The Most Hands-Off $6K/Month Side Hustle to Start - Ep. #330

What is your revenue per month on average?

$5,500 to $7,500.

Oh, that's beautiful. And you still have a full-time job?

Still have a full-time job. Yep. Very minimal work on my end.

How much total time do you spend on the business?

2 to 4 hours.

So you're making $200+ an hour on this business.

It's pretty risk-free. There is not a whole lot that can go wrong.

Can you get financing on these?

Absolutely.

So in about 5 minutes, a guy named Nathan is going to walk through that door, and he's flying here from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he makes thousands of dollars a month in profit working 5 hours a week doing trailer rentals. 31 years old, he has a full-time job and 2 kids, and his business is almost 100% automated. Very low risk to start, low cost to start. You can find out if there's demand before you have to launch. There's just a lot to love about the trailer rental business. So I flew Nathan here so we could learn all about it. Let's go. All right. So how long have you had the auction job?

Coming up on 7 years now.

Okay.

Yep.

And how long have you been doing the trailer rental business?

15 months now. Same age as my daughter. So we, we started that like 2 days after she was born. Okay.

What first gave you the idea to start this?

I have an issue like most young men my age of scrolling Facebook Marketplace. And saw a guy listing a trailer rental business for sale locally on Facebook Marketplace. On Facebook. Yep. And I realized I'd rented in the past a boat from him randomly a couple years before. So just reached out. He was selling 10 trailers and then his book of business for the last couple years as he was moving a couple hours west of Pennsylvania and just wanted to size down.

Now in a business like that, how much can you actually sell your book of business Versus he's just selling the assets?

That's a great question. And I think it depends how much information you have on those customers. And he didn't have any email addresses. It was just a home address and a landline or cell phone. So obviously, immediately looking in, you realize it's fairly antiquated.

Yeah. He's selling his trailers.

Yeah.

I mean, with maybe a little bit of goodwill worked in there.

Yeah, I eventually— I was the only one that was really serious about making an offer on it. So I kind of negotiated to just buy the trailers for what he was saying they were valued at, which was $35,000.

10 trailers?

Yeah, they were older used trailers, heavily used.

Are we talking like dump trailers, flatbeds, box trailers?

A good mix of everything. That was his goal, was to try and provide a little broad range of trailers. So there were 5 enclosed trailers, several Open trailers, utility and equipment trailer. The only thing that out of that list you mentioned that wasn't in there was a dump trailer.

Okay. Okay. This is Lancaster, Pennsylvania?

Yes.

How many people live there?

In the county? It's 500,000. Okay. No, exactly in the town, but it's a mid-sized town. It's nothing like Philly or here.

And how was he finding customers?

The old school way. Well, I mean, he had a— he did have a website, just a WordPress website with a lot of characters on it and backlinks. So he ranked in the area if you search for trailer rentals. But that was really how he was finding it. The 7 people.

Google Business Profile. Yeah. Good reviews.

Mixed.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, he's unsophisticated. Sounds like he's not. He doesn't have like a CRM, customer relationship management software, or did he?

He— I mean, you might say he did, but it wasn't sophisticated in anything other than he could type in somebody's name and see if they were in there previously. There wasn't anything automated that you could hook up to reach.

Okay. So he had a website, Google Business Profile. Did he have a lot of reviews or a lot of pictures?

He had a lot of reviews. He was doing it for probably 10 years in the area.

What would you say his rating was when you bought it? For—

he had 2 businesses and he separated out the trailers into their own. So they were like a 4.2 star. And then the other rentals were a bit lower than that.

Like boat rentals?

Yeah, boat and some small equipment. Okay.

But he didn't wanna sell that side of the business?

No. And he still kept, he's still doing the trailer rentals just on a smaller scale, 2 hours away.

Okay.

Yep.

Do you guys have like a non-compete or anything? Or is it just he's so far away, you're not worried about it?

It was kind of a goodwill offering in the fact that there's no non-compete 'cause he's still doing it. The way I structured the initial purchase, he was asking for $20,000 on top of the trailers for his customer list. And I made a deal with him that I'd just give him a referral fee for any, any previous renter that was on his list or that he referred through his current—

Okay.

Or through his updated—

Yeah, yeah.

Business. So that way he would still get a kickback if somebody from my area called him to rent a trailer. So I was giving him Or I still am giving him 35% of the first rental that anybody he refers.

Okay. So when you— so you ended up spending $35,000 on these?

Yep.

