The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - The Most Hands-Off $6K/Month Side Hustle to Start - Ep. #330

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

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What is your revenue per month on average? 5,500 to 7,500. That's beautiful. And you still have a full-time job? So have a full-time job. Yep. Very minimal. It's on my own.

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's not a whole lot that can go wrong with. Can you get financing on these? Absolutely. So in about five minutes, a guy named Nathan is going to 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 could 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. Yep. And how long have you been doing the trailer rental business?

15 months now. Same age as my daughter. So we started that like two days after she is born. Okay. Well, first gave you the idea to start with. 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 rented in the past. 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. Okay. And he 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 your cell phone.

So obviously immediately looking in, you realize it's fairly antiquated. Yeah. He's selling his trailers. Yeah. I mean, with maybe a little bit of goodwill. Yeah. So, yeah, I eventually, 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.

For 10 trailers. Yeah. We were older used trailers, heavily used. Are we talking like dump 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 dump trailer.

Okay, okay. This is Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Yes. How many people live there? In the county, it's 500,000. Okay. No, exactly in the town, but it's a mid-sized town. It's nothing like Philly or here.

And how was he finding customers? The old school way. Well, I mean, 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 searched for trailer rentals. But that was really how he was finding it, just having people call. Google business profile? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Good reviews? Mixed. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he's unsophisticated, it sounds like. He's not, he doesn't have like a CRM customer relationship management software, or did he? 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 if they were in there previously. There wasn't an all 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 or was? 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. Okay. But he didn't want to sell that side of the business? No. And he still kept, he's still doing the trailer rentals just on a smaller scale two hours away. Okay.

Yeah. Do you guys have like a non-compete or anything? Or is just he's so far away that 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 run a trailer. So I was giving him, or I still am, giving him 35% of the first rental that anybody he refers. Okay. So when you, so you ended up spending 35,000 on these? Yep. Okay.

What was he doing in revenue? Like, if he were to be able to value the revenues out of the business, how big was that? They, those 10 trailers averaged over the last two years. years, 28,000 a year. A year. Total. All 10 of them. Yep, all 10 of them combined. Okay. Okay. And did he have like good books or was, was he filing taxes on that or? I hope he was filing taxes. You didn't ask you. 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 self were on marketplace between the

auction and just, I've 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. And 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?

So he kept his phone number, kept his business name and everything. Okay. 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 or? He still has his website. Okay. So you put it in your own business name.

Yeah, my own business name. New Google business profile. Yeah. Everything on that side was fresh for me. So are you getting anything? Like, 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 like you're not getting calls because he keeps the phone number. Oh, sure. Sure. But is there, is he forwarding leads to you? Like, hey, can I run the 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. And 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 back-end stuff to start getting SEO traction. Okay. What did you name the business?

Lanko trailer rentals. That's what they call it. Lancaster County. Okay. Yep. It's a pretty common, easy to know exactly what we do and where we're... So it's lankotrailerrentals.com?

It's lankotrailers.com. Okay. Yeah. What was his name for it? Crosskeys rentals. Okay. All right. So are you having to pay him a referral fee when he sends lead 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 $1,200. Oh, okay. So it's not that much.

No. On 28,000 a year that he was doing, it's got to be mostly proper, right? Because you buy the thing and it's your time. There's no gas. I mean, wear and tear, minimal, I'm guessing. Yep. Insurance. Yes.

He told me he wasn't even worrying about insurance. That 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 an insurance would buy another trailer. 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 pooling. It won't necessarily cover collision, but it has to cover the liability.

So you're saying the vehicle insurance in Pennsylvania has to cover whatever it's towering. 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 a year. Okay.

It'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 run a little skid loader to move them all in between rentals. And I could set out a max of three trailers at a time to get picked up before I'd have to go over, pull all their trailers out back. That got a lot fast, so. Yeah, it was a great way to start and kind of, experiment with the contactless side where I was still coming to the RZee and the trailers every now and then meeting a renter. But since then, I've found about a half acre grab a 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 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, grab a lot. So there's plenty of access to park the trailers all on one side. And then as people come in to pick up or drop off, they have plenty of space to turn around. Okay. Yeah. So it's much better set up. So 300-ish a month for insurance, 800 for the lot, no employees. Yep. So we're at 1100 a month whether you rent anything out or not. Yep. Before we get to like your current numbers, how to like 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 are 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. Okay. So I got with them and that was kind of of how the Google side started picking up. Okay. Because they helped create your Google business profile?

