On-demand auto services proliferate in the Triangle

On-demand auto services are crisscrossing the Triangle.

Whether you’re in need of a mechanic, tires, a car wash or a full tank of gas, there’s a supplier of these services that will drive right to your home, workplace – just about anywhere.

“We’re traveling to homes, offices, the side of the road, schools – anywhere you think, we’re fixing cars,” said Robert Koenekamp, founder and CEO of Proficient Auto, one of several mobile mechanic services operating in the Triangle.

Convenience is a huge selling point for these auto services, which are geared so you can summon them online via a PC or cellphone.

“A lot of the convenience factor goes along with another consumer behavior, which is the impact our smartphones are having on our lives,” said Scot Wingo, executive chairman of Spiffy, a mobile car washing and car detailing service. “What people really like in this convenience sector is the ability to take out their phone and have it be, quote-unquote, a remote control for their life.” Wingo is best-known as co-founder and executive chairman of publicly traded e-commerce technology company ChannelAdvisor.

Taking the easy way was the big attraction for Brooks Raiford when he ordered a new set of tires from Michelin OnSite.

“They came to my office at the appointed time that I picked,” said Raiford, president and CEO of the N.C. Technology Association. “I was able to pay online, and they came here and got my keys. And 90 minutes later I had a new set of tires on our car.”

Raiford relished avoiding his usual tire-buying routines, which he considers a hassle.

“You either have to take time off work or you have to take part of your weekend to do it,” he said.

On-demand auto service companies such as Spiffy, Proficient Auto and Phantom Fueling – which will drive to your car and fill your gas tank – are locally owned and operated. Other services available in the Triangle, such as Michelin OnSite and YourMechanic, another mobile repair service, are the work of national players.

Most are relatively new to the scene. Spiffy launched 12 months ago, which is also when YourMechanic entered the Triangle. Giant tiremaker Michelin launched Michelin Onsite as a pilot program exclusively in the Triangle in August.

“Automotive services are the last to fall into line” when it comes to the burgeoning on-demand economy, said Kevin Doyle, who is leading the Michelin OnSite initiative.

Whether these services are really needed is irrelevant.

“You don’t have to get your pizza delivered, but people like it because it’s convenient,” said John Kitto, founder and owner of Phantom Fueling.

Paying for convenience

Some on-demand auto services are unabashedly priced at a premium.

Michelin OnSite, not wanting to undercut local brick-and-mortar Michelin dealers, monitors dealers’ prices and charges slightly more, Doyle said.

In addition, whereas dealers typically charge $100 to install a set of tires, Michelin OnSite charges $169.

“Someone who values their time is going to pay for the service,” Doyle said.

Raiford, the Michelin OnSite customer, said he priced buying the same tires from the auto dealerships where he and his wife purchased their cars and found OnSite’s price “was a good 10 percent lower.”

“When you add in a discount plus the convenience factor, it was a no-brainer,” Raiford said.

Mobile mechanic services Proficient Auto and YourMechanic contend they charge substantially less than auto dealerships and independent repair shops because they don’t have the overhead that comes with a conventional auto shop. Both services provide quotes for work that you already know you need – such as new brakes or a new battery – or charge a fee to diagnose the problem.

“We believe that convenience delivered at a lower price will always win,” said Art Argawal, co-founder and CEO of YourMechanic. “Uber has clearly shown that.” Based in Silicon Valley, YourMechanic has raised tens of million of dollars from investors and operates in 32 markets.

But the lower prices Argawal talks up aren’t in the offing for low-cost services such as an oil change.

“The mere fact that we have to send someone out who is going to drive to you and do a basic job that takes 20 minutes, we’re not going to really save you money,” Argawal said. “The economics will never win out.”

Proficient has a minimum charge of $75 for service calls.

“We have customers who will pay us $75 to come out and do an oil change – plus the cost of the oil,” Koenekamp, the Proficient Auto CEO, said. “But I don’t like to do oil changes. I don’t want a customer to pay that much when they can go somewhere else and do it for cheaper.”

Business at Spiffy, which offers car washes that start at $19 for a sedan and $29 for an SUV, has been so good that it expanded its service to Charlotte in August. It has designs on moving into other markets as well.

“We have a model that works,” said Spiffy founder and CEO Karl Murphy.

But Spiffy intends to be very deliberate about its expansion.

“There’s already been a couple of high-profile flameouts in the on-demand economy,” said Wingo, referencing the shutdown in July of Homejoy, an on-demand housecleaning company based in San Francisco that raised nearly $40 million in venture capital before going bust.

Early adopters

Phantom Fueling’s roots go back to 2004, when John Kitto was a freshman at Enloe High School working on an entrepreneurship project for a class assignment. He and his dad and a friend, according to Kitto, “came up with the idea, wouldn’t it be cool if someone came through the neighborhood and filled everyone’s (gas tanks) at night?”

Fast forward to 2013, when Kitto graduated from N.C. State University with a physics degree and was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He decided to “run the numbers” on the mobile fill-up concept to see if it could work as a business.

The answer was yes, which led to launching a beta test this summer that is scheduled to conclude Friday and will be followed immediately by the official launch of the service.

Phantom Fueling pegs the price of its gas each day to the previous day’s average price for the area as reported by crowdsourcing site GasBuddy.com.

During its beta test, Phantom isn’t charging a service fee for delivery. But, beginning with the official launch, Phantom Fuel will offer a pay-as-you-go service for $6.49 per fill-up on top of the price of the gas. In addition, said Kitto, he’ll also offer a subscription service that will start at $19.95 per month for unlimited fill-ups.

Phantom customers don’t need to be on hand when the gas is delivered and can schedule fill-ups around-the-clock seven days a week.

“The only thing you have to do is make sure the gas cap is popped ... make sure we have access to your gas tank and at that point you’re done,” Kitto said. “You can be gone, you can be asleep, you can be anywhere. We’ll just bill you automatically and you’ll get a text when it’s done. You’ll also get an email receipt.”

After sampling Phantom Fueling during the beta test, Ryan Johnsen, a 30-year-old enterprise sales executive at ChannelAdvisor, is a fan of the service and plans to continue using it.

“I feel like my generation is pretty quick to accept things like this – the convenience opportunities,” he said. “We’re early adopters with a lot of this stuff.”

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 1:00 PM with the headline "On-demand auto services proliferate in the Triangle."