Okay. What was he doing in revenue? Like if he were to be able to value the revenue side of the business, how big was that?

They, those 10 trailers averaged over the last 2 years, about $28,000 a year.

A year?

Total.

All 10 of them?

Yep. All 10 of them combined.

Okay. Okay. And did he have like good books or was he Filing taxes on that, or—

I hope he was filing taxes. Yeah, the books weren't good. The way I was able to feel comfortable going about that was fairly familiar with how much used items sell for on Marketplace between the auction and just— I've been flipping stuff on Facebook for a while. I figured that the $35,000 just for those trailers was the price that I could sell them all for individually if we started it and it flopped. Yeah. Yeah.

And if you really wanted to, you could have pieced together 10 trailers, but This is better than that. Because what about the phone number? Where does the phone number go?

So he kept his phone number, kept his business name and everything.

Okay.

I just took a customer list from him. And so then he just set up a phone call forwarding service.

Okay.

To my number if somebody calls in.

So you took over the website, swapped out the phone number with yours, or—

He still has his website, everything.

So you put it in your own business name?

Yeah, own business name.

New Google Business Profile?

Yeah, everything. on that side was fresh. Okay, for me.

So are you getting anything? Like, do you have any shot of getting leads on day 1 if you don't do anything? Or do you kind of have to start from scratch?

How do you mean start from scratch?

Because like, you're not getting calls because he keeps the phone number. Oh, sure. But is there— is he forwarding leads to you? Like, hey, can I rent a trailer? Not there anymore.

But let me give you his name. Yeah. So he is forwarding from day 1, which is how I got my first rental. And obviously, immediately once we bought the trailers, then I was putting up a Google Business Profile. I interviewed a couple different software companies to do the website and backend stuff to start getting SEO traction. Okay.

What did you name the business?

Lanco Trailer Rentals. That's what they call Lancaster County. Okay. Yep. It's a pretty common, easy to know exactly what we do and where we're So, LancoTrailerRentals.com? It's LancoTrailers.com.

Okay.

Yeah.

What was his name for it?

Cross Keys Rentals. Okay.

All right. So, are you having to pay him a referral fee when he sends leads your way?

Yep. Yeah. For the first, the first time somebody rents with me that comes from him, I give him a 35% kickback.

Okay.

And to date, over 15 months, I think there's been 20, right about 20 referrals. It's Total $1,200.

Okay, so it's not, not that much.

No.

On $28,000 a year that he was doing, it's got to be mostly profit, right? Because you buy the thing and it's your time. There's no gas. There's, I mean, wear and tear minimal, I'm guessing. Yep. Insurance.

Yes. He told me he wasn't even worrying about insurance.

So it sounds silly, but honestly, it's kind of not, I think, like if you were to self-insure, because after 6 months or 12 or 24 months, what you would have paid in insurance would buy another trailer.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Absolutely right. And in Pennsylvania, the tow vehicle's insurance policy has to cover liability for whatever it's pulling. It won't necessarily cover collision, but it has to cover the liability.

So you're saying the vehicle insurance in Pennsylvania has to cover whatever it's towing?

That's for Pennsylvania. I don't know if that's every state.

So they legally don't have to have insurance.

On the trailer?

Yeah.

No.

He didn't.

Yep.

Do you have insurance?

I do.

Yeah. Yeah. How much does that run?

So for general liability for the business itself, and then insurance on the trailers, which there's 13 of them right now, it's $3,800 a year. Oh, wow.

It's not bad.

Yeah. Just under, right around $350 a trailer.

Where was he keeping all these?

He was keeping them on a property that he owned. It was only 7 minutes up the road from my house. And then I ended up renting that old space from him.

I guess that would be the other overhead is where to keep these things.

Yep. Yeah.

Are you still renting that space today?

I'm not. No. It wasn't a great setup. It was just a really long skinny property. So every trailer had to be stacked up behind each other. So I had to also rent a little skid loader to move them all in between rentals. And I could set out a max of 3 trailers at a time to get picked up before I'd have to go over Pull all their trailers out, back them in. That got a little fast. So yeah, it was, it was a great way to start and kind of experiment with the contactless side where I was still coming to the yard, seeing the trailers every now and then, meeting a renter. Okay. But since then, I've found about a half-acre gravel lot that I rent, which is just a better setup for contactless.

What were you paying him? And then what are you paying now?

So I was paying him $400 a month. Okay, which was pretty reasonable. And now I'm paying $800.

Okay, but it's much better configured.

