Minibus Business

[robertthegreat]

Is there anybody on here run a minibus service as a business/ company to make money is it profiteble or not. the one,s on school runs seem to do OK and can do runs at weekends from Bangkok to seaside areas etc .Just a thought for something to do for family already have access to good driver not a boy racer.

[Cuban]

Easy way to do this would be to do contract work for or via a travel agency, better than trying to break new ground yourself.

Have you costed the extra insurance fees for commercial use of the minibus, increased servicing costs and hours your driver needs to work to make money from the venture?

Sorry to offer spanners to your idea but these guys that drive the minibuses work dam_n long hours to make any money at all, and they do cut cost corners where possible.

[torrenova]

You need to have it on the road as much as possible and the only way to do that is to have a business which needs one already. An example is a visa run service in the morning through the afternoon with restaurant pick ups or private taxi hire as a 2nd and 3rd uses.

People won't pay enough for a nice new bus to make it profitable.

[gregb]

Possible to do it, but not easy.

My brother in law tried it with a local school. Gave credit to a bunch of parents because they didn't have money. They never paid. Bank repossessed the van.

Here are some ideas:

First, you have to convert to NGV. Diesel is much too expensive. On a long trip, you'll get about 30/70 mix of diesel/NGV. On shorter trips with alot of idling is closer to 50/50. NGV is currently being rationed, and the queues are about an hour long. You'll only get 2/3rds of a tank. Plan for that. Get an extra large tank installed, and allocate enough time daily for filling.

Buy second hand. You won't get a huge discount over new, but you will get some discount. The NGV conversion will mostly void your warranty anyway, so there is no point in going new.

If you're doing a school route, never give credit. Make people pay up front/daily. Even if that means pushing the little tike out of the car when all his friends got in. Sorry. Life is hard and it's going to get harder.

You absolutely must have an idea for a primary money making service, and a secondary, high value service. The primary service covers your costs. The secondary service makes you a profit. If you can't find a secondary service for when the van isn't used in the primary route, you won't make anything.

Good luck.

[thaibkk]

Is there anybody on here run a minibus service as a business/ company to make money is it profiteble or not. the one,s on school runs seem to do OK and can do runs at weekends from Bangkok to seaside areas etc .Just a thought for something to do for family already have access to good driver not a boy racer.

a new visa run service maybe to Cambodia

can be one of your first clients, and i guess many others also

the school service for the kids is asking 1500 baht per child per month ... as they all live rather near the school and service is only in the morning and afternoon, not to bad a pay if you can find around 1O children + also if you use the service for other purposes

[torrenova]

Think also about the purchase, servicing and depreciation angles. If you buy on credit, you'll probably be faced with a monthly repayment bill of around 20k over 4 years on a Toyota Commuter. Doing any conversion is upfront cash. Depreciation is perhaps 200k straight away then somewhere around 100k per year.

Working over 4 years, your costs are something like:

20% deposit on 1m = 200k

Repayments = 48 * 20k = 960k

4 years commercial insurance = 150k

Servicing = 4 * 20k = 80k

Salaries = 48 * 15k = 720k

Total outgoings = 2.11m

Value of asset = 600k

Total cost of operation = 1.51m

Annual cost of operation = 377,500

So you'd have to make over 30,000 per month to break even on these rough calculations which do not include gas. Doing the school run is not viable !

Edited January 18, 2008 by torrenova