So I still created that myself, but once I had the domain. Their 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 calls started coming in. Okay.

Do you remember what your first month's revenue was? The first month's revenue was $2,300. Wow, okay. It's pretty good. It covered the expenses, which was my only goal. Yeah. I mean, already you're on track to meet what he did the year before. Yeah.

He's doing $28,000 a year. That's on track for $4,000 a month. Oh, wow. Okay. So what about your second month, aka your first full month? The first full months was right about $4,000. Wow. So you're beating him by 50%.

I mean, if he's doing it. 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 it's not looking. 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 will use them. But if it's selling, 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.

It was roughly, right? Yes. 20 leads to lead. I want to say that first month, we had about 20 rentals on the first total month. Okay. And of those, I would say three to five max were from here. Oh, wow. Okay.

So you're averaging like 200 bucks a rental? Yes. Yeah. How much per day per trailer on average? A good. All park is probably 90 bucks is the median that I rent for. It's anywhere between 50 and 150 trailers. And two days on average?

So it depends what kind of trailer they're running. If they're running 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 riding mom more. Yeah, pretty simple, quick move. Or their car broke down and they're just telling it to the shop. Oh, okay. Just a single day, a 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 I quickly started once the website and some of the automations had started, started doing hide-a-key boxes on the train.

trailers with a lock on them. And then when somebody would show up, they'd get, pick up instructions with where, where that key was hidden for their rental. So they could come up and pick it up without having to meet me. Yeah. The one downside that I learned pretty quickly of meeting people is like you found out today. You're on their time. Yeah.

So if they're running late, then you're stuck there at the yard for an hour. Yeah. You didn't have to be. Yeah. And you're just like, yeah. Yeah. You can walk around, kick tires, but you can know, do that for so long before.

Yeah, I'm twirling your thumbs. So phase one was you meeting people there doing it manually. Yep. Phase two has a lockbox. Hey, here's the code. Yep. Let me have any questions. What about phase three?

Phase three was beginning of this year when I've got the New York 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 lockbox 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, But that's the extent of what I'm doing. Just one off questions. Yep. Hey, I can't find it. 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. Yeah. Okay. So how much of it cost you to get phase three set up with like the lock boxes and the- So the majority of the cost is $800 to rent the lot? Okay. The lockbox is there 30 bucks a piece.

on Amazon. I spent 350 bucks on a print shop to make 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. 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 pass a lot, which why it's cheaper. Obviously, road furniture would probably bring in more rentals. Yeah. But I just, I hadn't found a place that had. 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 running out trailers. Right. 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 two and $3,000 kind of paid for itself but definitely a little bit slower yeah but that was also what I was expecting from what I had heard from him so my my only goal at the time was just to cover the $1,200 and fix expenses that I knew it was going to have okay what about any like maintenance repairs flat tires so really with trade which is the whole reason why I got into it. 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. Okay. 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? Yeah.

So when they come pick up, get the code. They take before 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 trailers 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 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 going to 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 dense and dings because they're larger, but that's what the security deposits 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 cheap little trailer, that could be $100 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.

Yeah. 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? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, they kind of know if it's more than $250,000, that's a big enough bump on the trailer that they know.

So I'm sure there will be a day where I'll have to eat something. But you haven't yet? No. Wow. Nope. So your maintenance costs have effectively been zero. So other than like, sorry, not maintenance. Your damages, 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? So my first year that was, for the first full year, that was $8,000. I spent on 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 be get it to where it's as hands off. for me as possible.