Yes, it's just a flat square, half-acre gravel lot. So there's plenty of access to park the trailers all on one side. And then as people come in to pick up or drop off, they have plenty of space to turn around.

Okay.

Yeah, so it's much better setup.

So $300-ish a month for insurance, $800 for the Lot, no employees. Yep. So we're at $1,100 a month whether you rent anything out or not.

Yep.

Before we get to like the, your current numbers, how do like the first 3 months go? What are your action plans? You hire a software company, you get a website up, you make the name, then what?

So there are several different trailer rental specific CRM website builders out there. So I interviewed each of them and found a company called Rent Flow Solutions. And they more or less handle Everything from the website design, SEO, and help to set up automations, or they can make it as automated as you're wanting the business to be.

Okay.

So I got with them and that was kind of how the Google side started picking up.

Okay. Because they helped create your Google Business Profile?

So I still created that myself, but once I had them, Their automations helped you start getting reviews and replying to reviews? Yeah, exactly. They, they did the whole website build for me. All I had to do was send them the description and pictures of the trailers, and they at least got it showing up on Google. So that call started coming in.

Okay. Do you remember what your first month's revenue was?

The first month's revenue was $2,300.

Wow. Okay. It's pretty good.

It covered the expenses, which was My only goal?

Yeah. I mean, already you're on track to meet what he did the year before. Because he's doing $28,000 a year.

That's on track for $4,000 a month. Oh, wow.

Okay. So what about your, your second month, aka your first full month?

The first full month was right about $4,000.

Wow. So you're beating him by 50%. I mean, if he's doing $28K.

Yeah. So the one thing to consider in Pennsylvania, at least, is it is a little bit more seasonal because Okay, okay. So it's not like in the summertime are the months where it's usually a little bit better. And then the open trailers stay pretty slow during the winter months because it's more just if you have good days, people will use them. But if it's snowing, they don't want an open trailer.

Okay, so how many of those leads that you first got were from him versus from your brand new website and Google Business Profile?

I wish I had that exact number.

Mostly your own stuff, right?

Yes.

20 leads.

I want to say that first month we had about 20 rentals on the first total month.

Okay.

And of those, I would say 3 to 5 max were from him. Oh, wow.

Okay. So you're averaging like $200 a rental?

Yes. Yeah.

How much per day per trailer on average?

A good ballpark is probably $90 is the median that I rent for. It's anywhere between $50 and $150. Trailers.

And 2 days on average?

Uh, so it depends what kind of trailer they're running. If they're running an enclosed trailer, they'll average 4.5 days. If they're renting an open trailer, it's 1.5 days.

Because they might just need to go pick up a riding lawnmower, you know?

Yeah, pretty simple, quick move. Or their car broke down and they're just towing it to the shop. Okay, just a single day, couple hour rental.

Yeah.

Whereas a lot of times the enclosed trailers end up being moves, or guys Taking motorcycles out to Sturgis, things like that, where they're on a trip.

Yeah. Okay. So in these first few months, you were doing everything yourself? Were you meeting people on the lot? How was that going?

The first several, I met people there, just did it manually in person. And then I quickly started— once the website and some of the automations had started, started doing Hide-a-Key boxes on the trailers with a lock on them. And then when somebody would show up, they'd get pickup instructions with where, where that key was hidden for their rental. So they could come up and pick it up without having to meet me.

Yeah.

The one downside that I learned pretty quickly of meeting people is like you found out today, you're on their time.

Yeah.

So if they're running late, then you're stuck there at the yard for an hour. Yeah, you didn't have to be.

Yeah. And you're just like, yeah, the best use of time.

Yeah, you can walk around, kick tires, but you can only do that for so long before twiddling your thumbs.

So phase 1 was you meeting people there, doing it manually. Yep. Phase 2 was a lockbox. Hey, here's the code. Yep. Let me know if you have any questions. What about phase 3?

Phase 3 was beginning of this year when I got the new yard lease set up. All the trailers have their own designated spot. They all have locks on them with their own keys. And then I've got a big sign kind of message board type thing with lockboxes on them for each trailer. They're all numbered. And when somebody books on the website, or if they call me to book, I'll process the card information over the phone. Then the automated system kicks in and they do the rental agreement right from their phone.

Mm-hmm.

Then it texts them 24 hours before their pickup time, the pickup instructions with the lockbox number and their trailer. So they show up, unlock the trailer, hook up and go.

So it's completely automated?

Completely. Yeah. I mean, I'll still field calls, but that's, that's the extent of what I'm doing.

