How to Conduct Market Research for Trailer Rentals | Trailer Hustle 046

Justin Martin shares practical strategies for testing trailer demand in your area, emphasizing market research, using real photos, and community support. He discusses his personal methods, community interactions, and upcoming tools and giveaways to support trailer rental entrepreneurs.

trailer rental, market testing, trailer demand, community support, trailer marketing, trailer business, trailer testing, trailer marketplace, trailer community, trailer hustle

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up guys? Welcome back to the Trailer Hustle Podcast. My name is Justin, and this is the Trailer Owners Network. I am very glad that you are here with me today. Um took a been off for about two weeks from making videos. I had a very, very much needed vacation that me and my girl went on, and I'm very, very, very happy to be back. Love, I don't know if it's just me or if some of you are like this as well, but when I go on a vacation, I love it. It's great, it's awesome. But on about day six, I'm kind of like, all right, ready to get back home, get back to, get back to the grind. I don't know why I'm that way. I'm just that way. This was this was pretty nice. We were gone for um, I guess a total of eight days, uh, something like that. And uh got back home, got caught up on a few things here, and um ready to get back to it. So I'm glad that you guys are here. And I wanna, today's episode is gonna be about specifically something that came up in the group yesterday. And I was a little disheartened by it, to be honest, because trailer hustle as a community has always been crazy helpful. I mean, the littlest thing somebody asks for, um, you know, you get 20 people running to the aid of that person. And it was a very simple request. It's a request that many have made before. It's a request that I'd made early on in other groups. It's and they were saying they were doing something that I actually recommend you do. And um, a handful of people were um being not so friendly about it. And what that was is this this person said, Hey, does anybody have any pictures of your trailers that I can use to test the market on marketplace in my area? And this is an absolutely positive and logical thing to do. And it's something that I do for every single trailer before I buy any trailer, I should say. For every trailer I've purchased, I have done this test. And what this test is, is you you make a listing or five, usually I'd make four or five listings for a specific type of trailer. So before I bought my deck over trailer, for instance, I made a listing using images of a deck over trailer. Um, I'd have like two or three per, and I would I ran them for 30 days, almost 30 days. And I would get messages from people, I'd talk to them, I would speak to them as if they were ready to rent or as if they were actual renters and I wasn't actually actually going to rent the trailer to them. And when we got to the point where I knew they were serious and I could kind of calculate, okay, they're they they're willing to spend this much money, this many days, whatever it was. I would just say, hey, I'm sorry, the trailer's not available for the time frame you're looking for. Sorry. That's the easiest way to tell somebody no. Um, and when you do that, you get a really good sense of, okay, is there demand for this trailer? Would I have rented this trailer out? Um, now you do that for 30 days and you have four or five listings, you're gonna know what listings, you know, kind of did okay. You're gonna see, you can look down at your notes and be like, okay, well, I missed out on 1500 bucks this month because I didn't have that trailer or a thousand bucks or two thousand bucks, whatever it was. Or on the flip side, I missed out on 150 bucks. So you take whatever data you get from doing that test and you apply that to that trailer. Like if you get a ton of feedback, probably a good idea to buy that trailer. You're probably wanting to investigate should I buy this trailer in the first place for a reason. You were probably getting customers asking you, hey, do you have this type of trailer? Or asking you, hey, um, you know, do you have a trailer that can handle this or accommodate this or that? And you haven't had it. Whatever that is, whatever that situation is, there's probably a reason that you were interested in that type of trailer anyway. Or maybe it was one of those things where you just kind of trust in your gut, which I'd never recommend. Don't trust your gut with this thing. Um, but you're probably like, you know what? I think this type of trailer will be an excellent addition to the fleet. It'll do great in this area. This is the type of trailer that I should do. Um, test it. Okay. Test it. Now there's all kinds of theories behind this of how you should test it, how you should do this and that. This is just what works for me. It's worked for me for lots of trailers that I've purchased. And I know there's some people out there that say, like, oh, if you have to