[markpowell]

I manage £60-£70 an hour and work around 20 hours a week cleaning  and 10 hours a week on leaflet dropping, 30 hours in total, i only work Mon-Fri. I spend around £75 a week on advertising. All my equipment and van are paid for.
I could spend more on advertising and work 40 hours a week but i dont need to!
 

[Matt Lindus]

You can dress the figures how you like. The GROSS NETT profit of the average 1 Van established carpet cleaner is a national average of 18K-25K, turnover can be as high as 60K but nett results will always be 18-25K. Saturation point is hit within about 7 years and you always earn the same as a one man band.

On the other hand an established 1 Van Roofing company at saturation point will have 215-250K turnover resulting in a 85K-120K profit.

Remember that you are running a business not working in a job. What you earn is not what you take.
Rule of thumb, try and imagine £100 of takings as £10 in your pocket and you wont go wrong. If your business takes £3000 in the week that's about £300 per week in your pocket. Take £5000 per week that's £500 in your pocket, not bad eh!

As carpet cleaners most of you will take about £650 - £750 per week on average!! That is totally unviable commercially and should only be classed as a modest to low income job, not a company or business.

Matt

[Mike Osbourne]

Matt

I realise a business takes a big chunk of your money, especially if you are heavily investing in equipment and marketing to grow your business. But your figures don't seem to stack up to me.

You reckon there are loads of one man vans turning 60K and only making a 25k profit? That's a hell of a lot of costs.

[Doug Holloway]

Matt

Your figures do not compare likle with like.

An established  1 van CC, flat out could easily gross 125K with say,  25 K expenses giving profit of 100k.

Cheers

Doug

[markpowell]

Matt,
I agree your sums dont add up to me either

[carpet guy]

If you don't get a simlar return to Doug's suggested figures, you are not marketing, or managing effectively.

If you feel you are approaching saturation, you simply increase your charges, or expand your workforce.

[Mike Halliday]

of courses they don't add up he's posted that before, he's just a wind-up merchant.

[ronnie paton]

defo wind up merchant i mean 10% of turnover y would we all bother(im a window cleaner but reading with intrest).

[Matt Lindus]

Do you guys understand what saturation point is? This means your business has reached its full potential. It also means that the demand for your services stops at saturation point.

In other word, everyone knows about you, everybody knows your good, everyone has your number to hand and/or knows where to get it.
If they think carpet cleaning they come to you. That is saturation point, more can be spent on marketing but the calls remain the same.

New company profits accelerate year on year until they reach saturation. Then steadily increase with inflation only.

 

[gwrightson]

matt,

How wrong you are!

I agree saturation point is what you are suggesting , but this does not mean to say you cannot expand if you so wish.
you simply broaden your horizons, spread your wings, and go further afield, if, IF this is what you want
but when you think about it,  there are always new custys even on your doorstep.

I see mars bars, cola, carling , etc. etc. etc. advertising every day.
I know what they are, I know their name and I know where to get them , so why do they keep advertising? 
To keep the buyers informed, to remind them that they are there. so really your theory is out of the window 

I think!!

Geoff

[Mike Osbourne]

More likely the reality is, how much work, money and stress is someone prepared to put into expanding their business.

Yes a lot of people would be happy with 60k turnover driving a little van with a portie and home for tea.

Less will buy a truckmount, diversify, continue to put money back into the business.

Even fewer are prepared to take the risk of duplicating their operation and take on more operators.

The saturation point in reality is the point you say to yourself it's not worth it to do any more.

[Straker Cleaning]

"Yes a lot of people would be happy with 60k turnover driving a little van with a portie and home for tea.".......... close but i am home for lunch 

[Mike Osbourne]

Put your feet up Chris and watch those wonderful programmes they put on the tele in the afternoon.

[mark_roberts]

Saturation point is when theres no time left in the day or your body gives up in this game.

Mike

Do you still achieve the £100 an hour cleaning suites?  I find suites the least profitable thing I clean.   If so how do you do it with one man.

Mark

[Ian Gourlay]

Just poped home for lunch to check my BT phone book ad as the plonkers messed it up.

Ian

Your figures are way way off.  10k a year dep. and £5k running costs.  Who told you that a portable supplier

I'll work something out for you later.

Mark

I know just made them up to cut Mikes earning down


Would be interested to know true cost of running a Truxckmount over a 4 year Cycle

Must be a new one

[Jason Hedges]

I would say the running costs of a t/m versus productivity is minimal compared to a porty.

I can do easily twice as much work using a t/m compared to a porty. I have recent experience of this as I am using a hired van with porty at the moment to cover essential jobs while t/m is off the road awaiting van engine replacement.

After using a porty (low powered backup) for a few days now appreciate more than ever the cleaning speed and power of a t/m.

The running and maintenance costs are far higher than running a porty but productivity and quality of job /drying time is much much higher!

All the best,
Jason.

[Mike Halliday]

Mark;
 suite & L/R 2hrs for my 2 man team £140 with the special offer I use. I never just clean a suite, its always comes with a L/R.

there is no such thing as saturation point :

'everyone knows about you, everybody knows your good, everyone has your number to hand and/or knows where to get it.  If they think carpet cleaning they come to you.'

I bloody wish!

Mike

[carpet guy]

Reminds me of " Cheers " where everybody knows your name. In the village in which I was born and grew up, virtually everyone knows my name, but I chose to do business elsewhere, as there are more people in towns.
Thoughts of saturation are negative thoughts.
Anyway, if you have a catchment area with 1,000,000 homes, how many could you get round in 25 years if you did 2 per day ? and remember this is just your immediate locality.

Good to see someone posting genuine and realistic times for cleaning, how some can think they are running a successful business while taking 3 hour plus to clean a suite makes me wonder, and I have absolutely no doubt, that a suite cleaned by the Halliday team will be as clean as one done by the those who kid themselves, that taking twce as long, gets it twice as good and that will cost you twice as much ma'am.

[stevegunn]

Speaking to ovenu cleaner today charges £45 for cleaning oven and he was there from 1.30 till 3.0 customer over the moon with oven there was 2 of them.

I know what I would rather do for my hourly rate

[mark_roberts]

Ive a friend who cleans ovens about that same money.  Have no idea how he makes money at that rate.

Ian

Ive had my TM for two years.  Only money spent has been servicing ie. oil, filters etc so Id say around £200 would cover that.  Petrol is £5 per machine hour which equates to around £100-£150 in value.  Depreciation Im not sure about but say 20% a year.  Regarding vans even if you run a portable you still need a SWB transit.  For a TM a LWB is idea so say the van costs £3000 more than a SWB to buy.  Diesel costs will be a bit higher due to the weight.  My transit gets 20mpg but Im told transits are hard on the juice.

If your busy and doing say £50k a year plus then a TM is worth looking at.  I know when I used the portable it cost me £300 a year or so on vac motors etc.

Hope that makes sence.

Mark