Just one-off questions.

Yep.

Hey, I can't find it. Is it this one or that one? Or—

Yeah, more it's just people calling in trying to get a price or see if I have availability before they check the website.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So how much did it cost you to get Phase 3 set up with like the lockboxes and the—

So the, the majority of the cost Is the $800 to rent the lot.

Okay.

The lockboxes, they're $30 apiece on Amazon. I spent $350 on a print shop to make like an official sign that looks good, built a little wooden placard overhang board for it to sit on. So a couple hundred bucks there. Each, each lock is $65 on the trailers.

Okay.

And then I've Cameras out there, but fenced in. It's not fenced in. It's open, but it's not road frontage. So you wouldn't see it if you're driving past. Yeah, a lot, which is why it's cheaper. Obviously, road frontage would probably bring in more rentals.

Yeah.

But I just, I hadn't found a place.

Yeah, it's not easy to find a gravel lot that's for rent that has good frontage.

Yeah. And that's within my price range for renting out trailers.

Right.

You know, as a side hustle.

Right. Okay, so $4,000 first full month. Was the rest of the summer kind of similar-ish?

The next several months were, and then I think through October was good. And then the winter months were a little slower. They dropped down to the lowest was just over $2,000.

Could be worse.

They were between $2,000 and $3,000, kind of paid for itself, but definitely a little bit slower.

Yeah.

But that was also what I was expecting from what I had heard from him. So my, my only goal at the time was just to cover the $1,200 in fixed expenses that I knew it was going to have.

Okay. What about any like maintenance repairs, flat tires?

So really with trailers, which is the whole reason why I got into it, it's— there's no engines. So there's typically also minimal hydraulics. You know, a dump trailer will have some hydraulics, but it's All minimal. So your real maintenance comes from tires and then bearings, typically, and suspension parts.

Okay.

Past that, there's not a whole lot that can go wrong with the trailer unless it's user error, obviously.

Yeah. Do they have to take pictures before and after? Yep.

So the, um, when they come pick up, get the code, they take before pictures, it checks the trailer out of our system. And then same thing when they're back, take after pictures. And then we have a— I hold a security deposit on their card. So then I can verify trailer's in same condition it left in once they wrap up.

Okay. Have you ever— have you ever had any claims? Like someone bumped into something or—

I've had damages to the trailers for sure. That's something you have to definitely disconnect yourself with, with the trailers, which I'm Glad I bought the first ones used. Yeah, for that reason, because they already had dents and scratches throughout, but it's going to happen. Thankfully, typically trailers are pretty sturdy. And it's just part of it, you know, that they're going to get banged up a little bit. And as long as it's not major, it, it's tough to put a trailer out of commission like that. The enclosed trailers have a little bit more dents and dings because they're— larger, but that's what the security deposit's for.

So when you do have incidents, you just use the security deposit?

Yep. Yeah. Always my goal is to be fair to everybody involved, and I always make sure to voice that to the renter. I'm not looking to make any money on their damages, but I'm also not looking to eat the cost myself.

How, how much is the deposit? And are, are you always claiming that when you have a damage, or do you just lose sometimes?

So a good rule of thumb at least that I do for the deposit is 2 times the daily rate. So if it's cheap little trailer, that could be $100 or up to $250. I usually don't go past that. And then the vast, the vast majority of damages, at least since I've been doing it, are under that threshold.

Yeah.

Every now and then, I had 2 breakdowns that were larger than that, but they were both easy to work out with The renters.

Okay. They're cool about it. Apologetic? Or—

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, they kind of know. Yeah, if, if it's more than $250, that's a big enough bump on the trailer that they know they— so I'm sure there will be a day where I'll have to eat something.

But you haven't yet?

No. Wow. Nope.

So your maintenance costs have effectively been zero. So other than like— sorry, not maintenance. Your damages, repairs are effectively zero.

They net even.

Yeah, but you are having to spend money to maintain them, the bearings, the tires. How much have you spent on that?

So my first year, that was for the first full year, that was $8,000 I spent on maintenance. And that was also a little higher than normal because I front-loaded buying a bunch of extra parts. And I work with a mobile mechanic in the area to have him do all the maintenance. So that my goal with it was to be— get it to where it's as hands-off for me as possible.

Yeah. Okay. And then do you think that $8,000 a year is like you can expect that, or was that artificially high because they were all used?

I think, I think that's a safe bet.

Yeah.

