My road to becoming a driving instructor

Soldato
Joined
18 Aug 2011
Posts
2,845
Location
Norfolk
I assume the money would be something like:

charge £25 per hour


less fuel

less insurance (must be fairly high compared to standard insurance?)

less car tax

less depreciation (which on a brand new car costing £10k+ will be fairly high with the amount of miles - 2k a year?)

less servicing (ignore if buying brand new)

less unexpected car problems (ignore if buying brand new) - but means you can't work if it's getting fixed

less maintenance - brakes/tyres etc

no paid holiday

probably having to work odd hours to fit around people's work/school

At the end of all of that it must be paying £10-£15 max per hour based on charging £25 per hour?

Probably be better off becoming an HGV driver.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 May 2007
Posts
9,347
Location
West Midlands
I think a lot of local instructors to me are ex coppers already retired (thus good pension at around age 55), also it suits people with outside interests like Op and my gfs instructor uses it to fit around the kids.

Anyways good luck to you OP
 
Associate
Joined
25 Feb 2019
Posts
3
11 years later, how are things going? Are you still a driving instructor?
I've just read the whole thread and would be interested in finding out how things are going now?
Is it financially viable?
Do you still enjoy it?
What are the pros and cons?

Many thanks :cool:
 
Associate
Joined
22 Mar 2012
Posts
1,635
11 years later, how are things going? Are you still a driving instructor?
I've just read the whole thread and would be interested in finding out how things are going now?
Is it financially viable?
Do you still enjoy it?
What are the pros and cons?

Many thanks :cool:
It's financially viable although I wouldn't say the money is amazing. My brother in law does it but he puts in long hours for 6 days per week to make it work. He said if he was to do it again he'd learn from a local company rather than go down the Red driving school route because the cost outweighs the benifits.
 
Associate
Joined
25 Feb 2019
Posts
3
It's financially viable although I wouldn't say the money is amazing. My brother in law does it but he puts in long hours for 6 days per week to make it work. He said if he was to do it again he'd learn from a local company rather than go down the Red driving school route because the cost outweighs the benifits.
So would you say that any other school is better than Red? I was looking at My Four Wheels as there is a guaranteed income. Still unsure about the actual job though.
Has anyone on here done any instructor jobs yet?
 
Associate
Joined
22 Mar 2012
Posts
1,635
So would you say that any other school is better than Red? I was looking at My Four Wheels as there is a guaranteed income. Still unsure about the actual job though.
Has anyone on here done any instructor jobs yet?
Not so much better, but cheaper. You should call around the local places finding out what they offer and how much they charge for it. For example, red set you up with some students from the start but some local companies offer the same service too.

As far as advertising goes don't bother with any sign writing on the side of the car or putting ads in local chip shops / hair dressers. He gets the vast majority of his students from Facebook and Google sending them to his own website or just people recommending him.

I can't really tell you much about the job since I don't do it myself. I think while most students are fine, you do have a few who will continually try to murder you from what he's told me, so you need to be on the ball at all times to save the situation. These sort of people are more rare though so i wouldn't be to stressed about them. He does do admin work every night when he gets home to keep track of progress, so it's not just do your job and watch TV. I think he does enjoy it though. He charges the highest fees in his area while being extremely busy ( usually booked up for a month or two in advance) so he must do something right. He also has one driver under him who he shares his "extra" workload with which probably helps with income.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
27 Nov 2002
Posts
3,107
Short version: I'm no longer instructing.

Longer version:

I really enjoyed my time as an instructor and did it part time, building up gradually for about 3 years. I liked the work, got a good sense of satisfaction from helping people gain skills and pass. I enjoyed being my own boss, designing and running my own syllabus and pottering about in the car for my working day. My frustrations were:

- Odd and disconnected hours. I found it difficult to string a working day together. One lesson 9am, someone else at 1pm, 3pm, and then 7pm for example. No real time to do anything in between, but everyone wants their lessons at times to suit them.

- Customers. Always, and I mean *always* cancelling/rearranging their lessons. You're deali with teenagers a good portion of the time who are disorganised and generally hopeless. "I forgot", "my phone run out of battery so I couldn't call last night", "I got drunk at my mate's last night and mum think is I shouldn't drive this morning". Cancellation fees are well and good, but get too draconian and they'll go elsewhere. Also, driving instruction is an odd world. If you're good, you lose your customers as quickly as possible... I had a few real battles with parents who just wanted their precious to take their test well before they were safe and ready.

