How to save money on gas when you’re a personal assistant
How can you provide delivery service without charge your clients more?
Gas prices are increasing each day and it is estimated that the price of gas will rise to $5.00 a gallon by the end of the summer. Much of a personal assistant’s business involves driving, delivering and picking up. So how can you still provide a cost effective service without passing too much of the cost on to your customers?
Schedule your week
One of the easiest changes you can make to your business without increasing your prices is to schedule your week. If you have repeat customers that have a schedule, try to make stops for all of your customers within the same area. For instance, make 1 stop to the dry cleaning store for all customers at once instead of multiple. If your grocery shopping, think about packing coolers in your car and shopping for all customers at once.(Be sure to carefully organize this process). Just this 1 change can significantly affect the amount you spend on gas.
Limit your days to “Zones”
If you have multiple clients in different parts of town limit your travel days to zones. For instance, if the far west end of town is 35 miles away, that is easily 70 miles round trip. Don’t make the journey more than one or two times a week. Instead, decide that Tuesday and Thursday is your “west end day” and handle anything in that area for those clients local to that zone AND any errands that need to be run for clients living in other “zones” to that area.
Outsource and get help
The summer time means that college students are available as well. You may look into hiring some college help that lives in further away areas or as I mentioned, “zones”. You will still need to pay them mileage and for their time, but you will also save money on not having to drive to that area your self.
These are just a few ideas that we have experimented with and have worked for us. You may want to try them yourself and see how well it works. Of course, this will require very good organization skills and time management, but that’s a trait that every personal assistant must have to be successful anyway.
