Mobile service is becoming a bigger part of how dealers compete for loyal, long-term customers, and the technology behind it can matter as much as the vans and techs themselves. To help dealers run those operations more efficiently and profitably, Curbee has built software that handles route optimization, load planning and real-time appointment tracking. One of its clients, Bozard Ford Lincoln in St. Augustine, Florida, saw appointment volume climb more than 20% in the first month after making the switch to Curbee.
Joining us on this episode of Inside Automotive are Amit Chandarana, CEO of Curbee, and Ed Roberts, COO and General Manager of Bozard Ford Lincoln. Chandarana says the partnership comes down to helping dealers get more out of every mobile unit on the road.
The Curbee effect
Bozard Ford Lincoln didn’t switch platforms because its mobile service operation was struggling. Roberts said the dealership switched because the operation was working so well that the shortfalls were starting to cost money.
The dealership built its mobile program on spreadsheets in the early days, and while an earlier provider helped raise the operation’s overall level, it still wasn’t giving Bozard Ford Lincoln the data it needed to run efficiently. Every minute a technician spends driving between appointments is time the dealership can’t bill a customer for, and cutting that “windshield time” became the driving factor behind the search for new technology.
"We can't charge customers for windshield time. So we have to minimize that windshield time as much as possible." — Ed Roberts
Bozard Ford Lincoln was already considered one of the top mobile service operations in the country when it made the switch, which made the decision harder than it might look from the outside, Chandarana said.
Curbee sends a team to every dealership for an in-person launch, pairing technology setup with hands-on training so staff aren’t left to figure out the new system alone. Bozard Ford Lincoln went live and immediately ran more appointments in a single day than it had typically handled over two to three months on the old system, Roberts said.
The dealership’s appointment count climbed another 25% to 30% in the days after launch as the team learned to let the platform’s routing tools do more of the work, Chandarana added.
Mobile service paying off beyond the service drive
Bozard Ford Lincoln’s mobile technicians handle far more than oil changes and basic maintenance. The dealership avoids opening anything lubricated in the field, including engines and transmissions, but treats most other repairs as fair game, from axle replacements to vehicle reprogramming, Roberts said. Two of the fleet’s vans are dedicated entirely to tires.
"This is kind of the last frontier, to have your vehicle serviced at your home." — Amit Chandarana
Bozard Ford Lincoln has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible outside the shop on purpose, testing limits rather than assuming a job has to come back to the dealership, according to Roberts. The dealership keeps a couple of tow trucks on hand for the rare job that does need to return to the shop, treating those cases as the exception rather than the default.
The payoff extends beyond the service department. Bozard Ford Lincoln’s national sales rank at Ford moved from the mid-80s into the top 10 to 15 range as the mobile operation grew, in a market of roughly 15,000 people, Roberts said. That pattern isn’t unusual among dealers running mobile service well, Chandarana said, since the visibility a mobile unit gets in a neighborhood tends to feed sales as much as it does the service drive.
The new mobile technician pipeline
Bozard Ford Lincoln solved its technician shortage more than a decade before it needed to think about staffing mobile trucks. The dealership launched a technician development program roughly 12 to 15 years ago, and that pipeline has kept the store from facing the recruiting shortfalls many dealers deal with today, Roberts said.
Staffing the mobile fleet specifically required a different approach. Bozard Ford Lincoln looks outside the traditional technician pool entirely, hiring people who already spend their workday driving routes and interacting with customers, including former pool technicians, HVAC technicians and plumbers, according to Roberts.
Those hires already have the customer-facing habits mobile service demands, and Bozard Ford Lincoln trains them on the automotive-specific skills once they’re on staff, Roberts said. The approach has broadened where the dealership can find mobile technicians well beyond the standard applicant pool.
The industry-wide push toward mobile service
Curbee is now in some form of conversation with roughly 14 to 15 of the industry’s 16 to 17 OEMs, according to Chandarana. Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have the most established mobile service programs among them, largely driven by their fleet business, while brands from Toyota to Subaru are also moving into the space.
Independent repair shops are the real competitive pressure behind that shift, Chandarana said, citing roughly 301,000 independents operating nationwide. Curbee’s “The Not-So-Sweet 16” report examines that competitive landscape, including the roughly 16 independent repair shops competing with each U.S. franchised dealership. Dealers who don’t offer mobile service risk losing customers to that convenience, since drivers increasingly expect the same at-home service they get from other industries, he said.
Onboarding a new dealership onto Curbee’s platform typically takes four to six weeks, Chandarana said, with mobile unit costs ranging from around $20,000 to $85,000 depending on how the vehicle is outfitted. The software portion of setup takes only a couple of weeks, with most of the timeline driven by ingesting and optimizing a dealership’s data, he said.
Start with your customers
Chandarana’s main argument to any dealer uncertain about investing in mobile service is straightforward: ask the customers. Many customers expect this convenience and often are surprised when a dealership doesn’t provide it, he explained.
A mobile service vehicle can provide approximately the same capacity as two and a half service bays, but at a lower cost and shorter timeline compared to expanding a shop, Chandarana explained. Dealers considering this investment should evaluate it in terms of customer retention and shop efficiency, rather than as an isolated expense.
Both Chandarana and Roberts pointed to a phased rollout as the lowest-risk path in. Dealers with multiple stores often test the model at one or two locations first, matched to the service managers with the bandwidth and interest to make it work, before expanding fleetwide.
