The Simple One-Man Side Hustle That Runs Itself

What is your revenue per month on average? $5,500 to $7,500. 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? Two to four hours. So you're making $200 plus 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 five minutes, a guy named Nathan is gonna walk through that door and he's flying here from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he makes thousands of dollars a month in profit, working five hours a week doing trailer rentals. 31 years old, he has a full-time job and two 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 can learn all about it. Let's go. All right, so how long have you had the auction job? Coming up on seven years now. Okay. And how long have you been doing the trailer rental business? 15 months. Oh, wow. Same age as my daughter. We started that two days after she was born, practically. 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 read it 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 from 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. With maybe a little bit of goodwill baked in there. 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. The 10 trailers. Yeah, they were older used trailers, heavily used. Are we talking like dumb 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 five 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 dock trailer. Okay, okay. And this is Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Yes. How many people live there? In the county, it's 500,000. Okay. I don't know exactly in the town, but it's a mid-sized town. It's nothing like Philly or here. And how was he finding customers? 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 rental, but that was really how he was finding it. Google business profile? Mm-hmm. Okay, good reviews? Mixed. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he's unsophisticated, it sounds like. He doesn't have a CRM, customer relationship management software, or did 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 how 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? He had two 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. But he didn't wanna sell that side of the business? No, and he's still doing the trailer rentals. Two hours away? Just on a smaller scale, two hours away. Okay. Do you guys have 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 because 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 previous renter that was on his list or that he referred through his current or through his updated 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 you ended up spending 35,000 on these? Yep. Okay, what was he doing in revenue? If he were to be able to value the revenue side of the business, how big was that? Those 10 trailers averaged over the last two years, 28,000. A year? Total. All 10 of them? Yep, all 10 of them combined. Okay, and did he have good books or was he filing taxes on that? 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 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, 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? He kept his phone number, kept his business name and everything. I just took a customer list from him and so then he just set up a phone call forwarding service to my number if somebody calls in. So you took over the website, swapped out the phone number with yours? He still has his website. Everything was- Okay, so you put it in your own business name. Yeah, own business name. New Google business profile. Yeah, everything on that side was fresh for me. So are you getting anything? Do you have any shot of getting leads on day one if you don't do anything? Or do you kind of have to start from scratch? How do you mean start from scratch? Because you're not getting calls because he keeps the phone number. He keeps the website. But 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 one, which is how I got my first rental. 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? Lenko Trailer Rentals. That's what they call it? Lancaster County. Yep, it's a pretty common, easy to know exactly what we do and where we're serving. So it's LenkoTrailerRentals.com? It's LenkoTrailers.com. Okay, what was his name for it? Crosskeys Rentals. Okay, are you having to pay him a referral fee when he sends leads your way? Yep. Yeah, for 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 totaled 1200 bucks. Oh, okay, so it's not that much. No. Hey, if you're digging this episode, please hit subscribe real quick. Nathan had six hours of flight delays today, and if you don't hit subscribe, then all of that was a waste. On 28,000 a year that he was doing, it's gotta 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. I mean, it sounds silly, but honestly, it's kind of not, I think. Like if you were to self-insure, because after six 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 there. 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. 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 bucks a year. Okay, that'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 seven 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. I could set out a max of three trailers at a time to get picked up before I'd have to go over, pull other trailers out back. That is a pain. That got old fast. Yeah, 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. 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 bucks a month, 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 along one side, and then as people come in to pick up or drop off, they have plenty of space to turn around. Yeah, so it's a much better setup. So 300-ish a month for insurance, 800 for the lot, no employees, so we're at 1,100 a month whether you rent anything out or not. Before we get to your current numbers, how did the first three 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's several different trailer rental-specific CRM website builders out there. So I interviewed each of them and found a company called RentFlow 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. 