Yeah. Okay. And then do you think that 8,000 the year is like you can expect that or is 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, you know, bearings are every 12,000 miles for example. So the more they're getting rented out, the more I'm going to 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. Yeah, it's a pretty simple GPS. It just pings twice a day. So there's plenty of different GPSes 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 trail would happen to get stolen. Yeah. obviously that's the one of the ones of the defense 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 okay then once they're on site there's obviously cameras there so their vehicle them

themselves are on camera. Yeah. All the trailers are locked. Of course, if somebody breaks in, breaks one off, they can take it. But then you're hoping the GPS is there. So what do you pay every month for, like, your website and all the software stuff? 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, like, your cameras and your GPS software? The cameras, they're $50 a month. There's have four on there. 50 for all four? Yes. Okay. Yep.

And the GPS software? The GPS there and up front 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.

Right now, $500, $600 a month, $6.00 a month would take. So we're like $2,000 a month for overhead. including maintenance of repair. Yeah. Yeah, right now it's right between 2 to 2,500. Okay. Depending how much the trailers are being invented. Yeah.

Okay. And then what is your revenue come on average? So now the last several months, it fluctuates between 5,500 to 7,500. Oh, nice. Okay. It's called 6,500. So you're netting $4,000 a month, give or take? Yep, right about that.

That's beautiful. And you still have a full-time job? So have a full-time job. Yep. I'll be at the yard for maybe two to three hours a week is typically what I should spend on it right now. How much total time do you spend on the business? Because you're not only working on it when you're at the yard, right?

If you were to add up all the hours in a week, five, ten. 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. Okay. 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 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 swap them something out while I'm there. Five hours a week, give or take. Two and a half to five. Okay.

So $1,000 bucks a week, net profit, on average, it's lumpy, $1,000 a week, four or five hours a week. So you're making $200 plus an hour on this business. After, like, don't give you wrong, you have to set stuff up. You have to negotiate with the guy. You had to get a lot, find a lot, make the board, 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 $250.50 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. What's on my own? How big could it get in Lancaster County? If you wanted to just go all out? That's a good question. And I go back and forth on what's the right way to grow it without even 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

on somebody, anytime somebody calls and I don't have the trailer they're asking for. I just will 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 happened. Yeah. Had your mother mechanic go out there once a week or so. The mechanic already travels.

So he could just spend a day there, a day in Leicester. What, if you, like, could only have one trailer to offer, what would it be? Probably for my area, it's going to depend where you're at geographically, but a dump trailer. Okay. 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. Okay. 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?

Yep. What do those costs? That was 80,300, new. Wow. Okay. And then, I mean, that'll last 10 plus years. Yep. Yeah, if you keep maintaining it, it'll have no problem.

And what do you rent that one for? 95 a day. Okay. Do you have like 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 the, or one and a half percent of the price. purchase price. So if it's a $4,000 trailer, $60, 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 $40.50 a day. Which means in 75 days of renting it out, you get all your money got. Yeah. And it's pure profit, quote unquote, pure profit from that on that. 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 key lock for the initial purchase. Yeah. To barred against your house. Yep. Okay. Was that difficult? No. No, it was something I, yeah. It was, I think the initial rate was two and a half per cent for their first nine months. Yeah. 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 if you did, you didn't want to use it. So you bought it against your house. When you get these financed, do you usually finance them through like the dealership you buy it from or through a bank or what? So I only used the

he lock 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 in the from the business. Yeah, yeah. So you've replaced all of the original first 10? I have I have one little cheap trailer that's still original. That's in good shape that I have in the other. 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. after that. Preferably for me, yeah, like a 20 or 24 foot enclosed trailer, those, for whatever reason, be great. What are people using those for? Moving? Moving, hauling, you can haul cars in them if you want them enclosed. Yeah. 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 try. transport them to Daytona or South Dakota. And then they'll drive them while they're out there. Okay. Have you, do you have issues of 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. Yeah. So in that instance, I just had them pull to the side to where it's not out of it. 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. Yeah. 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 going to 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 want to grow more by buying more trailers or by renting out other things or trailers in other cities?

