If you're serious about growing a healthy profitable and successful business, you're asking the wrong question.
Up to a point, the number of customers is irrelevant. The important statistic you should bear in mind is how much profit you are making.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the money you 'earn' in a day is all profit, it isn't.
You must allow for all overheads, vehicle costs, loan repayments, fuel, insurance, advertising, stationery, telephone, uniform, tools, repairs renewals and replacements etc etc.
Remember the (very true) adage: "Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity" If you don't make a good profit you will fail. It may take a few months or even a few years, but to avoid it you must have a realistic plan with clear goals.
I believe that to be sure of real success you should aim for an hourly turnover of at least £30 and achieve this for a minimum of 35 hours a week. This figure will increase in line with inflation as time goes on.
This will give you a good wage with enough left over to invest in your business so that you can weather the ups and downs that will come.
£18 per hour may seem brilliant after a factory or other 'employed' position, but running your own business is a different thing altogether.
Don't make the mistake of undervaluing your time, make sure you can turn over enough money to sustain your business and grow year on year.
Ian. Are you referring to the £30 an hour as an "on the glass" figure or is that drive betweens, setting up etc?
It´s from the minute you leave home to the minute you get home again 
There are days that I achieve that (and more) and there are days when I don't - especially if I feel a bit knackered and take too long a break.
I've very recently cleared out the garagfe I was renting and handed it back as I no longer needed it. There was all sorts of tat in there - some of which had been buried a long time at the back. It was a little treasure archive of paperwork and my two shredders have been working overtime. It's hard to believe that I used to charge such low amounts back in 1992 (I told you it was old
). As I was shredding the records, I did a quick count up of how many customers I had back then. From 10/91 to 10/93 I built up a round of 363 customers all done trad. Most of it was a crap round for one simple reason - it was underpriced. I was too kind to messers back then too. These days I have about 250 customers plus a bit of subbying that I do 2 - 3 days per month and even allowing for inflation and higher outgoings of WFP, I earn far far more from the 250 than I ever did from the 363.
The round got even bigger after that. It was very unwieldy too trying to run it from excercise books and paper files. I reckon that I was probably supplying a service to about 450 customers at one point - all ladder work.
These old records are a bit of a treasure chest and it was tempting to keep them for posterity but you have to let go at some point. The IR want them kept for 7 years (6 plus the current one) so I will be shredding everything that is from the last century.
So, as you were saying, it's notr the number of customers, it's the profit you earn from them. I couldn't help noticing that my turnover on my second year of trading was about 13 grand. The first year was just over 10 grand - but that was assisted by a self-employed driving job that I did one week a mnonth while I was building my round. Without that it would probably have been 7 - 8 grand.
Just thought I would dip into memory lane from when I started out as there seem to be quite a few new starters lately