Going forward, I have a couple more trailers now, and as rentals increase, the maintenance goes up because it's— you can do it off of the mileage of the trailer. So, you know, bearings are every 12,000 miles, for example. So the more they're getting rented out, the more I'm gonna have him in there replacing them.

How do you keep track of the miles?

So all the trailers, I put a GPS on all of them. Yep. Yeah, it's a pretty simple GPS. It just pings twice a day. So there's plenty of different GPSs that guys use in the industry. Some of them ping every 5 minutes, and guys like to sit there and see exactly where they're at. But I just need a ballpark of where they're at to track mileage. And then obviously, that's a worst-case scenario if a trailer would happen to get stolen. Yeah, obviously, that's the one of the ones. No, it's not happened. And I get that question a fair amount. But I'd say it's kind of— there's levels of insulation with it, where when somebody books on the system, they have to upload their driver's license and insurance to the rental agreement form. So I already have that. on there. And they won't get a pickup instructions text with the code until that's done and they're paid. Okay, then once they're on site, there's obviously cameras there. So their vehicle themselves are on camera. Yeah, all the trailers are locked. Of course, if somebody breaks in and breaks one off, they can take it, but then you're hoping the GPS is—

Yeah. So what do you pay every month for like your website and all the software stuff?

So the website and software is right about $200 a month.

Okay, so we're at $1,100 for insurance and rent, plus $200 for website, $1,300. What about like your cameras and your GPS software?

The cameras, they're $50 a month. There's— I have 4 on there.

$50 for all 4?

Yes.

Okay.

Yep.

And the GPS software?

The GPS, they're an upfront $150 to buy it, and the batteries are good for 4 years. Okay.

So nothing ongoing?

Nope.

All right. And then $8,000 a year-ish for the maintenance, which would be what, $700 a month, $800?

Right about there.

Wait, no, no, no. $500 times 12, $600. So like $650 a month, give or take. So we're at like $2,000 a month for overhead, including maintenance and repairs.

Yeah. Yeah. Right now it's right, right between $2,000 to $2,500. Okay. Depending how, how much the trailer is being rented. Yeah.

Okay. And then what is your revenue per month on average?

So now the last several months, it fluctuates between $5,500 to $7,500.

Oh, nice. Okay. Let's call it $6,500. So you're netting $4,000 a month, give or take?

Yep.

$48,000 a year. That's beautiful. And you still have a full-time job?

Still have a full-time job. Yep. I'm— I'll be at the yard for maybe 2 to 3 hours a week is typically what I spend on it right now.

How much total time do you spend On the business? Like, because you're not only working on it when you're at the yard, right? Like, if you were to add up all the hours in a week, is it 5, 10?

Definitely less. I think that's where it's closer to 2 to 4 hours. The main thing that I am doing is just taking calls. Okay, I'll get several a day, and if I am booking somebody on it, it might be a 10-minute phone call, but the system kind of takes over from there once I've Mark them. The only things I do, I swing by on my way home from work, usually 2 times a week, just look over the trailers while I'm there. Or if somebody drug a light connector, something that's easy to quickly swap out, I might spend 30 minutes swapping something out while I'm there.

So 5 hours a week, give or take?

2.5 to 5.

Okay.

Yeah.

So $1,000 a week net profit on average. It's lumpy. $1,000 a week, 4 or 5 hours a week. So you're making $200+ an hour on this business. After, like, don't get me wrong, you have to set stuff up, you have to negotiate with the guy, you had to get a lot, find a lot, make the board, make the thing that covers the board to keep people out of the rain. There's hours that went into it before, but you got it to the point where it's somewhat passive and making you $250 an hour. Yep. For your time.

Yeah, a lot of the time was front-loaded, just getting systems in place. But once they are, now it's, it's very minimal work on my end.

How big could it get in Lancaster County if you wanted to just go all out?

That's a good question. And I go back and forth on what's the right way to grow it without leaving my current job, whether that's continuing to add more trailers, which there's definitely room to do that. And I think it's Pretty easy. As demand comes in for certain trailers, I'll mark down when somebody— anytime somebody calls and I don't have the trailer they're asking for, I just will have a running list in my phone, and then I'll look to add that next. Or I think honestly, you could do a bunch of little transplant locations of 10 to 13 trailers, keep the footprint small, and just take the exact same repeatable system and put it 30 minutes away. That's— Also something that happened.

Yeah. Have your mobile mechanic go out there once a week or so.

Yeah. The mechanic already, already travels. So he could just spend a day there, a day in Lancaster.

What if you like could only have one trailer to offer? What would it be?