decline one person for whatever trailer, just buy that trailer. That's that's uh that's not the way that I roll, and I don't recommend that. Um you can get burned pretty quickly. Um and I'll tell you, let me give you a quick example before I dive into the rest of this. I had, and I've told a few people this I had I was I was this close to buying a 36 foot or 32 or 36 foot something in that range, dual car carrier um bumper pool before. And I was looking at these trailers 14, 15, 16 grand, and I'm like psyching myself out, like I'm I'm or or hyping myself up, like I'm alright, I'm I'm gonna buy it, I'm gonna do it. And the reason why is I was getting phone call after phone call for like two months, three months for a dual car carrier. And uh we're talking probably eight or nine inquiries for it. I'm like, man, like nobody in the area has one. Maybe I should get one. Started doing some research. And I was like, you know what? Let me test, let me follow my own advice, let me test the area, see what happens. So I reach out to somebody that I know in other parts of the country that have that kind. They sent me some photos of theirs, and um, I made three listings and left them up. And within two weeks, I had like four hits, okay. Um, which is you know pretty solid for that style of trailer at the price point that I put it at. I think I put it at 190 a day um for the you know the advertised rate. And um finally I I started really digging deep and asking questions because I started looking at these people's profiles that were messaging me because now I have more info versus just a phone call or a text. And they they were all these like um off-road enthusiast dudes. And so I started asking them questions like, hey, what are you uh what are you planning on you know using the trailer for? What's your rental intentions? And I got the same answer from a couple of them, which was yeah, me and a bunch of buddies are going to Blue Ridge Parkway, whatever, whatever, for this big ATV event. We want to take one trailer with all of our units on it instead of all of us dragging our trailers up there. I'm like, got it. I ask a little bit more, I dig a little deeper, and I find out that their entire group of friends, like 12 of them, were all calling around, all trying to find a trailer. Everybody was trying. So every one of these people, most likely, that I was talking to was the same group of guys. And after that event, phone calls dried up. So I had this artificial sense of like, oh man, this trailer will be perfect for this area. Oh my god, I'm getting so much inquiry on this thing. Had I not run that test, I wouldn't have figured that out, and I might be sitting with a big ass trailer in my yard that barely ever rents. Okay. So, sure, maybe that sounds like a very silly contrived example, but that's my example. That's what happened with me, and that's how I know that it definitely does work. But I've done the same exact thing and it's added validity. Now, sure, maybe I would have bought these trailers that I was testing anyway, and yes, they would have been successful, but you don't know. I've I'm fortunate enough, I haven't tested a trailer yet that wasn't like when I get when I get the that thing in the pit of my stomach, like I think I need to add another trailer or whatever it is, and I test it. I haven't had a single one yet not do well. Um, like with the test, you know, I always get the inquiries, I always seem to get the customer base for it. I'm very fortunate in the area that I'm in. So, you know, I I don't know. I haven't had a time yet where um, you know, a test didn't go well. So, sure, maybe I would have bought those trailers and it would have been just fine. But I still say better safe than sorry, okay, because I know the one time that I don't test it, I'm gonna buy a trailer that I think is gonna be great and nobody's gonna rent the thing, and I'm gonna be sitting here with a $10,000 hunk of metal and wood in the in the yard, you know. So so that's that's why I recommend that and why I think it's a good a good thing. Now, the reason why somebody might reach out to the group or the community and ask for pictures, hey, let me use your photos or something like that is you guys know how. If you're watching this, you've probably been on marketplace and you know the listings that you just scroll right past, right? The the ones that look like it's in a trailer yard or a dealer photo or a stock image, they get no clicks. I've tested it. They don't get the same amount of clicks as something else where it looks like it's in somebody's yard or that's a real person that's got that thing. Okay, so it makes so much more sense to utilize and use photos that are real photos taken by real people. Of course, you don't want to, you know, use submit pictures or upload pictures to have somebody else's phone number and stuff like that. So it was perfectly logical what this guy was asking for. Again, I've done it. Hey guys, send me pictures of your trailer so I can test the market on marketplace in my area. And the person wasn't saying