How to Price Fleet and Commercial Detailing Contracts

Fleet work is the first thing most detailers chase when they want steadier income, and it's the first thing a lot of them lose money on. The mistake is treating it as retail pricing with a discount attached. It's a different job with a different cost structure, and it needs pricing from scratch.

Price the round, not the car

A retail customer books one car, at their house, at a time that suits them, and you're paid per visit. A fleet client gives you fifteen vans in one car park on the same morning. Your per-car time drops hard: no travel between jobs, no setup and pack-down fifteen times, no waiting for someone to move their car off the drive.

That's where your discount comes from, and it's also the ceiling on it. Work out your realistic time on site for the whole round, then divide. If fifteen vans takes you five hours including setup, that's 20 minutes a van, and at a target of £45 an hour you need roughly £225 for the round, or £15 a van. Compare that to what the same wash costs a retail customer and you'll see whether the deal is sane. If your quoted per-van price only works when everything runs perfectly, it doesn't work.

The other half is condition. Retail cars are usually maintained. A works van that's been on a building site for three weeks is a different animal, and the interiors are worse. Go and look at the actual fleet before you quote, never from a phone call.

Build in the things that go wrong on site

Fleet jobs have failure modes retail doesn't. Vehicles that are out on a job when you arrive. No water or power access. A car park where you can't get the van close enough. A site contact who's in a meeting and can't unlock anything.

Two things protect you here. First, write into the quote what you need on the day: vehicles present and accessible between set hours, a water point or an agreement that you're bringing your own, keys available. Second, agree what happens to vehicles that aren't there. The usual answer is that they're skipped and still charged, or rolled to the next visit at the client's choice, but the point is that you've decided in advance instead of arguing about it in a car park.

Volume pricing that doesn't eat your margin

Tiering by commitment works better than tiering by size alone. A client with 30 vehicles who wants them done once, ever, is not worth the same rate as a client with 12 vehicles on a fortnightly cycle. The recurring one is what you actually want, so price it accordingly.

A structure that holds up:

• Per visit, ad hoc: close to retail, maybe 10 percent off for volume on the day.
• Monthly recurring: 15 to 20 percent below retail, minimum vehicle count, 3 month term.
• Fortnightly or weekly: the deepest rate, because your per-car time is lowest and the schedule is predictable.

Set a minimum charge per visit regardless of vehicle count. Otherwise the client trims the round to four vans one week and you've driven across town for £60.

Get the payment terms right before you start

This is where fleet work bites people who came from retail. Retail customers pay on the day. Commercial clients pay on their terms, which means 30 days as standard and often longer in practice, and they pay against an invoice with a purchase order number on it, processed by someone in accounts who has never met you.

Agree the terms in writing before the first visit: payment window, who receives the invoice, whether a PO number is required, and what happens when it's late. Invoice monthly rather than per visit so you're not producing eight documents a month for the same client. And be realistic about cash flow, because you're now funding product, fuel and wages for four to six weeks before the money lands. One decent fleet contract can improve your revenue and squeeze your bank balance at the same time.

Keeping this straight by hand gets old fast, which is where having every visit logged against the client and invoiced in one place earns its keep. DetailAhead handles multi-vehicle bookings as a single job and rolls the month's visits into one invoice, so the admin doesn't scale with the fleet.

Know when to walk away

Some fleet enquiries are just a business trying to get detailing at car wash prices. If a prospect's opening line is what a competitor charges, and the number is below your costs, the honest answer is that you can't do it at that price. Say so and move on. A contract you resent doing is one you'll rush, and the client will notice long before the term is up.