Starting a Garage With £200 in the Bank

This episode is sponsored by Castrol and The Race Group. To learn more about Castrol Service, please visit: https://www.castrol.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home.html

Ross Maitland was promised training by one employer after another. Main dealers, big independents, a contract, a handshake, none of it turned into a single day on a course. At 35 he was ready to leave the trade for good.

Instead he opened Maitland Motors in Burntisland with £200 in his bank account and his mum and dad lending him the rent. Less than a year in he had nothing booked and gave himself two days before he packed it in. Ten years on he has six staff, owns the building, and has just won an award for training and development. Alex and Tim take him right back to the Yellow Pages and work forward through every garage, every broken promise, and every mistake he made on the way.

Topics covered:

- writing to 74 garages for an apprenticeship and getting two replies

- being passed over for master tech training without being asked

- a bonus scheme that punished the wrong person

- finding out he was £3 an hour under the technicians he was trying to recruit- why paying under market rate catches up with a garage

- starting a garage with £200 and no savings

- the fleet work that saved his first year- a thousand pounds a year for unlimited training, and what he did with it

- what he does differently now he employs technicians himself

Timestamps:

00:00 - intro

07:56 - writing to 74 garages for an apprenticeship

18:14 - leaving the first garage for bigger jobs

26:44 - castrol | the race group partnership

29:30 - promised master tech training, then passed over

39:46 - on £10.50 an hour and £3 under his own technicians

48:03 - the two homers that made his mind up

52:24 - starting maitland motors with £200 in the bank

59:57 - two days from packing it in

1:05:20 - a thousand pounds a year for unlimited training

1:13:37 - winning the training and development award

1:20:01 - two staff, an envelope and five rules

1:30:37 - outroSubscribe for more expert insight, honest conversation, and real stories from inside the independent garage sector.

https://beacons.ai/ontheramp