that's the only way they're testing their market, but it's a damn good way to test your market, especially when for me, anyway, early on, the bulk of my revenue and customer base came from marketplace when I was first getting started. All right, it takes a while to build up your Google presence. It takes a while to get, you know, your listing presence really high and kind of get featured, if you will, on uh Google on page one. So it takes a while to build that stuff up. But, you know, so marketplace for probably the majority of the people out there is gonna be your best bet. And don't you want to maximize your click rate and your impression, or not impressions, but like your you know, the amount of activity that your listings get and the attention they get. And to do that, you have to have good images, you have to have the proper images. So it's perfectly reasonable, logical, and I would say it's necessary to use those types of images versus dealer photos versus stock images versus images you just find on Google. And you're also not that you need it, but you're getting permission from the person that owns the trailer and owns the photo, whatever you want to call it, to use it. So it's so much better. And trailer hustle is here for these types of things. If you need help, you have an idea, whatever it is, great. Boom. Now, some people were cool about it, other people were, you know, there was one that was just just buy the damn trailer. It's like, well, he didn't even say what kind of trailer. He's he's he wants to test a few. He doesn't know. He's doing research, he's doing a thing that we're all supposed to be doing, which is being a student of your profession, right? So there's another one that was, you know, bad idea. Why? Why is that a bad idea? You know, or other people that were like, uh, you know, just use just use Google photos and this, that, the other. And maybe I'm I don't know. I'm saying it out loud the way that I read it. It just sounds like shit. So anyway, we're all here to help each other out, and I think that's a very logical thing to do, uh, to test your area. That's what I recommend, that's what I do. Now, on the flip side, you have to do it the right way. I think that that's the right way. Some of the wrong ways are other things that we've seen, and actually, it was posted in the group and discussed probably, well, I guess it's been about three, four weeks now. Somebody took somebody else's listing, like their ad, their whole ad, everything that they found on marketplace, and it had like their phone number, their trailer, their advertisement, everything. And they posted that and used that as their test, you know, listing, if you will. So I don't recommend doing that. Okay, don't steal somebody else's full like business and everything. Ask for permission. That's why you posted the group. Hey, anybody got some photos you can send me? Great. And I went in there by the way, and I sent a bunch of photos. Like, yeah, here's utility, here's equipment, here's car hauler, here's deck over, you know, whatever. Use them. I don't care. I don't give a shit. Um, you know, we're all here to help each other learn and grow. But you got to do it the right way. And I think this person, uh, the guy's name is Trevor, um, good guy. I think he um I think he was doing it the right way. And I'm I'm kind of embarrassed that the community didn't help him out as much as uh as much as they should have. Um, especially, I mean, you go back in the archives of the group over the past couple of years. I mean, we're now a little over two years doing this thing, and um in in in, you know, for the Facebook group, and uh this has come up plenty of times, and a lot of people have submitted them, and a lot of people have responded much more favorably. So anyway, it was a little disheartened to see that, but it is what it is. But guys, that's how I test my area, and again, it's worked very well. There's plenty of other ways that you can test your area. You can see what's out there through, say, the Big Rentals marketplace platform or other marketplaces, right? Check the link in the description, by the way, if you guys want to check out Big Rentals, but shout out to them. But you can go on there and see what kind of trailers are in your area. Go on marketplace, see what kind of trailers are in your area. Are there any gaps? You know, are there any um, you know, indications that the area might need this type of trailer because nobody's offering it or whatever. That's all great. That might give you some a little bit more data you know for your business development, but to get real feedback from real customers, it's free, it's quick, it's easy. Just gotta be patient, upload, talk to people at the end of it. Hey, sorry, trailer's not available, it's booked out, sorry. Keep notes of it at the end of the month or at the end of your test period, whatever that is, you see that there's real demand for this thing, people were actually about to rent this thing, you know, you weed out the tire kicker as best you can. I know it's hard to