The honest money

What a ticket looks like

Start with the market's own numbers, not a guru's. Thumbtack's pricing guide puts the national average mobile detail at $144 to $254, with the range driven by vehicle size, condition, package, and location. Their near-me digest quotes a tighter $115 to $215 for typical mobile detailing, and the gap between the two pages is its own lesson: a national number is a shape, not your price. Your town has its own ceiling. You find it by quoting, not by wishing.

A workable starter menu, before you tune it to your market, looks like this. A basic exterior wash and vacuum on a sedan: operators commonly price this somewhere in the $50 to $125 band. A full interior and exterior detail: $150 to $300 is the common range, and that's the job that will dominate your first summer. Premium packages with machine polishing and protection steps run $250 to $550 and up. Ceramic coating, the top of the ladder, is covered later; professional jobs typically run $500 to $2,000 or more, and you should not touch that money until you've earned the skill it buys.

Your supply cost per car is small, often under $10 in chemicals and consumables for a standard detail. That's the number that makes detailing look like pure profit. It isn't, and the next section is why.

The arithmetic that decides whether you eat

Here's a worked week for a solo detailer doing eight full details at a $175 average. Pull up a spreadsheet and rebuild this with your own numbers, because the shape matters more than my inputs.

| Line | Amount | Notes | |---|---|---| | Revenue, 8 details | $1,400 | $175 average ticket | | Supplies | -$80 | roughly $10 per car | | Gas, 8 jobs at 15 miles round trip | -$91 | 120 miles at 76 cents per mile, the IRS business rate for July through December 2026; it ran 72.5 cents through June | | Insurance, one week's share | -$12.50 | Insureon's average for detailing general liability is $54 a month | | Self-employment tax set-aside | -$186 | 15.3% of the $1,216.50 left after the lines above, per the Social Security Administration's self-employment rules | | Left before paying yourself | $1,030 | before phone, booking software, water, replacements |

Two things to notice. First, $1,030 for a week of hard physical work is a good wage, but it is not the fantasy number, and eight booked details a week is not week one. You'll start slower, which is normal. If you're doing severance math on whether detailing covers the gap, run the runway math in months, not weeks, and let the slow start be part of the plan. Second, self-employment tax is not optional or abstract. When you work a W-2 job, your employer pays half of Social Security and Medicare. Self-employed, you pay both halves: 15.3 percent, on top of income tax. Set aside roughly 25 to 30 percent of every payment the day it lands, in a separate account, and quarterly estimated taxes stop being scary.

Where the money actually grows

Nobody gets rich on single details alone. The income curve bends through three mechanisms, and the course treats each one at length later. Repricing your menu upward as reviews accumulate. Selling protection, where a ceramic job can equal a week of washes in one ticket. And recurring maintenance plans, a handful of customers paying monthly, which is the difference between a hustle and a business.

Numbers only describe the destination. To decide whether you can live in this business, you have to see what a real week feels like from the inside, not the highlight reel.