I am sort of in a partnership I guess. I was doing it on my own, 98% just junk vehicles. I'm a hard worker and a smart thinker, but hauling and scrapping cars can be a lot of work for one person. If you can keep yourself busy enough your still limited to basically just one car a day. A friend of mine had been doing cars and cores with another guy but due to the other guy it wasn't working out too well (I know the other guy as well, not surprised it wasn't working out given the circumstances). At any rate, I have had other business ventures myself and have seen a zillion partnerships fall apart. Only seen one or two succeed. In fact my saying about partnerships is that they start with friends and end with enemies, lawsuits and broken friendships.
My "partner" and I talked about this a LOT before getting into it. Its not exactly a partnership but it kind of is. He thinks like me and is smart and quick like I can be, and in our particular line of work knowing the right people can mean a LOT. Due to some circumstances he does not have a driver license so is not able to actually do all this on his own, but he has gotten us a TON of work and kept us busy on days I woulda been sitting in the house. And its helpful having one another to motivate ourselves, if things get slow instead of me sitting here pouting and wondering what I can do, now we put our two good heads together and brainstorm more things to do. We are always keeping our heads high, looking for more resources and business ventures. We went from each of us having a couple hundred bucks to now we walk around with thousands in our wallets. We don't say no to anything that could make us money but we don't waste time making a few bucks here and there unless there's nothing better to do. We go for big loads and or big bucks. And we've been doing great at it! We have moved into not just scrapping vehicles but also buying running cars to resell. We have done great with that as well, almost always double our money on them. I'm the kind of guy that I'm too honest to be a career car salesman LOL. My partner however is a real slick talker when needed LOL it comes in pretty great a lot. I woulda been happy just buying and scrapping a few cars a week, but now we scrap a 3-6 cars a week, one or two large objects (grain truck or combine or what-not) and buy and resell a couple cars a week. Things get crazy sometimes but we chug ahead. We set back all of our core and non ferrous stuff and on Fridays we cash that in. We don't usually book any pickups for Fridays but usually wind up chasing leads and sometimes picking something up anyway. We've now got the truck setup to be full mobile for work and stripping cars and what-not, it has on board air to run impact wrench, air up tires, etc. and a big power inverter for sawzall, and other power tools. With this we have saved a lot of time and stress and hard back labor loading stuff or tearing things apart by hand. We don't have to bring cars back to the garage to strip if its out of the way. We can jack it up and chop the cat off right there on the trailer, remove lug nuts in a moment with the impact and knock the wheels off when they pluck cars off the trailer. Having two people makes an enormous difference when loading cars, chaining them down, etc. also.
Sometimes it seems like I do more of the actual work or that I spend more time crunching numbers, but at the same time I have to remember that if not for him I probably wouldn't be doing anything at all sometimes. Sometimes I think I'm nuts for sharing the profit, but at the same time some days there wouldn't be any profit at all if not for him. Same goes for him, he can't do any of it without me as he has no truck/trailer/license. He could buy a truck and trailer but still not drive it. Many times I wish he could drive so we could split paths and get more done sometimes, but we survive. We have big hopes, big dreams and big motivation to reach them. Two are stronger than one. I guess if you think of it as a marriage and keep that mentality that it takes two to make it work, and its better than being alone, that probably helps. He has a property with garage we are fixing up to use soon when our operations expand a little. I provide the truck and trailer. I am responsible for repairs on truck and trailer, but he covers half the fuel and maintenance. We figured that's the best way to keep it fair if we ever decide to split paths there is no joint owned property to fight over but we split the operating expenses. On his property he covers the expense of whatever we put into it, but we both provide labor to make the improvements on it (gravel and fencing).
It is something you need to consider deeply and I'm not by any means suggesting anyone get into it. I'm not even 110% positive it will work forever for us. But we've got it setup where if it doesn't, neither has anything to lose by trying. With that under control, we have no option but to succeed. Hopefully! LOL
I still vote that you hire someone, as stated, a retired guy would be best I think, most responsible and not going to be likely to be greedy and steal business, almost sure to be very polite to customers, and they are almost always very reliable and a lot less drama and BS than a kid. I'm saying this and i'll be 24 in May. But if I were gonna hire someone I didn't know, it wouldn't be a kid. If it was someone I knew and knew they were as hard of a worker as I am then that would be different, but if hiring a stranger it wouldn't be a kid. Waaaay too many worthless punks out there and too much trouble to sort through em all.
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