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? I still created that myself, but once I had the domain. Your automations helped you start getting reviews and replying to reviews? Yeah, exactly, 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 bucks. Wow, okay, pretty good. It covered the expenses, which was my only goal. 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 about 2,300 a month. Yeah, and that was only a half month that we started, so it was on track for 4,000 a month. Oh, wow, okay, so what about your second month, aka your first full month? First full month was right about 4,000. Wow, so you're beating him by 50%. I mean, he's doing 28k. Yeah, so the one thing to consider, in Pennsylvania at least, is it is a little bit more seasonal, because of the winters. So, yeah, it's not like a perfect month. 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 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, but roughly, yes. If you don't give me 20 leads. I want to say that first month, we had about 20 rentals on the first total month, and of those, I would say three to five max were from him. Oh, wow, okay. So you're averaging like 200 bucks a rental? Yes. How much per day per trailer on average? A good ballpark is probably 90 bucks is the median that I rent for. It's anywhere between 50 and 150 for my trailers. And two days on average? So it depends what kind of trailer they're renting. If they're renting an enclosed trailer, they'll average four and a half days. If they're renting an open trailer, it's one and a half days. Because they might just need to go pick up a rotting lawnmower, you know? Yeah, pretty simple, quick move, or their car broke down and they're just towing it to the shop. Just a single day, couple hour rental. 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 once the website and some of the automations had started, I 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 that key was hidden for their rental so they could come up and pick it up without having to meet me. The one downside that I learned pretty quickly of meeting people is like you found out today you're on their time, so if they're running late, then you're stuck there at the yard for an hour. You didn't have to be. And you're just like, that's the best use of my time. You can walk around, kick tires, but you can only do that for so long before you're twiddling your thumbs. So phase one was you meeting people there, doing it manually. Phase two was a lock box, hey, here's the code. Let me know if you have any questions. What about phase three? Phase three 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 lock boxes 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. Then it texts them 24 hours before their pickup time, the pickup instructions with the lock box number in 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 the extent of what I'm doing right now. It's just one-off questions. Yep. Hey, I can't find, is it this one or that one 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. So how much did it cost you to get phase three set up with like the lock boxes and the... The majority of the cost is the 800 bucks to rent the lot. The lock boxes, they're 30 bucks a piece on Amazon. I spent 350 bucks on 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 lock is 65 bucks on the trailers. Okay. And then I have 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 the lot, which is why it's cheaper. Obviously road frontage would probably bring in more rentals, but I just, I hadn't found... Yeah, it's not easy to find a gravel lot that's for rent that has good frontage, right? Yeah, and that's within my price range for renting out trailers, 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. But that was also what I was expecting from what I'd heard from him. So my only goal at the time was just to cover the 1,200 bucks in fixed expenses that I knew I was gonna have. Okay, what about any maintenance, any 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. Past that, there is 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, when they come pick up, get the code, they take the four pictures, it checks the trailer out of our system, and then same thing when they're back, take after pictures, and then I hold a security deposit on our card so then I can verify the trailer's in the same condition it left in once they wrap up. Okay, 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. The trailers, which I'm glad I bought the first ones, used 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 gonna get banged up a little bit, and as long as it's not major, 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 much is the deposit, and 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 two times the daily rate. So if it's a cheap little trailer, that could be 100 bucks, or up to 250. I usually don't go past that. And then the vast majority of damages, at least since I've been doing it, are under that threshold. Every now and then, I had two 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 kinda know if it's more than 250 bucks, that's a big enough bump on the trailer that they know they caused it. So I'm sure there will be a day where I'll have to eat something. But you haven't yet? No. Wow. So your maintenance costs have effectively been zero. Other than like, sorry, not maintenance, your damages, your 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? For the first full year, that was 8,000 I spent 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 get it to where it's as hands-off for me as possible. Yeah, 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 that's a safe bet going forward. I have a couple more trailers now, and as rentals increase, the maintenance goes up because you can do it off of the mileage of the trailers. So 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. Do you know where they're at? Yeah, it's 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 five 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. Obviously, that's one of the ones. Never happened. 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. Then once they're on site, there's obviously cameras there, so their vehicle themselves are on camera. 