Running a driving school, or even simply working for yourself as a driving instructor, can have many costly associated overheads. From sourcing the right car to finding driving school insurance that suits your specific needs, there will be many costs you have to weather before you even look at attracting students.
Once marketing and petrol are taken into account, it can seem very hard for smaller companies to be competitive against the larger and more established names, and therefore looking at ways to reduce overheads, and in turn offer a far better deal to students, is likely to be extremely important.
However, there are many things that can be done. Not only will fuel cards help your drivers reduce the cost of fuel (something more important than ever with fuel costs now rising so high), but even simply looking around for the right driving instructor insurance could save you a huge amount of money.
Whilst you may well be able to get driving instructor insurance through ordinary insurers, you are likely to find a much better deal and a policy that more effectively suits your own personal needs by visiting a company that specialises strictly in driving school insurance.
Once you have your insurance sorted, decide if you can use your own car for teaching students. If you can, you could potentially save a huge amount of money in the long run, and it is wise to remember that you do not have to completely re-spray your car with information or add unnecessary decals. Instead, a simple removable board above the car will often be more than enough to let people recognise your name as well as ensuring that everyone around will be aware that a learner is behind the wheel.
Finally, consider whether you need physical offices or not – by having each instructor working from home, you can very quickly reduce the costs of running your school very significantly indeed.