Costs of setting up an MOT station? Worth it?

[anonymous-user]

Hi all,

Feel free to move this to 'Business' if needs be.

As the title says really, does anyone know the full costs of setting up an MOT test centre? I mean from start to finish, not including the costs of the building/property obviously.
I presume there is certain equipment to buy, training to do and some form of licence to aquire?

After set up what is generally the 'profit per car' and yearly licence costs?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[dirty boy]

Just had a look at a client of a colleague out of interest.

He appears to rent all the equipment for about £16k a year.

Insurance is £3500
MOT Certificates cost about 5% of his turnover, so his turnover is £247k MOT Certificates cost him £14k

This is purely a testing station.

He appears to make a decent living!

[john_p]

What's that, about 16 MOTs per day ..
Could probably get away with one ramp and one tester ..

.. goes off to look at nearby space ..

[S1mon.]

Friend of mine just had an MOT bay installed, Just the ramps/computers and equipment cost him £25k, not including some building work/electrics for rollers etc.

[redstu]

One for sale

http://www.rightbiz.co.uk/buy_business/for_sale/27...

[JB!]

I think the new computerised systems means you can do one every 40 mins.

[markcoznottz]

Too many people doing it how do you stand out?. Local throat cutting on the price, some places doing it for basically nothing, in the hope of some follow on work. Would be a brave desicion IMHO.

[Jonny671]

john_p said:

What's that, about 16 MOTs per day ..
Could probably get away with one ramp and one tester ..

.. goes off to look at nearby space ..

16 hour days?

I think we can only do 8 per day here, obviously only one testing bay here though. I guess if you had two set up bays you could do that many.

[Pablo16v]

JB! said:

I think the new computerised systems means you can do one every 40 mins.

My mate does my car and it took 35-40 minutes to pass it with one advisory. He has 5 ramps and 5 mechanics doing the service and repair work and he spends all day doing the MOT's at £55 a time. With interuptions, calls, breaks and general running the business stuff he probably averages 8-10 cars per day.

[Muzzer]

john_p said:

What's that, about 16 MOTs per day ..
Could probably get away with one ramp and one tester ..

.. goes off to look at nearby space ..

You can only do a certain amount per day.

It used to be limitless - our family station used to do, ahem, loads per day.

Then they cottoned on to it and I think it's about 8 or 9 per day max per MOT bay.

There's still money in it though if your premises and general overheads are cheap.

Make deals with other traders who don't have MOT facilities for discounted tests. They will
then bring their cars requiring tests to you, filling your bookings if/when it's quiet.

Are you looking at doing the tests yourself? If so, be prepared for monotony - doing them all day, every day for 5.5 days a week gets very boring after a while.

If not, you're paying for a tester, which isn't cheap and will wipe out a lot (if not all) of profit.

[redtwin]

Pablo16v said:

JB! said:

I think the new computerised systems means you can do one every 40 mins.

My mate does my car and it took 35-40 minutes to pass it with one advisory. He has 5 ramps and 5 mechanics doing the service and repair work and he spends all day doing the MOT's at £55 a time. With interuptions, calls, breaks and general running the business stuff he probably averages 8-10 cars per day.

Does he have a steady stream of customers paying £55?. My local place does them for £38 and that is on the high side which would explain why he never seems busy. I continue to go there as the tester knows me well and won't to try anything on.

Other garages advertise £25 and even main dealers often have specials for £20 or thereabouts, so I would imagine they do them at a loss/break even in the hopes of add on service repair work.

[Pablo16v]

redtwin said:

Pablo16v said:

JB! said:

I think the new computerised systems means you can do one every 40 mins.

My mate does my car and it took 35-40 minutes to pass it with one advisory. He has 5 ramps and 5 mechanics doing the service and repair work and he spends all day doing the MOT's at £55 a time. With interuptions, calls, breaks and general running the business stuff he probably averages 8-10 cars per day.

Does he have a steady stream of customers paying £55?. My local place does them for £38 and that is on the high side which would explain why he never seems busy. I continue to go there as the tester knows me well and won't to try anything on.

Other garages advertise £25 and even main dealers often have specials for £20 or thereabouts, so I would imagine they do them at a loss/break even in the hopes of add on service repair work.

Yes, he's flat out every day although there isn't much in the way of competition which helps.

[dirty boy]

I've just checked

They charge £40

They have two testing bays

Wages amount to £60k

[reggie82]

It's easy to say you'll do x amount of MOTs per day, but where are these customers going to come from. There is a lot of competition so I expect you'll have to spend a lot on marketing and be competitive with price.

Of course when you build up a good customer base you'll get repeat business and word of mouth will work for you if you look after your customers, then your marketing costs will drop considerably I would have thought.

[was8v]

Garages around here are doing discount MOTs, theres always an ad in the paper for a cheap MOT place.

The local Honda main dealer has done my corrado and more recently my 350z for £25 and free retest on the corrado when it failed on the handbrake (they didn't even seem interested in doing the work on it, I did it myself).

That suggests to me that they are struggling to get customers for the MOT bay....


Do a lot of research on demand in the area you set up in first!

[anonymous-user]

Thanks chaps.

The reason I'm asking is I have the opportunity to but a decent sized brownfield site (used to be a petrol station but been completely dug up and bulldozed) in an absolutely prime arterial road in a busy town.
The site is too big for just MOT use, but a friend runs a very busy Audi/VW/Skoda specialist garage and he wants to expand to somewhere bigger and more visible.

This site could be halfed nicely and maybe some mutual business either way, because at present he has to drive his customers cars to be tested and he hates it...

[JB!]

Sounds good.

The place I use is £35 and rammed. Has a bike MOT bay too! Very busy, honest MOT's, happy to let customers see fail points and very quick.