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. Quick word about today's sponsor, Beehive. They just launched something called Community, and it does something that I've never seen on any other platform. Every newsletter and podcast you publish gets added to your feed automatically, sitting right in front of the people who already love your stuff. So your biggest fans get a whole new way to find out what you love with no algorithm getting in the way of what it wants them to see, and the conversation keeps going. The replies that your readers send come out of your inbox and into a live town hall where everyone can jump in. You can add community access to any subscription you already sell in about five minutes, whether it's free, freemium, fully paywalled, or paywalled with upsells inside. And yes, of course, Beehive doesn't even take a cut of those earnings. A quick community post is easy to write, and the feed is easy to scroll. So now you can keep your short form and your long form in the same place instead of renting that space on social media. Get more juice from everything you produce, the link's in the description below. 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 your cameras and your GPS software? The cameras, they're $50 a month. I have four of them. $50 for all four? Yes. Okay, and the GPS software? The GPS, they're an upfront $150 to buy it, and the batteries are good for four years. Oh, 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, $500. So like $650 a month, give or take. So we're at like $2,000 a month for overhead, including maintenance and repairs. Yeah, right now it's right between $2,000 to $2,500, depending how much the trailers are being rented. Yeah, okay, and then what is your revenue per month on average? In the last several months, it fluctuates between $5,500 to $7,500. Oh, nice, okay, call it $6,500. So you're netting $4,000 a month, give or take? Yep, right about there. $4,000 a year, that's beautiful. And you still have a full-time job? Still have a full-time job, yep. I'll be at the yard for maybe two to three hours a week is typically what I imagine 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 five, 10? Definitely less. I think that's where it's closer to two to four hours. The main thing that I am doing is just taking calls. I'll get several a day, and if I'm booking somebody on it, it might be a 10-minute phone call. But the system kind of takes over from there once I've marked them. The only things I do, I swing by on my way home from work, usually two 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 five hours a week, give or take, on the business? Two and a half to five. Wow, okay. So 1,000 bucks a week net profit. On average, it's lumpy. 1,000 bucks a week, four or five hours a week. So you're making 200 plus an hour on this business. After, like, don't get me wrong, you had to set stuff up. You had to negotiate with the guy. You had to get a lot, find a lot, 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 bucks an hour for your time. Yeah, a lot of the time was front-loaded, just getting systems in place. But once they are, now 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. 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, we'll 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 I've been. Yeah, had your mobile mechanic go out there once a week or so? Yeah, the mechanic already travels, so he can just spend a day there, a day in Lancaster. If you could only have one trailer to offer, what would it be? Probably, for my area, it's gonna depend where you're at. Geographically, but a dump trailer, it was a little bit slower to get started, but once people know you have that, that rents out by far the most on my lot as far as number of rentals, but they're averaging one and a half days. 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're just. What do those cost? That was 8,300 new. Wow, okay. And then, I mean, that'll last 10 plus years. Yeah, if you keep maintaining it, it'll have no problem. And what do you rent that one for? 95 a day. Wow, okay. Do you have a metric where it's like 10%, right? Like, I spent nine grand on this, I need to rent it for your 1%, 90 bucks a day, you know? Yeah, I'll base it off of what the other larger companies in the area are doing, but a decent rule of thumb is one and a half times, or one and a half percent of the purchase price. So if it's a $4,000 trailer, 60 bucks, 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 150 a day. Which means in 75 days of renting it out, you get all your money back. Yep. And it's pure profit, quote unquote, pure profit from then on out. It is, and you still, you own the asset 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. To bar it against your house? Yep. Okay, was that difficult? No, no, it was something I, yeah. I think the initial rate was two and a half percent for their first nine months, and then it jumped up to six and a half. Okay, 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'd bar it against your house. When you get these financed, do you usually finance them through the dealership you buy it from, or if you're 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 the, from the business. Yeah, 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 nine. Okay. So dump trailers, you're, in your area, if you had to pick one, it would be that. What about number two and three? 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'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 do people use those for, moving? Moving, hauling, you can haul cars in them if you want them enclosed. 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 three or four 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. 