Mike Andes answers questions while driving to Charlotte. A location doing $25k/month needs $3-5k more but is limited by two working trucks. Shifting from 40 to 60 truck-hours weekly could raise utilization 50%, though Mike warns the schedule may not be sustainable.
Questions this video answers
Around $25,000 per month.
About $3,000–$5,000 per month.
Two trucks are in use by the crew; a third truck has a blown engine.
Move from an average 22-day month to 26 days by running staggered crews (e.g., one crew Mon–Fri, another Tue–Sat).
About a 50% increase in asset utilization.
Chapters
What's up, Augusta Nation. Hope you're doing good. We are driving. Zach is driving. I am sitting here in my seat.
Driving back from Louisville. If I lose connection, I'll try to do this tonight. We're basically by driving back from Louisville back to Charlotte. So it's out in the middle of nowhere. So if the Internet drops out.
That'S why. Because Starlink isn't around yet. Okay, so there's some questions that came in. Let's jump into those. You know what, you can improve the angle. Isn't that helpful.
Looking at my nostrils? Okay, let's try this out.
We got questions present.
Okay. First one's from Ken from Fenton, Michigan.
I was listening to the last G suite. I think it's C suite until third. Just curious if you are allowed to tell us what happened with Lee and the bad customer. The one where he had to tell him to read what he called pops. If it's a drama our business, then that's okay. I just have to ask. I don't know. So you're have to leak and maybe share in the next season.
Devin from Red Deer. As you're.
Bigger and better with everything you're doing, will you ever move to a bigger city to establish yourself more or does it even matter? With the Internet nowadays, I don't think it has anything to do with like an online presence. The only reason I would ever want to move is to get around like more entrepreneurial communities. Bellingham, super small. There's not like a lot of entrepreneurs. There's nowhere like small business community or people getting together. I like the only reason why I would ever want to move and like a place like Austin, San Francisco, New York, whatever would be fun. But I just don't really want to live there.
But in terms of like from a business perspective, they'd be fun to just kind of be able to actually have people that understand.
Kyle Tarvin, need your input on what you would do in this situation if you were me. We need to increase Our revenue by 3 to 5k month per minute to start making profit on one of our locations. My thought, my thought process is that we can easily do it by selling all day for most of the day. The problem is that we currently don't have enough vehicles for three plus myself. The truck. Two trucks this location owns are used by the crew and our third has a blown engine. This location is around 25k per month. I was planning on buying a small truck to run around part time. We don't really have the 8k thunder truck 5k truck, 3k paint and vinyls. I could go get a loan for vehicle, but interest rates are a little dumb right now. Or I could just use some of the cash I have personally to get gifted location a new truck. Regardless, I believe that we need another. Maybe we can get away with another with doing something else a little less cost intensive. I'm just not sure what the right answer is. A cheap forest floor with the trailer hits to pull a trailer. Not sure what I would do in this situation. Okay, now.
Let'S see here. Zach, what would you do in this situation? Oh, you're listening to your music. Never mind. It's hilarious. Okay, no, you're good. Did you listen to that question?
Did you hear the whole question? Okay, don't worry about it. I think you, you would have.
So like, basically, to answer your question, pal, I don't think you need a vehicle if your goal here is just door hangers. Like, honestly what I thought Zach was gonna say is scooter, you just need a sc.
Your rollerblades, if that's the goal. Just to do the door hangers to get, you know, three to four, you know, $5,000 a month more in revenue. You don't need a vehicle for that. And so if you think you need 3 or 4 or 5,5000 more revenue using your other trucks in terms of the actual work getting done, don't get a third truck because you need it for door hangers. Because like no one sees your truck when you're doing door hangers. You don't need it. Again, assuming that's the goal. Now if you need 3 to $5,000 more in revenue and that's going to push your past your truck capacity of what you can do with those two trucks, that's a different conversation.
But it sounds to me like you're just trying to increase the revenue in order to get to profitability. And in order to do that, you're trying to get door hangers out. And I don't think you need a vehicle for that. You need a backpack, some roller blades. That's actually not a bad idea, dude. Although getting up and down steps would be a little treacherous. Adult Heelys.
I know, but dude, that's like treacherous.
Oh man. All right.
Joe Dilmore from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I'm thinking of starting to run a six day work week. Oh, kids. It would have a one crew working Monday through Friday and a second crew running Tuesday to Saturday. Monday and Saturday would be a light. Would be light days of a single crew. And we could try and Concentrate the bigger projects in the middle of the week, then we have more help. If it works well, maybe even try the Monday through Thursday, Wednesday through Saturday, 10 hour work days later down the road. The basic concept is that based on average 22, okay, this is all ring based on an average two day work month, 22 day work month, we can extend it to 26 days with the same manpower, number of trucks, equipment, etc. What are your thoughts on this and is this, is anyone using a similar system or having experience with it? Yeah, so this would, this would absolutely work.
In terms of maximizing efficiency 100%.
If you're running them on like say 4, 10, so they're doing Monday. I thought, I thought about this like a gazillion times. Like why would you not do 4 10s Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday start times? You'd have like Monday through Thursday crew and you also have a Tuesday through Friday crew and you have a Wednesday through Saturday crew. That would maximize your efficiency. And now your truck is rolling around 60 hours instead of 40. Like literally you get 50% more efficient in more revenue for every same piece of equipment. Like asset utilization will go through the roof. Like literally you would have a 50% increase in asset utilization. This is the way that you would actually squeeze money out of a location. And even in the case like for you, Kyle, this is something you could consider in the short run to get around the issue of having to get more trucks. Here's the problem is you are working six days a week, 12, 14 hours with the guys around, plus everything else you have to get done, that's usually not sustainable. And so again I'm much more concerned about people doing actions that cause them to quit than actions that cause short term pain. Like, oh, I don't have trucks, right. That's a problem that can be solved with another truck. And so the question is, you know, eight or $10,000, let's just call it like a few hundred dollars a month insurance and all the rest of it, is it really worth the extra? You know, basically like that's all you do every day. And I'm not saying you should do that. Like I'm saying like maybe in the short term this works and it's going to help you and get the business more established and make more money. But I think in the long run it reduces the chances of you ever getting out of daily operations because you're never going to find a general manager that wants to work six days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. And then that one day that the trucks aren't rolling around, I guarantee you're going to be doing maintenance because they're running so hard, they're going to need more maintenance. So. Great idea, though. Like, you're. Yes, you're 100% right. It's like a manufacturing plant that works 24 7. They have evening crew or a night crew and a day crew. Right. You get literally the exact same asset, I. E. The factory you use twice as much. In this case, the asset utilization of your trucks would literally go up by 50%, going from 40 hours a week to 60 hours. Great. In theory. Great, great, great. And honestly, you absolutely do this. It just comes down to sustainability and whether or not you can pull this off for next five or ten years, and more importantly, whether or not you could find someone to replace you that would also want to be pulling those kind of hours. So. All right, well, I'm going to cut it off here because we are getting out into the very much of the boondocks and I could lose you all at any point in time. And for all I know, you can't even hear or see anything I'm doing because I have one bar of. So. All right, well, I think that's all the questions for today. Hope you all have a great weekend and we'll see you next week.
