Advice on possible new job...Driving instructor!

[----]

The course will cost me £3k upfront and will take upto 6 months to get through it.Once i get my instructor licence it's all go.
They give me a job working for RED (unless i want to go it alone/with another company) although i'll be self employed.
I pay them £185/week and in return i get a brand new car every 12 months with free insurance and all servicing costs paid for e.t.c.
They also give me all my clients for however many hours per week i want to do and basically do everything other than actually teach the clients for me!

The wage for this for a standard 40 hour week is £23 per hour = £920/week.
- £185 for them,then £50/week fuel £70 N.I and tax and £10/week for sickness insurance and accountant.
I come home with roughly £600 per week.

They base this wage on 40 hours per week at £23/ hour which would be 4--2 hour lessons per day, so probably have to add 1 hour/day onto that for travel times to each job.
Still sounds too good to be true?

So what's being missed here? reckon this sounds right?
Want to get as many opinions as i can before i throw 3 grand into it.

Thanks
Dave

Sorry for the huge post
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DRZ-400sm

[.....]

What happens if they have no clients to give you?

Didn't Red go bust recently?

edit: Isn't £50 a week on fuel a bit optimistic?

[Itchy]

[NickD]

I'd guess the hours are a bit of a bastard.

Putting in 40 hours, when those hours are largely outside everyone else's working hours might be a bit gruelling.
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I was only doing what it said on my licence officer....
Tear along the dotted line!

[Itchy]

[Kickstart]

Hi

I would doubt that you will get 40 hours worth of clients in a week, especially when starting out. Also check carefully about the various tests you have to go through as an instructor. From memory the initial training puts you at a certain level and you must then pass further assessments within a certain time frame. Can't remember the details, but it is worth checking up on.

As to your figures, £50 a week is probably only about 9 gallons. Even at 60mpg that is 540 miles, or 27 miles per 2 hour lesson including your traveling distance. I would suspect at least double that giving you £635 before tax and accountancy fees per week (not sure what the tax situation would be on having the car), roughly £30k for a 48 week year.

All the best

Keith
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[chrisw]

[Itchy]

[chrisw]

[Andy C]

40 hours (even if you get them) arnt going to be one after the other.

My driving instructor worked 6 days a week 8-8 as he would have 1-2 hour gaps frequently as you have to work when people want you not when you want them (e.g. I had a slot 6-8pm Tuedays as I had work and didnt want weekends).

He loved it but from what I saw it wasnt an easy job
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99 RS125 --> 02 SV650s --> 03 Speed Four --> 92 RXS100 --> 93 CB400sf --> 01 CB600f Hornet

[----]

Cheers for the reply's .

As far as the car maintanance goes it won't matter as they pay EVERYTHING for the car.Tyres,servicing all repairs e.t.c. is all payed for by them.
The car is also replaced with a brand new one after 12 months.
The car is a corsa 1.3 diesel which are great on fuel but i agree £100 at least a week is probably more realistic.

They said that all the taxes i would have to pay would amount to about £70 per week which i assumed would be everything.I didn't know there'd be more taxes after that aswell.

They seem to think that the 40 hours work is definately there pretty much guaranteed although i had my doubts.This was based on a 9-5 working day.

The course covers all the tests i would need to become a fully licenced driving instructor although the £3k doesn't cover the actual test costs which would probably be around the £500 mark assuming i pass them first time.

I'm jotting this all down anyway so i have as many questions as possible ready before i go for it.
I was even thinking about booking a lesson with a RED instructor myself just so i can get all my questions answered from someone doing it.

Cheers anyway given me some more to think about
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DRZ-400sm

[Kickstart]

Hi

Quick look at it seems to be a 3 part test to become an instructor, with only a 27% pass rate for the 3 part (and think you only get 3 attempts).

Bit on Red driving school on BBC Xray programme:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei-ERWryXi0&feature=youtube_gdata

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Ariel Badger]

You may get plenty of clients but if they live a hour apart it is a lot of none payment time whilst you drive to them using your fuel to do so.
Cavat Emptor.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[Ariel Badger]

[----]

I can't watch that video as i'm still using my mobile phone to get online...but..
I did have a thorough search on google last night and there was quite a bit of info on this.
It backed up what all of you are saying about longer hours,nowhere near the 30k/year e.t.c...
Even lot's of reports about their training method being really poor.