Probably for my area, it's going to depend where you're at geographically, but a dump trailer.

Okay.

It was a little bit slower to get started. But once people know you have that, okay, That rents out by far the most on my lot as far as number of rentals, but they're averaging 1.5 days.

Okay.

And it's seasonal. So that's really heavy summertime junk removal stuff.

Is that what they're using?

Junk, landscape, concrete, asphalt. It's hydraulic, right? You just— Yep.

What do those cost?

That was $8,300 new.

Wow. Okay. And then, I mean, that'll last 10+ years? Yep.

Yeah. If you keep maintaining it, it'll have no problem.

And what do you rent that one for?

$95 a day.

Okay. Do you have like a metric where it's like, like 10%, right? Like I spent $9,000 on this, I need to rent it for your 1%, $90 a day, you know?

Yeah, I, I'll base it off of what the other larger companies in the area are doing. But I A decent rule of thumb is 1.5 times the— or 1.5% of the purchase price. Yeah. So if it's a $4,000 trailer, $60, you could probably do a little bit higher than that on the cheaper trailers. But for a $10,000 trailer, at least for me, that's pretty accurate for $50 a day.

Which means in 75 days of renting it out, you get all your money back.

Yep. And it's— and then you're pure profit, quote unquote, pure profit from then on out. It is. And you still You own the asset. Yeah, that you could go and sell for 20 to max 40% less than you paid for it. They really don't devalue very fast.

Can you get financing on these?

Absolutely. Yeah.

Do you?

I took out a HELOC for the initial purchase. Yeah.

So you borrowed against your house?

Yep.

Okay. Was that difficult?

No, no, it was— it was something I— yeah, it was. I think the initial rate was 2.5% per Oh, wow. For their first 9 months. And then it jumped up to 6.5%.

Okay. So that's how you bought the business. So you didn't really have the cash, or even if you did, you didn't want to use it. So you borrowed against your house. When you get these financed, do you usually finance them through the dealership you buy it from or through a bank or what?

So I only used the HELOC for the initial ones when I financed, and then Since then, I've replaced all the old trailers that we had initially bought. They've just been from the money and, and the— okay, from the business.

Yeah. So you've replaced all of the original first 10?

I have one little cheap trailer that's still original. That's in good shape that I haven't replaced, but all the other 9.

Okay. Yeah. So dump trailers, you're in your area. If you had to pick one, it would be that. What about number 2 and 3?

Probably a car hauler. Kind of similar, an open trailer. So when it's bad weather in the winter, it's not gonna move up north. But here it would move year round. That would— that's a very often rented trailer. And then an enclosed trailer after that, preferably for me. Yeah, like a 20 or 24-foot enclosed trailer. Those, for whatever reason, do great.

What are people using those for? Moving?

Moving, hauling. You can haul cars in them if you want them enclosed.

Yeah.

That's more or less the extent of it. But a lot of times they're on trips. People will take them on vacations, or motorcycle guys love to rent a big enclosed trailer and put 3 or 4 bikes in there for them and their friends to transport them to Daytona or South Dakota. And then they'll drive them while they're out there.

Okay. Have you— do you have issues with people backing it in? Like, reparking it or pulling it out? Or is the type of person renting a trailer the type of person that kind of knows how to pull a trailer?

Typically, they know how to pull a trailer, but there's definitely people that don't. In that instance, I'm thankful now that our yard is big enough that you can turn it around. And if worse comes to worst, and somebody— I had somebody call me saying like, I can't do this. There's no way.

Yeah.

So in that instance, I just had them pull to the side to where it's not— yeah. Just drop it there. I'll get it next time I'm over there. And as long as it's out of the way for people to turn around.

Yeah.

Or if I'm worried enough on the phone talking with them, just feeling it out, you can kind of tell if somebody's asking for a big enclosed trailer and they're pulling it in, saying they're going to pull it in a car and they've never towed before, that's kind of an easy one to weed out over the phone.

Are you— do you want to grow more by buying more trailers or by renting out other things or trailers in other cities?

That was going to be a question that I would ask you.

Sure.

My initial thought was to do transplant locations. Since I already traveled through a lot of Northeast PA, it would be easy for me to work them into my routes during the week to just check here and there and take the exact same systems that we're already doing, just put it to another geographic location. Or obviously, once you start in the rental game, you can expand into equipment is a big sector. And it's kind of endless as to the size that you could go. Or I experimented with a golf cart this summer with renting. I know. Yeah.