tell because a lot of people act interested and then they're not. But you know, it'll give you a good indication as to whether or not the area needs it. And I just I recommend people do that. Um, and uh anyway, so I'm gonna get on a soapbox if I keep going about that, about how it yeah, I hate to see in the comments that I saw because it's like how crappy is that? And we see this in other groups too, where 10 people pile on you and just shit on you for no reason. It's like we all started somewhere, you know, and that's been the whole the the greatest thing about trailer hustle as a community is we're not like that. And the people that are like that get the boot. I mean, if you've been around for more than a day, you know that I kick kick people right out. As soon as I see any kind of negativity or no eagerness to help or something like that, that's what this is about. That's what this community is for. So I take it very seriously, and it really, I really didn't like. I did remove a couple of the comments that were just pointless um and gave those people uh warnings. Um, but uh anyway, regardless of that, um, I think it's uh I think it's a good thing to test your market that way. If you disagree, fine. Um, but uh that's what I do, that's what works for me, that's what works for a lot of other people. Um there was another comment uh about you know, just buy the trailer, um find them used, buy the trailer. You know, you don't have any depreciation at that point because you didn't buy it new, um, so you don't have that immediate depreciation, so you can sell it for basically what you have in it. Sure, you can do that as well. It just takes longer, you know, it just takes longer to do that. Um, you know, and it's kind of a gamble because you're spending the money and then you got to sell the thing and then you gotta register it, and then you know, so you are still out a little bit of money, but um, it's easier just to test, just to test it the way that I said that's just that's just my recommendation. If you've got the budget for it and you want to just buy trailers just to see if they'll rent, hey, by all means, do it. That just hasn't been my business plan and it hasn't worked for me. That's not, I shouldn't say it hasn't worked for me. That's just not what I've decided to do. It's just that's what seems like a pain in the ass. Um, that's just me. So anyway, that is how I test my market to see if a certain trailer will be a viable rental option in my area. Okay, to make sure that I'm not buying a piece of equipment that's just gonna sit. Okay, all right. I think I've said my piece on that. Um glad to be back, guys. Um, the app is, we've got all kinds of new giveaways that are on the app. Thank you guys so much. We are uh the app is getting a lot of downloads, guys. Uh, so I'm really, really grateful for that. A lot of people are starting to post more about it in the trailer hustle group as well. Um, there's a couple of influencers that uh not influencers, but people that make content that happen to shout it out. That was really cool. Um, so hopefully we'll get some more of that going. But more importantly than any of that, is we are finding that people are locating each other more easily. Every day you see in the group, hey, anybody located in St. Louis? Anybody located in such and such, whatever. Open up the app. Boom. Chances are there's somebody nearby. We're approaching a thousand users on the app, and the thing's been relaunched for like, what, a month? That's pretty cool. All right. That's that's very, very, very exciting. Um, we do have we do have a uh a pretty cool sponsor that's coming in to do some pretty cool giveaways. So you guys are gonna have to be on the lookout for this. We're gonna run a giveaway just in the group, not in the app first, all right, which is going to be a bulletproof hitch. Okay, so the hitch is on the way to me. Once it gets to me, I'll take some pictures and all that, do the official announcement. And it'll be one of those typical things where you go to their Facebook page, like, follow, come back to the original post, click done, you know, or comment done in order to um to enter that giveaway. And that's just gonna be kind of an introduction for these guys. And they are uh the trailer spot. The trailer spot's a dealership um that's located in Virginia. Um, so really, I mean, really, really great guy um talking to them. But they are uh at 10875 Wards Road in Rustburg, Virginia, 24588. And uh they carry some pretty great brands. So I would highly recommend checking those guys out. Um, let's see here. Uh they sell down to earth, iron bull, caliber, rock solid cargo, next haul. Um, so they've got some they've got some good stuff. And uh the cool thing is they they have had people from the community come into their dealership saying, yeah, you know, we're part of the trail coastal community. I think I've seen you guys in there and whatever. So that's really cool. That's what this whole thing's all about. And uh they're gonna be giving away a hitch just as a thank you. Hello, we're