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 worse, and somebody, I had somebody call me saying like, I can't do this, there's no way. So in that instance, I just had them pull to the side to where it's not out of the, 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, 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, you know, saying they're gonna pull it in a car, and they've never towed before, that's kind of an easy one to weed out over the phone. Do you wanna grow more by buying more trailers, or by renting out other things, or trailers in other cities? That was gonna be a question that I would ask you. Sure. My initial thought was to do transplant locations, since I already travel 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 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, 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. There's more moving parts, like they break more. Yep, and those people will often want them delivered, campers, golf carts, which is what I learned testing that out this summer, 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 wanna be in, 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 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 bucks a day. But what's the use? Oh, what's the use? Events, campgrounds. Okay, like 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 industry is happening outside on farms nowadays, so 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. 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, 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 with their rental agreements if you wanna test it out, if you have something sitting around. Okay. Hey, if you know someone like Nathan, or if you're like Nathan, and you started a business that made thousands of dollars in a period of months, I want you right here at my house on this podcast, so go to tkoyes.com, fill out the form, and we'll have you on the pod. 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, $4.50 a day. I've rented with Skid Steer on Facebook Marketplace. I've rented an Excavator on Facebook Marketplace. That's where I think to get them, but you gotta drop it off, pick it up, usually, and you gotta fill up with gas. How many things can go wrong on that? Yeah, and you need to at least give the person renting it a quick tutorial on how to use it, 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 how many other things can you rent out that don't have moving parts? They're kind of hard to find, right? 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%. Okay. 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 post them there or have them on the lot for rent for two, three months, just to test, and then sell it 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. If I were you, I would get to that as soon as possible and then find the next best city in your area. And you probably didn't even do any competitive research, I'm guessing. When you bought this. 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 there. What I was wondering is, do you have any bearing on, in Lancaster, 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. 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. You might learn that the average market has half as much competition, or twice as much. So you might be like, dude, this is easy mode, I'm gonna go an hour down the road. That's average competition, and you do half as well. 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. I'd be curious to know that. You could just scrape every trailer into place, divide it by the population, and assume that the demographics are similar. They might not be. If 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 they have this many spots, four are gone right now. And get a metric of person per trailer. And then try to get a baseline. All right, here's eight cities, all in Pennsylvania, or Pennsylvania, Ohio. They're all in 60,000 average income, and it's 4,000 residents per trailer. Wow, this one's 9,000 residents per trailer. I need to go there next. It's a little out of the way, but I'm twice as likely to have success there than I am now. 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 this your first? So this was the first 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. I did it full-time for four years. Wow, legit. Through high school and then right after. So that's kind of working for yourself. But no running a business by any technical term. 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 three websites there, plus Facebook Marketplace. You're saying? You can test the market with all of those without spending any money on a website, on Google. Yeah, and they'll send you their leads. Yeah, I mean, this sounds, maybe it 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? Like, let's say there's a box trailer for 90 bucks a day. You go to Neighbor and all those three websites. You list a box trailer for 90 bucks 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 nine grand on a trailer. Or, you know what, this is kind of fun. And if I owned that trailer, I'd actually be making 90 bucks and not just giving it right back to, you know what I'm saying? I just like to think of ways that you can completely de-risk. Yeah, I think definitely posting it on Facebook is an easy way to just check some ballpark demand in your area. Yeah, you don't need to rent one. Just get a stock image of a trailer and post it. 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 gonna 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. And just test it with one trailer on the side, 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, been 100 bucks. So I really don't anymore. Sounds like you don't really need to. No, and I don't do any paid ads on Google. It's just all kind of organic. Any other tips, advice? If you wanna 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 a little business program where they get a 10% discount if they rent for, anytime they rent for three days. And you'll make their booking super easy. They can just text you. Something simple like that. If you just have a dump trailer, reach out to the landscaping company, 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 gonna use you again. So they're pretty likely to repeat. Beautiful, where can people find you or your business? You can find me on Twitter, or X. That's gonna 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 at lancotrailers.com. Beautiful, thank you, Nathan. Thank you. If you like this content, please share with a friend. Hit a like or a comment below and we'll see you next time on The Kerner Office.