Interesting.

Yep. I know guys that do RVs. Or at least the pull-behind campers. So there's plenty of avenues to expand just a single location. But those expansion opportunities, if you're going past just the regular trailers, how I have them set up right now, all require typically time.

Yeah, there's more moving parts, like they break more. Yep.

And those people will often want them delivered. Yeah, campers, golf carts, which is what I learned testing that out this summer. They— most, 95% of the people that are inquiring about them just want them dropped off. And at least right now, that's not the game that I want to be in.

Yeah.

But I would consider it for next year, knowing that now, to hire a younger guy to work several hours a week on the side for me.

Yeah.

To run those, pick those up.

What do people rent golf carts for?

From what I've seen, it's usually between $100 to $200 a day.

But what's the use?

Oh, what's the use?

Yeah. Events, campgrounds, Okay, like you're, you're an event organizer, and you're coming to the area for an event, and you need a way to get around the event.

That, or even just weddings, things that are happening. A lot of that's— that industry is happening outside on farms nowadays. Yeah, people will rent them for those types of events. And then also a lot of inquiries come from people that are camping nearby in the area, want a golf cart for the week while they're in town.

Okay. Yeah. Do you ever rent on Facebook Marketplace?

Yeah. So Google makes up about 55% of where the leads come. And then Facebook for the last 15 months is about 14%. Okay.

Well, where's everything else? Just organic?

Organic, word of mouth, referrals, or repeat customers. And then there's a couple specific trailer rental platforms that you can post your own trailers on. You don't even have to have a business, you can do it. kind of with their rental agreements if you want to test it out. If you have something sitting around.

Okay. I mean, I'd be curious to see what would happen if you posted a bunch of different things on Facebook Marketplace, just to see what the demand is like, as if you already had it.

Yep.

Skid steer for rent, $450 a day. I've rented a skid steer on Facebook Marketplace. I've rented an excavator on Facebook Marketplace. That's where I think to get them. But like, you gotta drop it off, pick it up usually.

Yeah.

And you got to fill up with gas. How many things can go wrong on that?

Yeah. And you need to at least give the person running it a quick tutorial on how to use it. Yeah. And at least for where I'm at right now, that's not something that I wanted to do during the day. I would have to find an operator if I wanted to expand into that.

Yeah. Because it's like, on one hand, if you were to open multiple locations, then you could say, well, that's a whole different business. But on the other hand, if you were to stay in that one location and put a boat on there or an RV, I think that's more of a different business than just adding another location would be. 100%. Because there— how many other things can you rent out that don't have moving parts? They're kind of hard to find.

There's not, not many.

So if I were you, based on all the facts you just told me, and you have such a system dialed in, I would just open a new lot or just see what I could do to get more people to my current lot. What percentage of the space are you taking up there?

Probably 50%. So there's still room there. And I, because I'm a habitual buyer and seller of things, I've bought a bunch of trailers this summer, and I'll, I'll post them there or have them on the lot for rent for 2-3 months just to test.

Yeah.

And then sell it. Okay. After.

So it could be if you filled it up at your same occupancy, your same volume, it could be $100,000 of profit from that one half-acre lot.

Yeah, you could find a way to do that for sure.

Yeah, if I were you, I would get to that like as soon as possible and then find the next best city, you know, in your area. And you probably didn't even do any like competitive research, I'm guessing, like when you bought this, like—

I looked around for sure and just saw what anybody renting trailers around the area was doing, how many reviews they had, what their kind of setup looked like, and nobody was doing contactless. And at least I'm obviously a little on the younger side, Still where I know everybody my age and younger would prefer that type of method, grab and go, it's on your own time. So I just thought it was a missed opportunity. Yeah, there.

What I was wondering is like, do you have any bearing on in Lancaster, you know, there's this many total trailers for rent in the market against this population versus a city half hour down the road has this many trailers, like Do you know if the supply and demand of trailers in your market is high or low compared to other markets? I don't have an idea there because you might learn that the average market has half as much competition or twice as much.

Yeah.

So you might be like, dude, this is easy mode. I'm going to go an hour down the road and that's like average competition and you do half as well.

Yeah.

Or you might learn, man, I'm playing this on hard mode. You go a half hour down the road and it's just, it explodes because that's more of a normal market.

Yeah.

