exhausting and does not scale.

Getting paid, and the admin that catches people out

Get paid before you leave. Chasing a £180 service across a county is not a business model, and it is the thing new mobile mechanics most commonly get wrong in the first year.

Contactless on a phone handles most jobs and needs no terminal at all. A payment link sent by text handles the case that comes up constantly in mobile work, where the person standing next to the car is not the person who owns it.

Take a deposit covering the parts on anything you have to order specially. You are carrying the cost of that part to somebody's driveway, and if they change their mind you are carrying it home again with nowhere to put it.

Send a proper invoice that separates parts and labour and carries the registration and mileage. Customers keep them, and a genuine service record is worth money to them when the car is sold, which is a good reason for them to keep using you.

Register with HMRC as self employed or set up a company, and put money aside for tax from the first job rather than from the first tax bill. The second approach is how perfectly good businesses end up in trouble in their second January.

Watch the VAT threshold carefully. It arrives faster than people expect once parts are flowing through the business, because the parts you buy and resell count towards your turnover as well as your labour.

Record every job against the registration rather than only against the customer. It is what lets you send service and MOT reminders a year later, and it is what you will want in front of you if there is ever a dispute about what was done and when.

Handle customer data properly. Names, addresses, phone numbers and vehicle details are personal data, and being a one person business does not exempt you from looking after them.

Check whether the specific work you want to sell needs anything extra. Air conditioning work involving refrigerant handling requires certification, for example. Confirm the current requirements with the relevant body before you advertise that service, not after somebody books it.