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The van board didn’t have any posts, so I figured I’d throw this one in here. Anyone raised their prices yet to compensate for the price of gas? Also, has anyone thought of any good ways to limit their mileage per day besides trying to group jobs as close together area wise as possible?
We send out a monthly newsletter to our regular customers and always run a monthly special. At times we have run “neighborhood specials” to try and get customers to get a neighbor to get their house cleaned the same day. Give each $30 off, 10% off, etc. Have had mixed results on the responses. In doing so, we hope that the customer gets a neighbor that we have never cleaned for before so they are advertising for us. Also, if you have a large territory, it limits the time spent in the van, especially nice if you have an employee on the clock. Anyone else have any other promos they run that may help all of us in limiting our fuel consumption? No fun spending $60+ at the pump.
I have started charging a trip charge of $10 when the prices hit $2.30 a gallon unless it was within a 10 mile radius. I also try to schdule appointments in thesame area or on the way to the most distant area to minimize my travel expense per job. I try to schedule the distant jobs at least a week out to give some time for other appointments to book in the area.
Gas is becoming a larger issue every day. We need to be careful how we schedule. I may go to 4 large days per week for both vans. I will pack 1 van’s schedule when practical then fill the 2nd. We are going to increase our jprices as well. Everyone else needs to pass the increases on to the consumer, I see no reason why we shouldn’t too.
Not directly related to my post, but as we know, not all gasolines are created equal. Here is a website that lists the gas stations that auto manufacturers recommend to reduce the “harmful deposits” that all tv commercials talk about.
We raised our prices earlier in the year – one of the reasons we gave was higher gas prices.
We’re thinking about a “surplus” charge – maybe $5 per job. This would only be in effect when the gas prices are above a certain point (say $2.50/gallon). We’d drop it when the prices drop.
This is similar to how airlines do it – the customer has direct visibility, and it seems temporary (and don’t we all hope it is!).
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