- Pricing. This was a real difficulty for me. It cost me about £8 an hour to run my car when counting fuel, tax, servicing, instructor licence costs etc etc all averaged over the year. There seem to be two brackets of instructors - the long standing 20+ year guys charging (at the time) £24-£25 an hour, and the various newbies on the "5 lessons for £55" type deals - or £3 an hour for the instructor. I tried to go in the middle. £23 an hour, and a bit of a discount if bulk buying. I lost count of people - even friends of the family, local people around the village I've known for years since they were toddlers, whose parents would enquire, suck their teeth, and then I'd see their kid driving round in a franchised car a few weeks later. The same people who quite happily use the local £40 an hour dog walker won't pay £23 an hour for driving tuition... Quite often though, they would get sick and tired of being parked up by the side of the road the whole time in their cheap lessons (instructor's got to save money on fuel somehow I guess?), come to me for a change, find it a revelation to actually do some driving in a driving lesson, really enjoy themselves and make progress. I think there's a constant recycling of these "deal" type instructors who come in on the "£30k" promise, run ludicrous pricing deals, work 7 day solid weeks to try and make ends meet and give up a year or two later...

- The franchise model. BSM or AA charge an absolute fortune. I think BSM were about £230 A WEEK. So your first £920 a month that your earning (a good portion of that through your £11 an hour deal lessons) goes on your franchise fee before you earn a single penny to pay yourself... Self employed for me was the only way to go (despite an offer from my instructor trainer to join his local franchise and expand into a new town for him).

Ultimately, I brought my instructing up from a beginning of nothing to a good 3 day week part time job, alongside some other music teaching. I was then offered one day a week work in a local school teaching their music technology lessons, which is also right up my street. After a term, they asked me to interview for a full time paid teaching post. I decided, as I was trying to save for a house, that a full time, well(ish) paid teaching post beat continuing down the instructing route, so I reluctantly didn't renew my licence.

Any more questions, please ask. I did enjoy it, but ultimately the process of slowly building a business - which was definitely going pretty well - at a time when I was approaching 30, met a girlfriend (now my wife) and was looking to buy a house didn't really make sense. I never got to he point where I could ditch all my other work and go full time driving, and without going full time driving, I couldn't have a completely available diary to fit in all the students on all days of the week.

Anyway, school budgets collapsed, music technology became superfluous to requirements and I'm now a cop! Blue light course soon ;)
 
Associate
Joined
5 Sep 2017
Posts
18
An old thread but I've recently joined RED as a PDI.

I recently passed my Part 2 practical and have just started my Part 3 Training.

I have chosen the full Franchise route (which provides a branded car and covers all its expenses other than fuel), which is around £210 a week. Local lessons near me are charged at around £37 an hour (RED only sell blocks of 2 hour lessons) and have been told that if I deliver at least 7 lessons in a week (so less than 2 a day in a 6 day week - which is more than do-able), it will cover all the costs (franchise, %age of prepayed lessons, fuel, etc.

I have a long way to go yet - I'm only on Unit 1 of 12 so far and is spread over 3 months of training. My Franchise isn't due to start until later this year, at which point I will have my pink licence and will then have 6 months of teaching and earning with the view of taking the Part 3 test and earning the full ADI badge.

:)
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
27 Nov 2002
Posts
3,107
Hi timbob, with so much backlog of people wanting lessons did you ever consider re-applying for your ADI licence?

As the necro thread has just been re-necro’d again…

Short version: no, I didn’t!

Long version: I’m still a cop, and I’m just about to hit the top wage bracket. My teaching and instruction experience proved the key factor which landed me a job in the training department working with student officers who’ve fallen a bit behind for one reason or another during their probation period as a sort of coach/mentor. And I still enjoy nee-nor-ing my diesel family estate panda car round corners on its door handles to take my students to jobs!
 
Associate
Joined
5 Sep 2017
Posts
18
An old thread but I've recently joined RED as a PDI.

I recently passed my Part 2 practical and have just started my Part 3 Training.

I have chosen the full Franchise route (which provides a branded car and covers all its expenses other than fuel), which is around £210 a week. Local lessons near me are charged at around £37 an hour (RED only sell blocks of 2 hour lessons) and have been told that if I deliver at least 7 lessons in a week (so less than 2 a day in a 6 day week - which is more than do-able), it will cover all the costs (franchise, %age of prepayed lessons, fuel, etc.

I have a long way to go yet - I'm only on Unit 1 of 12 so far and is spread over 3 months of training. My Franchise isn't due to start until later this year, at which point I will have my pink licence and will then have 6 months of teaching and earning with the view of taking the Part 3 test and earning the full ADI badge.

:)

Still been on this - up to Unit 8 now next week, with Franchise commencing 2nd Oct.

:)
 
Back
Top Bottom