I am starting a motor club in the DFW area with about $75 and no trucks. Here is my playbook. I am sharing this for feedbacks and ideas. Since this is a local business, I’m not concerned about creating competition, but collaboration instead so we can share ideas and experiences. Here are the steps I took:
Phase 1: Infrastructure Setup
Think of a name for your business. I would recommend getting a local name like (Your city) Motor Club so that you can build a local presence and good for local SEO.
Buy a domain for ~$15 and get it hosted on Vercel.com for free. Once you buy a domain, feed the url into an AI to get it to help you start building your site. Here’s a prompt you can start with: “I want to start a motor club i (your city). I just bought (yourdomain.com) on (ie. Namecheap) and now want to build out a website on Vercel as a marketing site for the motor club. Ask me some initial questions to get any clarity, then give me baby-steps to building and launching the site.” Vercel does not cost you anything to host a website and as you go through each step, if you’re confused, screenshot what you see and tell AI “This is what I see, what should I do from here.” I would recommend Claude.ai as your AI tool – it’s what I used to build everything.
Once you have a landing page, go to TowMarX.com and start create your dispatch account. It’s free to start and only $5/job. This is what you use to manage the business. You get a customer portal, mission control, finance section, and can add drivers to dispatch once you get things going. Everything is done via SMS.
Once you have all that set up, get some business cards for about $50. You can prompt: “I want to create some business cards for my motor club. Ask me some questions to get an idea of what I want and help me design everything, including logo.”
Phase 2: Supplier Side Setup (the Drivers)
You need to build a Lead List of local drivers in your area that you can dispatch jobs to. Once you have the Lead List, contact them and offer them additional jobs send to them via SMS, no contracts. You decide what % of the job you want to pay them. From what I’ve seen, most drivers are happy making $65 per standard tow from the big motor clubs like AAA. Since you have no overheads, your payout can be higher. With no commitment, contracts, or software to download and everything just sent to their phone, there should be little friction as it’s just extra work for them if they’re idle.
To build your Lead List, prompt: “I want to recruit tow truck drivers to run jobs for my motor club. I need you to build me a comprehensive Lead List of potential drives that I can contact and recruit in the (your city area). Ask me any questions to help with setup and clarity.”
To help you with conversations, prompt: “Build me a comprehensive conversation sheet to help me recruit tow truckers for my motorclub. Break it down into openings, conversation pieces, sales tips, closing statements, handling rejections, and any other angles that will help me convert. There is no commitment on their side, I’m just sending them extra work via SMS. Ask me any questions to clear up any ambiguities.”
Once you have all that, the real work begins – start recruiting. I would target 10 commitments before moving to the next phase, as it will give you enough buffer that someone will take a job when you dispatch the jobs out.
Phase 3: The Demand Side Setup (the customers)
From what I read, DO NOT try google ads. You’re going to have to pay a lot per clicks, compete with the big boys, and conversion rates aren’t very good.
My 1st recommendation would be to go to local body shops and work with them. You can set up a referral fee for body shops who send you jobs. How much is up to you, and it’s based on how much you’re paying out to your driver.
Once you have an idea of what you want, prompt: “I want to go to body shops in the (your area) to partner with them to send me tow jobs. Build me a list of body shops that I can contact or visit to build a partnership.” Now you have your Sales Lead Sheet.
If you don’t have sales experience, prompt: “Create me a sales pitch sheet that will help me convert Body Shops to be partners for my motor club to send me jobs. I plan to offer $X per jobs sent to me as a partnership. Build a sales guide that would help me with the entire process, including edge cases and ideas that I should consider.”
While the driver recruiting can be done over the phone, this is a process that will require you to visit locations, meet the owners/managers, and build relationships. If you want to be a little “risky”, maybe invest in box of donuts before visiting.
This is my exact playbook – about $75 to start. I will make future posts to share my results. Has anyone tried something like this? If anyone has questions or want to just talk things over, feel free to contact me.
submitted by /u/Quangholio
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