The Top Three Reasons Your Vehicle Needs Detailing
The Top Three Reasons Your Vehicle Needs Detailing
All right, Stephane, the man with a plan from Starfleet Detailing—how’s things going today? Things are going pretty good.
That’s good. Nice and sunny out, nice and sunny out. Yeah, sunny where you are. Here it’s minus 26 degrees in Edmonton, so I don’t know how many people are going to get their vehicle detailed today, but it’s supposed to warm up tomorrow.
Yeah, yeah, so let’s dive into some queries that people have about detailing in Alberta. So we’re looking specifically for people who have some questions about detailing in Edmonton, and number-one question that is on everybody’s list is, “Why is detailing so expensive?”
Is Detailing Actually That Expensive?
Number one, you know, if you’re used to going to the 15- or 20- or 30-dollar car wash, detailing is a little bit more than that. So dive into that a little bit for us: why does it seem that detailing is expensive in Edmonton?
So, to detail a vehicle, goal there’s a process, and that process is the same whether it’s dirty or fair or fairly clean. It’s like when you wash a floor—you know, you sweep the floor, then you mop the floor. Obviously, if it’s really dirty, well, then it takes, you know, two, three times more, takes two, three times more to wash all that dirt off, right?
The car is like that as well: you can have one that’s fairly quick, and we call those maintenance cleans. So your maintenance, because you’re doing it often, it doesn’t have time to build up this dirt. But then you can have people that detail their car once a year, once every two years, once every three years; obviously they’re a lot dirtier and it takes more time, but the process is still there. You still have to start with a vacuum, and then you have to shampoo, and you have to wash the plastics, and then get in there with your brush to get in all the little cracks and crevices, do your shine.
The process is still, no matter how dirty it is, the difference is that your base is the same, and then as it gets dirtier, then it builds up on that base price. And to do a basic go-over of the whole vehicle, it takes a couple hours. Then you’ve got your tools, you got your chemicals, and, like us, where you’re mobile, you got your van, you got your gas, you got your insurance—like, there’s so much cost involved just to get out the driveway into somebody else’s driveway to do their vehicles.
Detailing a Car Takes Time
So, just before we even start, there’s already time and expenses put into it that has nothing to do with the detailing. And then after that, you get into the detailing, and then you’ve got your expense of labor. And then after that, you got to pack everything back up, then you got to leave, go back to the shop. So all of that two hours all of a sudden turns into three hours, three and a half hours, and all that cess to be recuperated. And that’s why it seems like, like it’s expensive, but there’s a lot involved into it.
Now, if you go to a basic detailer, which is just basically a vacuum and then kind of wipe down the car really quickly, that’s not a detail—that’s a quick wipe-down, and obviously that’s going to be cheaper. So maybe the person is envisioning that when they think of detailing. That’s not detailing. Detailing involves multiple different types of tools: you got your extractor vacuum, you got your compressor, you’ve got your steamer, your chemicals—like, it just, so it’s a van full of equipment, a lot of stuff.
The Cost of the Detailing Depends on The Size of the Vehicle
So, with that being said, what are the benefits of somebody, you know, spending the money, spending a few hundred bucks—three, four, five hundred, depending on size of the vehicle—what’s the value of somebody spending that amount of money on getting their vehicle detailed?
I’ll give you a simple example. Somebody came in with their vehicle; it was, I think, five, six years old. We detailed it. When we were done, the car looked brand new, and this has happened multiple times where they’re like, “Oh, wow, this car looks new; maybe I’ll keep it longer.” Think of that—you just saved yourselves thousands of dollars, ’cuz if you keep your car an extra year because it looks good again, there’s your answer; there you go. So it’s worth it to do it.
Now, another question that people have here online is, “How often should you do one of these deep, deep-cleaning details?” In Canada it should be done once a year, and for the unique reason is that the salts build up. So you have your boots from the winter with sand and salt; you get into your car, it melts, and then it gets embedded in the carpet, and you do that day in, day out. And what happens is that the salt with the sand, it converts into a rock, and we can’t take that out. I, you can try to break it up with a hammer—like, it’s literally like a rock—and you can break it up with a hammer and try to chisel it away, but, like, just the T-ball detailers, they’re not going to do that for free, first of all. Right, they’re going to say, “Look, this is the hardest rock; we can’t get rid of that.” So then you’ve got this ugly-looking carpet, or you can try to keep up with it before buildup.
So, if you do it every year, get the salt out, then you don’t have that buildup, and then you don’t have that ugly-looking carpet. Right.
Detailing Your Fleet Is Extremely Important
Now, you guys are unique in that you are a mobile detailing company in Edmonton and you go to mainly shops or garages where people are maintaining fleets of trucks, or larger vehicles, or even heavy equipment. What is the advantage for these companies to hire Starfleet Mobile Detailing to clean and detail their vehicles?
Companies that I’ve talked to, and they’ve mentioned to me that what used to do was they would get one of the workers to take the vehicle to a company like Bubbles, and they felt that it was fairly fast: they would go there and sit for an hour and a half to two hours, and then they would come back, and they felt that that was the quickest way and that they would actually save money. But the reality is, they don’t, and I’ll explain to you why.
