Starting a scooter rental business

Scattered

Scattered

Pickle you Kumquat
Aug 24, 2009
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I'm just looking to throw ideas around with other like-minded people before I just invest $12,000 in scooters.

Here are things that would need to be considered:

To start off, 15 scooters @ ~$800 each. Gas powered, street legal.

There is a pretty good location for rent with a shitload of foot traffic at $1100/month.

What kind of insurance would I need? I feel like this would work like rental car insurance, somewhat. Renters pay a small fee for full insurance coverage, if they wreck the thing, its covered. What about bodily harm if involved in an accident, Is there a release for that?

I'm figuring $30/6 Hours or $45 for the day

:arcadefreak:

Thoughts?
 


sounds profitable within a couple of months. I assume the location is in a tourist area, sunny and/or by the beach?
 
Dude, around here, people charge that much for a bicycle for 2 hours. Dead serious. You can get away with probably $100 for the day or $50 for 6 hours or whatever.

Take into account the rent of your store at $1100, plus property taxes, plus electricity and water, plus content insurance, etc. The prices are going to get higher.

Then you have scooter maintenance fees, full on replacements, the insurances to cover damages to person or equipment. You'll need to have a shit load of helmets of sizes and shapes to rent out as well. And you'll have to clean those daily, etc.

Just throwing some thoughts out there.
 
thehobbster said:
Just throwing some thoughts out there.
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Thats exactly what I was looking for. I'm trying to flip this from an idea to a profitable business. I know there are a ton of things I'm still not even considering - Much like you pointed out, a big selection of helmets.
 
I hope you'll go through with it and update us in this thread with your general progress and items of concern you encounter, etc. I could learn a lot from the process you go through, personally.
 
Interested in following the progress of this, I have a friend talking to me about the merits of renting Jetskis right now, and I think it's a cool topic. Please keep this thread updated.
 
I saw guy doing it in my hometown, not scooter but more like 4 seat bicycles. There was one guy needed to maintain shit and he was spending like 12 hours just doing that. People will not care about rented stuff. Some will hire it for stunts etc. Still it was very profitable business, especially after guy organised himself and 2 people-staff, shit worked really well. People paid some ridiculous money per hour.
 
If you live near the beach/tourist area you'll make a shit ton.

Being that they're rentals have a mechanic on call.

I say go for it.

Talk to a lawyer for what type of insurance you may need.

Where to plan to store them overnight? In a garage? Outdoors? Under a tent?

Will you charge them for gas? or will you factor in that the rental cost?
 
I think there are many more profitable and easier to manage ventures. If I had spare money at the moment (should have some within 3 months) I'd start a full scale bulk mailing venture. $12,000 will get you about 30 million inboxes a day for a month. You'd make roughly 4-5X your investment.
 
tygoldberg said:
Where to plan to store them overnight? In a garage? Outdoors? Under a tent?

Will you charge them for gas? or will you factor in that the rental cost?
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Inside the business. The location I'm looking at has plenty of room outside to display several scooters during operating hours. When closed, the scooters go inside in a "staging area"

As far as gas, you would rent it with a full tank and then you're on your own. They would be required to bring it back with a reasonable amount of fuel (as close to full as possible)

In its infancy I plan on busting dick day in and day out. I have a high mechanical aptitude, and these machines are 1/32 the size of some of the equipment I've worked on. Somewhere down the line, the time it takes to work on these will outweigh what I'm capable of producing doing other tasks, so eventually someone will need to be brought in for maintenance and repair.
 
A scooter rental place recently opened up just in front of my apartment. It does exactly the same thing you are trying to do. Around 20 scooters, huge foot traffic, they also carry mopeds. Anyways if your a legitimately looking into it, I can be a little school girl and ask them what the dealio is, so you don't have to do everything trail and error.
 
pewep said:
I think there are many more profitable and easier to manage ventures. If I had spare money at the moment (should have some within 3 months) I'd start a full scale bulk mailing venture. $12,000 will get you about 30 million inboxes a day for a month. You'd make roughly 4-5X your investment.
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I'm interested in this too, but for the time being I think I'm going to focus energy into something more conventional that I can train someone to do for me. If I put enough time into a venture like this I can be paying some college aged kid a good wage to manage most aspects of this business (customer service, rentals, check-ins/outs, cash handling, etc) and then another individual to assist the manager making less, but still decent wages.
 
jfizzle said:
A scooter rental place recently opened up just in front of my apartment. It does exactly the same thing you are trying to do. Around 20 scooters, huge foot traffic, they also carry mopeds. Anyways if your a legitimately looking into it, I can be a little school girl and ask them what the dealio is, so you don't have to do everything trail and error.
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The biggest thing I'm interested in is insurance. Foremost, if I have employees I will need work-comp. Then there is general and liability for the physical business. Then insurance for the equipment while being rented, then insurance if someone drives the scooter off a cliff, is unfortunate enough not to die, and racks up 2.7million in medical bills getting "better"
 
Scattered said:
The biggest thing I'm interested in is insurance. Foremost, if I have employees I will need work-comp. Then there is general and liability for the physical business. Then insurance for the equipment while being rented, then insurance if someone drives the scooter off a cliff, is unfortunate enough not to die, and racks up 2.7million in medical bills getting "better"
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Yea. I have no clue. I was only offering to ask them whatever questions you might have on my way home.
 
If you wouldn't mind, asking them a ballpark figure on what they spend in insurance overall for the full operation (monthly/semi-yearly/yearly/whatever) would be killer
 
here's a wild and crazy idea I had. 6 steps to riches!

1) say no to scooters
2) make a website
3) write compelling content
4) monetize other than adsense
5) ???????????
6) profit

then you don't have to worry about a ton of risk that is involved in an offline biz.
 
I think you're right that insurance will be the key part and probably very expensive.

I've spent a lot of time in touristy places in Thailand where everyone and their mother rents out scooters.

Consider that you're going to get a lot of repairs and damaged bikes. People rent these things without thinking it through and then crash it. For this reason, you probably need to take a large security deposit on card or in cash. Also look into how much you can get selling the older bikes off once they break down more than they run.

I think it can be very profitable though if you get a good deal with a mechanic and insurance. It's very little work at that point.
 
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