starting up a self drive 3.5 horsebox hire - any advice?

[georgiegirl]

Ok so this is all theoretical ideas at the moment.....

Basically I want to upgrade to a 3.5t horsebox - my 4x4 which i have to use as my everyday car has horrendous running costs and plus next year we will be travelling much further afield so a 3.5t would be ideal.

However, as with everything, financing such a thing is going to be a struggle. Does anyone know about how easy/difficult it would be to set up a self drive hire service which would hopefully help me towards some of the costs of paying for a box? Wether there is the demand for such a thing? Obviously we need to take into account specialist insurance, breakdown etc etc. I imagine the box itself would need to be funded by a small business loan.

This is all just ideas at the moment, just need a bit of advice before i start to look into it further?

 

[lauraandjack]

Some friends of mine did this quite successfully for a short while - then sold the box and the business as a going concern as they moved away from that area. I'm not sure it earned them mega money but they certainly covered their costs. I believe they just advertised locally.

Some pitfalls that I can think of from their experiences:

Beware that if you are planning on using the box a lot yourself, it may well be that most people want to hire it when you want to use it, i.e. weekends!

People trash things that are not their own and rarely own up to damage. Wear and tear will be much higher than if you alone were using it.

Coachbuilt type boxes are probably better, as you can get taller horses in them (the van conversions are not really suitable for anything over 16hh), and make sure it has a wide enough rear door for emergency purposes and preferably a collapsible breast bar).

Be careful about your pricing structure too - it is very easy to price yourself out of people's budgets!