here, and I'm pretty sure we will have something more substantial coming from those guys as a giveaway in the app. More to come on that. I don't want to give away anything too uh too much just yet because we haven't gotten all the details hammered down, but that's gonna be really cool. Um, thank you so much to the trailer spot um out of Virginia. Thank you guys so much. Um, I'm gonna put a link to their website down below as well so you guys can check them out. If you're in the area, it's worth a drive. Um, but we also got a handful of other um things that we added. We added um more of like the stake pocket D rings, the battery trickle charger, the solar trickle charger and maintainer. Um the straps giveaway is happening. This uh actually is happening tomorrow from Big Rentals. So be sure to enter that today um in the app, as well as the Ride Dog GPS giveaway that happens every month as well. That's coming in a couple of weeks or in a week or so. So be sure to get in on these all these things, guys. It's a lot of uh money worth of stuff. We've given given away over $10,000 worth of product so far between myself, the things that I buy, and the things that I I do and the sponsors and the things that they kick in, um, whether it be trailers, I mean all these things. So it's it's pretty cool. And we're gonna more than double that in the next uh few months, just so you guys know. There's gonna be a few more giveaways happening very soon. Um, now that being said, with the app, guys, if you are on the app and you experience any problems whatsoever, please reach out to me. Okay, you can post up in the group, that's fine. I'm gonna see it. I'm gonna reach out to you, but reach out to me. Um, you can email support at trailerhustle.com or you can just message me, Justin Martin, on Facebook or message the Trailer Hustle um account on Facebook. And um, I want to know what it is because if it's a problem you have, somebody else probably has the problem as well. And I want to get them fixed. I want to fix all these bugs. And I think I think we've we've gotten like 99.999% of them. You guys, you guys know how it is. I mean, you have growing pains and everything, especially in setting up a brand new app when I've never built an app before, um, you know, and dealing with a development team and all that stuff. That's all new to me. So thank you guys so much for your constant feedback and your flexibility when things do happen. And like, especially a handful of you guys from like, hey, test this, test this, do this, do that. Tell me what it does. Send me a screenshot. So thank you guys to everybody that's contributed to this. And really everybody has, you know, from something super big to me like putting you through the ringer of test this, test that. Sorry about your luck, whatever, you know, between that stuff, and even just folks that are like commenting in the app, or excuse me, in the group of like, you know, hey, it'd be cool if it had this, or hey, this is a problem that I have, and what can it solve that? I've got a list of features this thing's gonna be jam-packed with over the next um by the end of the year, there's gonna be a lot of really cool stuff happening. Um, so there's there's a lot happening with it. It's really cool, but I'm doing it in uh now that I've got the app pretty much stabilized, I'm gonna be cleaning up a lot of the back end stuff so that way the future growth will be much smoother. I don't want there to be a new set of bugs every time we we launch something new. So um I'm trying to organize this and manage this thing the best way that I can. Thank you guys so much for your continued patience and your contributions to this thing. It really does mean the world to me, seriously. And I hope that you guys decide to join it. It is free. Okay, you can get on the app for free. Yes, we have two other tiers. The the non-free tier is Hustle Light. Hustle Light gives you the access to the giveaways, gives you access to maintenance logs, uh, all electronic, gives you access to documentation uploads as well, um, and a couple other small things. And then when you go to Pro, Pro is going to give you a nicer looking pin. Yay, so does the the light, but pro it shows you as like a featured pin. You show up as a featured member, you can showcase products, you can showcase services, discount codes, additional locations, um, all kinds of stuff like that. Um, there's a few other little perks as well. Um, and you can sponsor giveaways if you guys want to. So if you're a dealer, manufacturer, parts company, whomever, whatever your company is, and you're wanting to get involved more with trailer hustle, you know, be sure to uh join as a pro member and uh showcase your stuff to everybody, guys. Um it's it's pretty cool. Oh, and then the other thing with light is you don't have the banner ad at the bottom anymore. Um so there's a few advantages to bumping up to that. And mind you guys, the giveaways and um the trailer hustle picnics and all the things like that, all that stuff is financed through the app and through these