Oh well,it did seem to good to be true from the start but it was worth asking about

Cheers everyone

Back to the drawing board...
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DRZ-400sm

[Hex]

[TQ]

I've heard bad things about Red.

Yes they'll guarantee to get you work but they won't guarantee where that work will be.

A mate of a mate did this in Worcester and Red were offering him jobs from Cheltenham to Shrewsbury. You will end up spending so much time/fuel travelling between jobs you won't make a lot in the end.
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First Bike :Gilera DNA 50 | Second: Imported 1989 NSR125
Third: 1998 Yamaha XJ600N | Currently: 1999 Yamaha FZS600

[defblade]

On the bright side, you get to meet a lot of 17 year old girls

.....I'll get me coat......
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Honda Varadero 125cc => Suzuki Bandit 650 33bhp => 77bhp =>
BMW K1200R Sport 163bhp => Aprilia Shiver GT 750 95bhp

[TQ]

[Groove]

My dad started doing driving instructor franchises a little while ago and now trains new drivers up.

He has always had full books whilst working from himself with NO advertising other than a shit website, all his work came from word of mouth. Before he went solo he has worked for BSM, Safeway and one other i cant think of. He got a very poor amount of students due to the amount of driving instuctors working for the same company in the same area! Sometimes went weeks without ANY from the companies.

Solo his earnings before expenses before he started training drivers was around the £800 a week mark. I've got all his accounts on here as i do them.

Last year i started to work on the driving school with him to see if it could be made bigger (hence the instructor training) and we now have a few drivers around Essex all with fairly full diaries (no one has less than 30 hours a week for the next 4 or so weeks).

We still do minimal advertising, website has been improved, a few links around the net (but trying to get new driving school out there is ridiculous with the amount of competition) but mostly posters in areas of drivers and leaflet distribution/colleges etc.

Our franchise is only £55 per week. Although it does not include a car/insurance. Also our training isnt £3k up front. Its pay as you go like normal lessons @ £25 per hour. Usually comes to around £2000 after you have paid your test fee's etc.

Hope this helps.
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[Robby]

It seems that the most you can make as a driving instructor is £30kpa, with a lot of hours required to make it. 40 hours working is a fairly long week as it is, once you factor in travelling and waiting you're likely to be spending 60 hours a week sat in a corsa.

£30k is a fairly low ceiling for any profession, and you won't start off on that, probably below £20k. Factor in that for your £20k (about £1200/month in your pocket) you're going to be perpetually tired, scared, frustrated or bored. Your entire life will revolve around working - no pub on friday night if you're doing an evening lesson, or an early lesson on saturday. You'll mostly eat petrol station food at petrol station prices.

You should factor in holidays and the car being off the road for servicing and repairs, which I would expect to total 4 weeks. This brings your £30k ceiling down to £28k.

If you work it out over a year, you would probably have the same amount of money as doing the same number of hours stacking shelves.

[pa_broon74]

My old flat mate is a driving instructor and he really enjoys it. He did say though that the income estimated is hugely exagerated, he said it was based on 40 hours actual teaching not factoring in the other 40 odd hours you spent between lessons going from A to B to C etc etc etc.

He's been at it for a wee while now and is fairly established so gets all his work via word of mouth. I don't think he ever went with a big company, I remember him saying it was a bit of a false economy.

As usual, this is internet advice so any relevance to reality might not be real and could be imagined.


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Didn't catch anything.

[Skudd]

I've just given up being a Driving Instructor, the last winter with all the snow and the cost of fuel, together with everyone pulling in their purse strings stopped making it a viable option any more.
The good years were very good, the job didn't feel like work, but the overheads and the lack of pupils in a saturated area made it very hard.
I had a very good pass rate and got most of my work by word of mouth, but there were people under cutting prices by silly amounts but giving shorter lessons, people only look at the price per lesson and not per hour or the quality of that hour.
I'm still keeping up with my ADI licence as it is something to have in your back pocket for a rainy day.
The problem is that there are too many being pushed through the system, put on a pink, then fed loads of cheap pupils, then they fail part 3, but there is always another pink just waiting to jump in the car after them.
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