Not only are they paying for the detailing, which is comparable but sometimes a little bit more expensive than us, but they’re also paying for the guy, the employee, to drive there, to sit there, and to drive back. And then you tack that on to the cost of the detail, so now this detailing is almost double, or at least 50 percent more, than what we charge.
The Time Of Year Influences The Detailing
So what we do is: we go from our shop with our van, all our equipment, we go straight to the yard of the company, and then we detail whatever they have right there—summer or winter—and it ends up costing them less money. And, of course, you also reduce the risk of somebody having an accident with a vehicle. And then there’s also the issue of some vehicles that they get detailed are, like, semi-trucks or heavy equipment; you can’t take that to Bubbles for that.
What are some of the other additional benefits that they receive by having their vehicles taken care of? Well, there’s lots, lots of benefits. It helps, I think, it helps with their crew; so if they go around working with a clean vehicle, it, I think, incentivizes them to be clean, pick up after themselves, keep the vehicle cleaner. It also helps new employees to see that, “Hey, you know, this company I’m working for really keeps up with their equipment,” and it makes them feel like, “Hey, I’m working for a company that cares and that really knows how to run a business.”
Because I think any company that doesn’t take care of their vehicles and they start looking run down, that’s not impressive. If anything, that would probably turn me off to using that company. And could you imagine if that same effect rubbed on to the employees, where they’re like, they don’t even care to work for that company anymore? Like, you want pride of ownership, you want pride of your work, and so that’s a positive effect.
Detailed Vehicles Last Longer
And, of course, the equipment lasts longer, I think, because now you’re incentivized to really care for your equipment, drive it properly, and it lasts longer, so they save money in that sense. They don’t have to be changing their equipment as often because of wear and tear, because when you don’t detail regularly, the interior gets premature wear and tear, and then it starts to look run down. And next thing you know, because it looks run down, they don’t bother washing the exterior, they don’t, you know, they start riding rough and whatever—it just has a total negative effect.
Yeah, so it’s almost as if you let it go too far, then the employees don’t care about the vehicle either, so they just ride it rough, they keep it dirty, they don’t care anymore, they take the same attention to it, and it kind of, it promotes the destruction of the vehicle, because they’re not, because the company isn’t taking care of the inside. So they have no pride, and they think, “Well, if you don’t care, I don’t care either.”
Yeah. Now, if there’s any takeaways that we had from your company, Star Fleet Detailing, what would it be and, you know, how would you, how would you encourage a company to get started with Starfleet Detailing in Edmonton?
Well, I encourage companies to reach out to us if they want a company that’s safety-conscious, that shows up on the day that they booked, that does a great job, and that will help upkeep their fleet. We’re the company to do that, because all the other companies that do commercial detailing, it’s more like a side thing. They’re primarily residential customers that they service; they do individuals’ vehicles, which are usually cars and trucks. They do polishes, ceramic coating, and so when they delve into commercial, that’s not really their forte, and so they kind of treat them like a regular car, but they’re totally two different animals.
Work Vehicles Usually Require More Detailing
The dirt is different in a commercial vehicle versus a residential. Residential, it’s usually food and makeup and stuff like that, whereas you go to commercial, it’s grease and mud and sand, and so it’s a lot different way of handling the dirt. So if they call us, we’re going to go there, we’re going to be as quick as we can, and we’re going to be as effective as we can, and we’re going to be in and out. They don’t have to worry about us; they don’t have to have a guy sitting there making sure that we don’t hurt ourselves, because we know the drill and we know about having our PPE, all the safety regulations—we’re all familiar with that.
So when they get us on into their yard, we bring in our van, we go to work, and they don’t even have to bother with us. They just go back to whatever they were doing. We send them the bill, and, you know, at first obviously they’re going to go look and inspect, but once they know we do good jobs, it’s just, like, it’s really quick in the sense that it avoids a lot of unnecessary things that they would normally do with somebody they don’t really trust.
And, yeah. Okay, I’ve got one last question for you. So you guys do mobile detailing in Edmonton, you guys do fleet detailing in Edmonton, you do mobile fleet detailing in Edmonton. Question is: somebody who has a ten-year-old car, is it still worth it to get that vehicle detailed?
Vehicles of All Ages Deserve Detailing!
We detail cars that are 50 years old. It really doesn’t matter what the age of the vehicle is; obviously it depends on what their goal is. So if they’re wanting to detail for resale and it’s an older car, well, obviously if the car looks new and it’s an old car, it’s going to be easier to sell; might even be able to charge premium. If they’re doing it just for themselves, for, you know, so they can keep riding the vehicle longer, to not have to buy a new one, well, that’s obviously going to help, because if it looks fairly new, then, you know, you still have some pride in riding that vehicle, driving that vehicle.
And it also preserves the value of the vehicle. The longer you take care of it, if it starts to fall apart because you don’t take care of it, then the value goes down, and then you start stop carrying, and next thing you know you’re driving it into the ground.
Right. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today and answering these questions. I know that there are more people in the Edmonton area—especially fleet managers, people who run fleets, and even people who own just regular passenger cars—who are looking for a good company, reliable company, who’s going to be there year after year to service them and provide exceptional detailing experience, and that is Starfleet Detailing.
So, thanks so much for doing that today, and we’ll catch you next time.
Okay, sounds good. Thank you.