things that we do and through the contracts we sell at trailerhustle.com. So thank you guys again for your continued support because it's it's been really, really great. Um, it's been a lot of work, but it's gonna be worth it. It is worth it. And uh just just happy that you guys are here. Now on trailerhustle.com, as you guys know, we offer trailer rental contracts. We offer dump trailer, like stationary dump trailer rental contracts. We also offer, like the templates for them, we offer maintenance log along with suggested like uh maintenance schedules and all that. We also offer um the pre-rental checklist template. I'm going to be adding a few documents. We are going to have an equipment rental contract. Okay, so those of you that are renting out equipment or want to rent out pressure washers or want to rent out whatever, this contract will be more suited and tailored to you. Um, I have had my attorney draft all that up. Um, these are templates, of course, so you can modify everything in any PDF editing software. Um, and that way you can put your own company information, your own state that is like the you know, the governing law, all that kind of stuff. You have to put your own state. Um and any provisions that you want to add. If something's more important to you than something else, you can add whatever you want into these contracts. But this is a great starting uh starting point. Of course, it's always good to have a contract for your state specifically, but this is gonna save you a ton of time and a ton of money, starting off with a solid template, a great starting point. And paying for doc review from an attorney is way cheaper, trust me, I know, because I'm doing it right now, than having an attorney actually draft up. Up a contract for you. So these are templates that you guys can use for your business. You just kind of tailor them and customize them to your business. So that'll be available probably in the next few days. Um we're also gonna be doing a lease-to-own contract. So if you have trailers that you want to sell to a customer, you want to set up on a lease to own. I'm doing that myself right now with a customer. I've got a uh template for that drawn up, that'll be available as well. Um, so that way you can uh get into that with your customers and it'll cover all the all the things you need it to cover. And then we're also gonna be adding a junk removal contract. So um shout out to the handful of guys that have reached out to me about that um and the two a handful of my mentors in the junk removal space because I'm not in the junk removal space. However, I network with a ton of people that are, and uh, I'm learning as much as I possibly can about it, um, just like I hope you guys are too, before you dive into anything. And um, so we'll have that contract coming soon. We're also going to have, and this is one that a lot of people have asked for, um, not more than the equipment rental contract, but a lot of people have asked for this, is a an entity-to-entity lease form. So for the guys that want to have their one LLC own the trailers and lease them monthly to the rental company LLC, this contract will be for that. So that way, if you want that extra layer of protection, the rental company technically doesn't own any assets. So if you get sued or something, there's there's guys that do that. I personally don't do it, but there's a lot of guys that do that. I do understand it for sure. Um, but this contract will be a good sample you can use to set that up. Um so I'm excited to get all these added to the website. Um, it's been uh it's been very, very cool seeing the the growth of trailer hustle, not just as uh a Facebook group and the app and all that, but just in everything, you know, the stuff that we're doing with this podcast, you know, this thing came about just a few months ago, and it's been very well received. And I'm very grateful for you guys for checking out the content and giving me inspiration and giving me ideas of things to cover, and uh, we're gonna keep it up. Um, if you guys have any ideas or anything, drop a comment below. Please like, comment, subscribe, all that kind of stuff. And uh, yeah, do all the things you're supposed to say. What are you supposed to say as a uh a content creator? Like, be sure to like, comment, subscribe. Anyway, do all those things, guys. I really appreciate y'all being here. I will see you guys next time. This is the trailer owners network. This is y'all's network. I am glad that you're here. This is built for you guys. I hope that I am helping you with this this content me blabbering. Um, you wouldn't be here unless you found it helpful, hopefully, unless you just like making fun of me. In which case, drop a like. You know, drop a like. Comment. I just like making fun of you. You know, that'll let me know who made it at the end of this video. Drop a drop a comment that says we just like making fun of you. That'd be really good for my ego. Anyway, you guys have an amazing day. This is the Trailer Owners Network. I will see you guys on the next one.