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Long distance route


QuikVend

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I'm currently looking into a route that is about 3.5 hours away from me. I looked into it once before, but the price has since dropped. That was the main reason I didn't try to move forward before. 

90 locations, a mixture of singles, triples and 5-way racks, all are vending 1"and 2"toys, candy and gumballs. 50+ machines not on location. 

What I'm trying to find out, is if anyone has a decent sized route and how they go about servicing it. The current vendor has locations on cycles ranging from 6-weeks to 2+ months. I'll need to minimize trips to make it profitable enough. It did $13k in sales, after commissions and charity payments in 2016.

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     Keep in mind that is almost 8 hours of driving just to and from the service area then you have to run the route also. I am not sure what the route breakdown is (number of candy machines vs toy vs gumball vs racks) and that really dictates how you break up the service cycles in my opinion. Couple of challenges.....candy will require more frequent service than gumballs and toys and then there are out of cycle service/machine pick up calls. You can try to stagger service into 3 cycles (basically a monthly run to the area) that way you can handle any out of cycle service calls within 30 days at the longest but that will definitely bring up your cost. You could run a 2 month service cycle hitting all of you candy locations every 2 months and half of the gumball/toy with each cycle which would put your gumball/toy cycle at 4 months between service. Now 45 locations in one day plus 7-8 hours commute time will be rough but as time goes on you can adjust things based on volume that may make that easier to handle. You will need a contingency plan for locations that call and say "We're going out of business and today is our last day...you need to pick up your machine" or if one of your best locations has a coin jam 2 days after you serviced it. Do you really want to keep them waiting plus lose that income? Ask yourself if you plan on building onto this new route (at minimum trying to fill in locations between the new service area and your current service area) or replacing locations in that area as you lose them over time.  I'm my opinion 3.5 hours to get there is really pushing the service envelope. If it was all stick/toy/gumball locations it would make it much easier. Not an easy decision even if you can get it for a good price. Good luck,

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With 90 locations and only 13000 after commission you need yo ask how many rack locations, how much they do and how many charity locations and what they do. Not knowing that information or what the commission prevents are you really know nothing. For example if this was all charity with a fifty cent a month sticker fee the stops would be averaging around $12 each a month and most could be done every 3-4 months. If the route was all commission at 30% you would be at around $17 a month per location which is terrible.

so you need more information. But just based on what you have it looks like a money loser. You are not going to be able to do the route unless you stay over night. And this will need to be weekday work. I don't think you could actually make money in this even if it was free.

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I'm set to meet him on Saturday to see a few locations and go over everything and get some answers to question I have. I had figured an overnight stay would probably be necessary. My full time job schedule would be able to accommodate that, if it were necessary. I'll do some investigation before making any decisions.

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Going a little further: you could build along the route you travel to the route with the extra machines so your travel time and mileage pay you something too. This is a way to build toward a really nice route. It really comes down to how many sacrifices in time and money you are willing to make. If you have the grit, the price is right, the locations solid, the equipment good you could build something worthwhile. But do not underestimate the amount of commitment required to do so. Local routes are nice because you can ease into the business, a long distance route is going to really test you.

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That is something to keep in mind as well. His 50+ machines plus the ones I have would definitely be enough to build a route along the way. I'll make notes of potential areas to expand in as I drive up Saturday.

I know it will be quite an undertaking. It would more than double my current bulk count and sales. My goal is to make vending my main source of income. I've been working nonstop at my full time and a side job investing in growing my business. Obviously this is the quickest way to expand, but I want to expand to generate more income, not just to get bigger.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

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Unless you are in a large urban area your routes will all be long. So if you have the commitment this long route will be your future. I have run long routes for years they can wear you out. I hope this works out for you. 

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I'm still wondering about the "how you service it" part. Not frequency, but product wise? Do you have to have  a van full of product and spare parts? what if a location asks you to pull your equipment while you're already out there? Do you have to have room for a spare machine too?

Plus what about the locations that are closed for some strange reason the day you go to service? I'm not sure when i'll get that big myself, but I've been wondering those questions for a bit.

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5 hours ago, musser said:

Unless you are in a large urban area your routes will all be long. So if you have the commitment this long route will be your future. I have run long routes for years they can wear you out. I hope this works out for you. 

I hope so too. There haven't been any routes to pop up locally since I bought my first 2 a little over a year ago. The owner is willing to accept payments, so I would be able to expand quickly and without much upfront costs. 

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Yea, it was listed on Craigslist. There was another one in the area as well, but it was close to 50k, so I didn't even bother looking into it. 

I use an app called craigspro. It let's you search through multiple cities individually as well as including nearby cities to the one you're searching. I typically search 'vending' and 'gumball' to get the most results, but have had a little luck with 'gum' and 'candy'.

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