My name is Roger Hicks - though I go by BobTHJ on the net. I have run my own technology company for the past few years - contracting to an aviation company which supplied 95% of my income. Though it suspected it was coming I found out two months ago that my billable hours were being cut by roughly 80%. I suddenly needed to find work! Though considering several options vending caught my eye when I saw a route for sale on Craigslist for $15,000. Upon calling the owner I learned she had 40 placed candy machines (Vendstars - though I didn't know what the heck that was at the time) spread across 15 towns 100-200 miles from my home. She also had another 50 Vendstars in her garage which I could purchase in addition for $100 each! Supposedly this route generated $1500 a month. I was seriously tempted to buy it - but decided to wait while investigating other options. I'm glad I did as I know now that her route was WAY overpriced.

Vending had me intrigued however. I liked the idea of having assets which worked 24/7 for you, and I also liked that it was a business in which I could involve my wife and kids (I have 7 kids from ages 8 to 3 months!). I began to search around and quickly found multiple other routes for sale for much less. I started Bob's Quality Vending on September 1st of this year when I purchased a 2-machine route for $285 from a kid with a giant blue mohawk. One Vendesign and one Candy King triple placed in a moving company dock and a industrial breakroom respectively.

Between a retirement account and a few assets I was able to sell I had a total of $50,000 to start. This money was (and is still) being used both to support my family while I get the vending business off the ground as well as to acquire a large enough business to continue to support us going forward.

The following week I purchased three more routes:
-> a six machine full-line route (5 1-800-VENDING RC800 combo machines and one USI snack machine) for $9,000
-> a 72 machine triple head bulk vending route (mostly Vendstars with a few metal triples - Seaga?) for $8,000
-> a three machine Seaga snack station route (9 coil mechanical machines) for $450

Two weeks ago I added another full-size snack machine (older National model) purchased from the gentleman who repairs my machines for $500 on location in a sporting goods store break room. I also hired Metro Vending (total cost $11,500) to set me up with 3rd party for Coke and Pepsi and place 10 soda machines (moving at least $50/week per contract).

I've probably overpaid somewhat for some of this, but on the flip-side I live in a smaller area so it might have been a while to find routes available for a more reasonable cost. Overall I think I did well in avoiding the biz-op hype (the Metro Vending investment is the only one I'm unsure of - still waiting on the 3rd party stuff to be approved).

I've spent my time this last month stocking and visiting all my machines (many of them were near-empty), having my USI snack machine repaired (twice - separate problems), getting business cards, brochures, and sales tax licences, and making lots of sales calls (none of which have been successful yet - though several may pan out).

Finding Vendiscuss has been a blessing! My intention is to make a new post here each week to update on the latest developments in my vending adventure. I'll start with this past week in the next post.

To learn more about me visit my personal web-page (not yet updated to include the vending business) at [url="http://www.bob-space.com"]http://www.bob-space.com[/url]