I'd be curious to know that. Like, you could just scrape every trailer rental place divided by the population and assume that, like, the demographics are similar. So they might not be. Like, if the one city has an average income of $40,000, the other one has $80,000, it could be totally different. So I would find sister cities of Lancaster that have comparable population sizes and comparable demographics, and then try to get a bearing for not just how many competitors, but how many total trailers are there for rent in that area. Just by calling up, looking at their website. All right, looks like, you know, they have this many spots, 4 gone right now.

Yeah.

And get like a metric of like person per trailer, and then try to get like a baseline. All right, here's 8 cities all in Pennsylvania or Pennsylvania, Ohio. They're all in like $60,000 average income. And, you know, it's like 4,000 residents per trailer. Wow, this one's only— this one's 9,000 residents per trailer. I need to go there next. It's a little out of the way. But twice— I'm twice as likely to have Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

That's a good point.

Yeah, I mean, you could do that research in an hour.

Yeah.

Okay, so $4,000 a month. Had you ever done any businesses before this, or was like your first— this your first?

So this was the first like official LLC we set up. I have a habit of not staying still. So I mean, I flipped stuff for a while. I Managed an office location for a company for a period of time, sold Cutco knives. So—

How were you at that?

Pretty good. Yeah, I did it full-time for 4 years.

Wow.

Right through high school and then right after.

Yeah.

So that's kind of working for yourself.

Yeah.

But no, no, like running a business.

Yeah.

By any technical terms.

What advice would you give to people that want to start this business?

So it's pretty risk-free. In the fact that you can go out and buy a used trailer for a cheap price if you look long enough, and you can throw it up on Facebook and even just these other rental software platforms out there that don't charge anything upfront. They just take a commission off of when—

What are the names of those?

Neighbors Trailer Rentals, Big Rentals, there's Big Loads. That's what's top of mind. So 3 websites there plus Facebook Marketplace, you're saying You can test, test the market with all of those without spending any money on a website, on Google. Yeah. And they'll, they'll send you their leads.

Yeah. I mean, this sounds maybe sounds a little untraditional. But if you really wanted to launch this without spending a couple grand on a trailer, you could list a trailer for rent that you could rent, right?

Yeah.

Like, let's say there's a box trailer for $90 a day. You go to Neighbor and all those websites, you list a box trailer for $90 a day, you're not trying to make money, Right. And just see how it goes. Go pick up that one, drop it off. Like, you're breaking even, you're losing a little money. But it's like, you know what, actually, I don't like this at all. I'm glad I didn't spend 9 grand on a trailer. Or, you know what, this is kind of fun. And if I own that trailer, I'd actually be making $90 and not just giving it right back to— you know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, I just like to think of ways that you can completely de-risk.

Yeah, I think definitely posting it on, on Facebook. Is an easy way to just check some ballpark demand in your area.

One, just post something, get a stock image of a trailer and post.

Just see how many people are reaching out to you on that. And even just see, take a look at what other people are doing, because there's going to be other people posting their own trailers on Facebook for rent. It's fairly common, but of it being fairly common, not a lot of people, I feel like, take it very seriously.

Yeah.

And just test it with one trailer. on the side, right? Haphazard for a couple months and then move on.

Yeah. Okay. Do you boost your Facebook Marketplace listings?

I've done it just a little bit. I mean, total over the past 15 months, spent $100. So I, I really don't anymore.

Yeah, it sounds like you don't really need to.

No. And I don't do any paid ads on Google.

Okay.

It's just all kind of organic.

Okay. Any other tips, advice?

If you want to take it seriously, Get out in your local community and just let people know that you're renting trailers. Work with other businesses. Tell them you'll set them up on like a little business program where they get a 10% discount if they rent for— anytime they rent for 3 days. And you'll make their booking super easy and they can just text you.

Yeah.

Something simple like that. If you just have a dump trailer, reach out to the landscaping companies, somebody who might need to use that several times throughout the summer. And typically, once somebody rents from you once, they're in the door, they're going to use you again.

Yeah.

So they're pretty likely to repeat.

Beautiful. Where can people find you or your business?

So you can find me on Twitter or X. That's going to have to be linked in the show notes.

No, it's fine. We'll link it.

I don't know what it is offhand. I put together a free, just basic starter guide that You can go online and download at trailerrental.guide. Okay, put in your email, and I'll send that to you. I've just been compiling what I've been learning on the fly for the past 15 months. But that's enough to get somebody to their first trailer and renting it. Or if you have a direct question, you can email me nathan@blankotrailers.com.

Beautiful. Thank you, Nathan.

Thank you.

Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's It's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn. You're still driving, what have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a 5-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business.

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Hope you have the best day of your life today.