Fleet rental and contracting hired vans: Effective tips for start-ups

Here, we look at some of the crucial factors that you need to master to let your car rental business find its growth path.

While the need for getting around will always be there, a car rental business can always tap the opportunity. But wait. Do think establishing a business like this is as easy as it sounds? Quite contrary is the case. Actually, in spite of the huge opportunities a car rental business can only grow if you know how to manage it. Well, while managerial skills are the bare minimum prerequisite for running any business as such, deep domain knowledge about the car rental industry is equally important. Remember, your fleet of vehicles is your asset and without knowing how to manage them to reap business revenue, you are going to squander these assets over time and face breakdown. Let us furnish here some of the crucial factors that you need to master to let your car rental business find a growth path.

  • Every penny is worth fighting for

In a car rental business, there are several facets of expenses, right? Starting with the gas bill to the insurance cost of servicing, employees and office maintenance, you have several avenues to spend money to allow business operation. Naturally, to ensure profitability you need to control expenses in every front. There are many ways to approach this problem.

For instance, take the processing cost for insurance. Should you show a blind eye to a cost like this? Or say, for the cost incurred by the interest rate what approach do you have? Are you keen on finding the best interest rate with equally lucrative terms and conditions? These costs leave a lot of burdens on your top-line and you need to address them in time. Let me remind you, these costs actually pull down your average profit from each car. You cannot take them lightly.

  • Procure fleet from official shops

For buying cars, start-ups can go to most reputed dealer networks, official stores or multi-brand showrooms. Well, when it comes to buying vehicles for running a commercial fleet, you should only choose official stores for the best deal and accessories. Ford Transit Direct is the ideal choice for Ford cars, though Jennings official Ford shop deserves equal praise from the customers.

  • Find less competitive market

What can be a better opportunity than a least competitive market for the fleet owner to run his business? Well, finding the least competition-populated market is a growth booster for car rental industry. Finding a niche business opportunity unattended by other rental services can also create huge value for the business. In this way, we have found car rental brands catering to accidents or membership-based car rental services for college students. Finding a niche market not counted by other services can just work as hollowed market waiting for you to fill in.

  • A simple logistics

As a car rental service, you need to keep a tap on a few things. For instance, most customers often criticise express annoyance over complex rental logistics wasting their time and money often. There are quite contrary examples that became successful only on account of simplicity and minimum interaction. Allowing users knowing their car models and detailed attributes over the internet often saves the service from complexity and clutter.

  • Distinct customer experience

Finally, how a car rental service stands apart from the rest? Well, when riding a car and travelling around it is not just the so-called brand-level comfort matters, but other attributes that can be added to allow more comfort or ease. For instance, depending on your traveler’s tastes and class you can offer them best magazines of their interest. Offering a value added experience added to the high-class comfort has become almost an imperative now.

In the end, always keep in mind that your fleet of cars is central to your business and naturally you need to take care of them more than anything else. Even if you are only a startup in this business, you already have an idea how most customers prefer novelty and the brand new feel? From the business point of view, it has several implications. First of all, only a larger fleet allows you to send some vehicles to rest. But on the other hand, with a brand new look, you can always fetch the best price for your car.

Ben Lobel

Ben Lobel

Ben Lobel was the editor of SmallBusiness.co.uk from 2010 to 2018. He specialises in writing for start-up and scale-up companies in the areas of finance, marketing and HR.

Related Topics

Fleet Management

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