How To Recoup Your Gas Money As a Mobile Mechanic

Should you have the customer pay for gas as a mobile mechanic? Simply it’s up to you but we suggest that you do. 

Covering your expenses is hard as a mobile mechanic because after all they’re most likely hiring because you are cheaper than a regular mechanic shop. Without charging for the gas to ride out to the client you’re wasting money and time.

Gas money doesn’t seem like much but it definitely adds up. 

Even planning on $5 a job will add up and allow you to buy more equipment and expand your mobile mechanic business. Especially if you have a big gas guzzling truck or something then this will be more of an issue.

Getting Your Gas Money Back and Back Into Your Business

You really have two options:

Charge per mile or just raise your price by a couple bucks. $5 would be fine in most cases if you charge. Fix the price into whatever service you will be doing.

You may want to get every cent and penny pinch and you should to a certain point but don’t be that person who is so concerned with a few dollars that you forget about giving the client a reason to call you back the next time they need their vehicle serviced.

There are multiple ways to pay for your gas, just like everything else in your business you need to treat it like one.

Charging Per Job

Building whatever your hourly rate is or service fee for the job is necessary and I think is the best way to get that money back and just break even for the drive there.

This is why you should have the gas money built in to your whole business and not per mile or just select a few clients that you deem to far away.

This is a very clean and simple way to keep track of all the gas money being spent because really you don’t even have to think about it since you already know you are covered no matter what.

Charging Per Mile

You can also charge per mile. Although this seems like you’re really stingy and may put off the customer. 

Remember you want to build a great reputation in your town to spread word of mouth and if something bad happens or the customer doesn’t like the way you have laid out the charging fee then they’re way more likely to say bad things about you and worst of all leave a review.

Implementing a per mile gas charge into your charging mechanism is possible but you have to have an explanation that makes sense and that they will understand and accept without making a fuss.

This can work though if you can implement it in the price without causing too much craziness.

How Much Should You Charge For Gas?

This is up to you and what state and city you’re working in but we suggest $5 a job since it’s so easy and you don’t really have to worry about it again. You just add it into your service fee. You don’t need to make a profit on the gas charge just recoup the costs.

Remember it depends on the size of your service area and how far you will be driving to the client. Some jobs will be close and some will be super far away from you.

Even if you want to be less expensive than your competitors or garages you can put the gas price a bit lower and recoup like half the amount just to get some revenue back but you will theoretically will get more customers.

Conclusion

So as you now know that recouping the money that you spend on gas, driving to your customers house is important to your business.

Although if you’re just starting out then you should not worry about pinching pennies you should worry about getting jobs and as many as you can to build up credibility which will eventually build up your business.

We suggest you take the route of building the price into your service charge, labor costs and not the per mile because it’s a lot simpler and let’s you keep working and building your business without having to keep track of everything.