Illustration for What a $10,000 Month Takes for a Mobile Detailer

A Miami detailer about nine months in asked how to get to $10,000 a month (community discussion). He said he grosses $3,000 to $4,500 a month, mostly at tickets around $150 (his menu runs $139 to $199), spends about $2.80 in product per car, and pays $25 to $30 per client in social media ads. He also said there are at least 20 detailers per city where he works. Replies split. One said $10,000 a month won’t come consistently from $150 jobs and pointed to coatings; another said it isn’t realistic until you have people working for you.

The job count

Average ticket Jobs a month for $10,000 Jobs a week Hours a week at 3 hours a job
$150 67 About 15.5 About 46
$300 34 About 8 About 24
$450 23 About 5.3 About 16

Our assumptions: 4.33 weeks in a month and 3 hours per job, including setup and driving. Published booking windows vary widely; one detailer lists a $150 ceramic maintenance wash at 1.5 hours, and another books 3 to 5 hours for a full interior-and-exterior detail. Use your own times. How we research: methodology.

What comes off the top

Gross isn’t take-home. Rounding job counts up means the gross is really $10,050, $10,200 and $10,350. For each ticket we subtracted a card fee of 2.6% plus 15 cents per job (one processor’s in-person rate), the Miami detailer’s $2.80 of product per car, a 20-mile round trip at the IRS business mileage rate of 76 cents a mile as a stand-in for vehicle cost, and $54 a month for general liability insurance, the average one insurance marketplace reports for detailers.

  • $150 ticket, 67 jobs: about $1,530 in those costs, leaving about $8,520 of that $10,050.
  • $300 ticket, 34 jobs: about $940, leaving about $9,260 of $10,200.
  • $450 ticket, 23 jobs: about $740, leaving about $9,610 of $10,350.

That’s before advertising and income taxes. Advertising scales with the job count: at the Miami detailer’s $25 to $30 per ad-sourced client, 67 new clients would cost about $1,675 to $2,010, and 23 about $575 to $690. Repeat customers don’t carry that ad cost. Taxes depend on your situation; ask a tax professional. Our real hourly rate guide runs the same kind of check on jobs you’ve already done.

What one add-on does

Add-ons raise the average ticket without adding a stop. One California detailer lists a $200 add-on to coat wheel faces. If one in four $300 jobs also took a $200 add-on, the average ticket would be $350, and $10,000 would take about 29 jobs instead of 34. That’s five fewer driveways a month for the same gross, assuming the add-on fits in the visit.

Price or volume in a crowded market

The Miami detailer’s crowding complaint shows up in Census counts too, though they don’t tell the whole story. In 2023, Miami-Dade County had 137 establishments with paid employees in the car wash industry code (NAICS 811192), 106 of them with fewer than five employees. Solo operators without employees aren’t in that count. Our guide to whether mobile detailing is oversaturated explains what each Census count measures.

A crowded market doesn’t settle the price question, but the arithmetic leans one way: fewer, higher-priced jobs mean fewer hours, fewer miles and fewer customers to find. Our guide to setting your prices covers building a menu from your costs.

A plan you can track

  1. Pick the ticket you’re aiming for. Your current average is the starting point.
  2. Turn it into a weekly job count from the table.
  3. Check your hours. If the count needs more hours than you have, the ticket has to rise or the work has to be shared.
  4. Track repeat clients separately. They don’t carry an ad cost.

Sources

Based on 9 sources · How we price