That was going to be a question that I'd 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 roots 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 a 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. With renting? 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. Yeah, there's more moving parts. Like, they break more. Yep. And those people for, well, often want them delivered. Yeah. Campers, golf carts, which is what I learned testing that out this summer. They, most 95% of the people that are inquiring about them just when them dropped off. And at least right now, that's not the game that I want to be in. Yeah.

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, to pick those up. What do people rent golf courts for? From what I've seen, it's usually between $100 to $200 a day. But what's the use kids? Oh, what's the use? Yeah. Events, campgrounds. Okay.

Like you're an event organizer and you're kind of. 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, won a golf part 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. Well, 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 kind of with their rental agreements if you want to test it out. If you have something sitting around. Okay. 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 the skid steer on Facebook marketplace. I've rented the next video on Facebook marketplace. That's where I think to get them. But like you got to drop it off, pick it up usually. Yeah.

And you got to fill up a gas. How many things can go wrong on that? Yeah. And you need to at least give the person running it a quick tutorial on how to use it. Yeah. And at least for where I'm at right now, that's not something that I'm 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 the 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. A hundred percent. Because there's how many other things can you rent out that don't have moving parts? They're kind of hard to find. There's not, not many. So if I were you, based on all the facts you just told me, you have such a system dial then, I would just open a new law or just see what I could do to get more people to my current law. What percentage of the space are you taken up there? Probably 50%. 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 law 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. Yeah. If I were you, I would get to that as soon as possible and then find the next best city, you know, in your area. And you probably didn't even do any like competitive research, I'm guessing. Like when you bought this, like, I looked around for sure and just saw what, what anybody running trailers around the area was doing, how many. reviews they had, what their kind of setup looked like, and nobody was doing contact lists.

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 like, do you have any bearing on in Lancaster? you know, 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. Like, 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. Because you might learn that the average market has half as much competition or twice as much. Yeah. So you might be like, dude, this is easy mode. I'm going to go an hour down the road. And that's like 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 explodes because that's more of a normal market. I'd be curious to know that. You could just scrape every trailer into a place divided by the population and assume that like the demographics are similar. They might not be like if the 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 to how many total trailers are there for rent in that area just by calling up looking at their website

it looks like they have this many spots four are gone right now yeah and get like a metric of like person per trailer and try to get like a baseline all right here's eight cities all in pennsylvania oh pennsylvania ohio oh i're all in like 60 000 average income and you know it's like four thousand residents per trailer wow this one's only this one's nine thousand resident patrol. I need to go there next. It's a little out of the way, but I'm twice as likely to have success there. Yeah. 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 month. Have you ever done any businesses before this? Or it was like your first. This is your first. So, this was the first,

like official LLC we set up. I've have a habit of not staying still. So I mean, I've 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. Yeah, I did it full time for four years. Wow. Right. legit. Through high school and then right after. Yeah. So that's kind of working for yourself. Yeah. But no, no like running a business. Yeah. buy any technical terms. 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 up front. They just take a commission off of 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 those without spending any money on a website, on Google. Yeah. And they'll send you their leads.

Yeah. I mean, this sounds, maybe 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? Yeah. Like let's say there's a box trailer for 90 bucks a day. you go to neighbor and all this through websites you list a box really 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 own that trailer I'd actually be making 90 bucks

and not just giving it right back to it you know what I'm saying like yeah I just like to think of ways that you can completely de-risk yeah I think definitely posting it on on Facebook is an easy way to just check some ballpark demand in your area. You don't even need to rent one. Just post something. 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 going to 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. Yeah. And just test it with one trailer on the side, half hazard 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, spent $100. So I really don't anymore.

It sounds like you don't want to need to. No. And I don't do any paid ads on Google. Okay. It's just all kind of organic. Okay. Any other tips, advice? If you want to 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 like 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 and they can just text you. You know, 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 going to use you again. Yeah. So they're pretty likely to repeat. Beautiful. Where can people find you or your business? So you can find me on Twitter or X. That's going to 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 trailer rental. Dot 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 lankoTrailers.com. Beautiful. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you.

Hey, guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out, you're still mulling the lawn, you're still driving, what have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. It would mean a lot if you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton.

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