LPG Conversion

I’ve been looking for ways to control or reduce my costs. As a driving instructor there are only a few things that you can do to achieve this.

1. Find a cheaper franchise to work for or set up on your own. 
2. Increase your prices for driving lessons, which is not that easy when most of the competitors are keeping prices down.  
3. Cut down on the actual miles you do a day, which does not work for me as I like to give my pupils a good drive on their driving lessons.

This is what made me look at the cost of getting my car converted to dual fuel.  I was surprised that I had no cost increase on my insurance which I have to say was a welcome change.  I then started to look for places to get it converted and the cost.  I spoke to a friend who had had his car done at a garage near Arundel, he was very happy with it and so I gave them a call.  The cost with VAT was £1500 which seemed ok but when they said the needed the car for four days to do the LPG conversion it made me pause.  Four days of lost income adds a lot to the cost from my point of view.  I was speaking to another driving instructor that had been thinking alone the same lines as myself and he had found a garage much closer to Portsmouth (my base) which were charging him £1800 but still wanted the car for four day.

I carried on my hunt and found on Google a company in South Wales called Profess Autogas that only do LPG Conversions.  They also do the conversion in one day, you have to get the car to them for 8am and the aim to hand it back by 7pm.  The cost for this service? My car is a four cylinder so the cost was a staggeringly reasonable £850.  For me that was a no brainer, petrol had gone up another 5p while I had been thinking about the conversion.  They were great on the phone, took a £100 deposit and it was all arranged.  I drove up the night before, stayed in a Travelodge and they get me a courtesy car for the day. Simple and straight forward.

Because of the mileage I do I will have repaid/saved the cost of the conversion within four months.  LPG is at the day of writing this 78p rather than 132.9p for unleaded.  And that’s before we even think of the benefits of my carbon foot print. 

Independent driving in the test

How does the industry work

So if we start at the begining. Every driving instructor is a self employed business person, they work for themseleves even if they work for BSM or the AA and in most cases they pay a franchise fee to the school that they work for.

All driving instructors have to be registered with the Driving Standards Agency (www.dsa.gov.uk) and have to have a police check before they can be entered onto the register of approved driving instructors. There are three exams to take before you are a full qualifed driving instructor or ADI (approved driving instructor).

Part One is the theory test, part two is the driving test where you must have less than six minor points, you also get to do all of the manouvers and the test is a full hour. Part Three is a test in your teaching ability and is a role playing exercise.

When your training and once you have passed your part two exam you have to then do 40 hours of training for your part three and after that you can go onto a training licence or pink licence to get experiance with real leaner drivers.

Once you have either qualified or go onto the training licence you need to find a driving school to work for. Some very important questions to ask when thinking about a driving school to work for are:-

1. Do they have a staggered start up.

2. How many weeks franishise free weeks do I get a year.

3. How much is their franchise?

4. How much notice do I have to give if I wanted to leave?

5. What sort of contract do they want me to sign? (Watch out for lengthy franchise agreements, if your being asked to sign something large ask yourself what are they hiding inside the contract).

6. What other training do you get offered in your franchise? Check test training? Part three training?

Hope you find these points helpful, if you can think of any more than please let me know.

This Blog thing

Thought it was time to try something new. Had thought about blogs but was not sure if they were for me. But it seem's like a good time to try. Let me introduce myself, I'm Phillip one of the directors of a driving school called Alert Driver Training ltd or www.HighAlert.co.uk . I intend to use this blog to talk about the driving school and other related topics.