Starting a banner tow company

wayway8

wayway8

Well-Known Member
Just fantasizing in my head. How much do you think it would cost to start a banner tow company from scratch? Including not having the plane yet.
 
at least 100,000. Plane maybe 25k-30k. Insurance 5k a year. Hangar to store airplane and equipment another 30k. Probally 5k at least in equipment. Figure oh 4k a year for maintence including annual. Then there will be extra cost. Advertising, busniess lincese, I would imagine you have to hava a operators license from the faa. Its not cheap that for sure.
 
Inverted25 said:
at least 100,000. Plane maybe 25k-30k. Insurance 5k a year. Hangar to store airplane and equipment another 30k. Probally 5k at least in equipment. Figure oh 4k a year for maintence including annual. Then there will be extra cost. Advertising, busniess lincese, I would imagine you have to hava a operators license from the faa. Its not cheap that for sure.
Click to expand...
I think your numbers are close but a little light in some areas and heavy in others. If you're going to make a go of it, you're going to need more plane than $30k will buy you unless you're extremely lucky. However you won't need a hangar. Nice to have, but not required. The plane can sit outside and one $2k 48' container will hold all your equipment. Allowing $4k for mx including annual on a banner plane is a fantasy at best unless you hold an A&P cert and can do nearly everything yourself.

I think the tough part to starting a banner business is getting those first sales. Especially if you're in a market where there isn't anyone currently flying. Its a tough to sell to get local business' to spend money on flying advertising if none of their competition is already doing it.
 
Those numbers were a rough estimate based off a guy a know who started his own single pilot operation in a old beat up J3 a few years ago. He started out thinking it would be fairly cheap since he already owned the airplane. He soon learned how damn expense that banner equipment was and how hard it was to find new clients in a area that no one towed banners. Hes still trying though. I just saw him the other day flying a banner advertising his own banner tow busniess. Thats the only banner I ever seen him fly though lol.
 
From my unexperienced view the only people who make money in aviation are the aircraft management companies and there are a ton of those out there!

and Richard Branson, Vijay Mallya, and Tony Fernandes. :D
 
If you need an employee, I'd work in exchange for a negotiable amount of time in the airplane :)
 
Please don't yourself to get time.

Secondly, call Van Wagnor, or the many other operators who tow and ask.

Good luck.
 
cmill said:
that was the wrong thing to say.
Click to expand...

I was half joking and I'm a college student just trying to afford to get a PPL... everyone put your weapons away.

And there my friends is why pilots work for $20,000 a year.
Click to expand...

Maybe if I had a commercial certificate and I was talking about flying a banner in return for time in the airplane, this would be true. Because I don't even have a PPL and I'm not talking about flying in return for free flying, you guys need to chill out.
 
Inverted25 said:
He soon learned how damn expense that banner equipment was and how hard it was to find new clients in a area that no one towed banners. Hes still trying though. I just saw him the other day flying a banner advertising his own banner tow busniess. Thats the only banner I ever seen him fly though lol.
Click to expand...
Oye that's rough. I always hate to see that happen. One of the tricks I've seen guys do is to identify which local business' are in tight competition with one another and do advertising of some sort. Car dealers, bars, restaurants, that sort of thing. Then you approach one of them and get them under contract to fly at way under your cost. Make it so cheap they can't say no. Once you're flying and they're getting results, you go to their competition and sell them a full rate contract to fly 'because the other guy is flying'. Its a risky way to get started but I've seen it work.

His bigger problem is going to be that cub. Cubs are decent towing platforms but letter banners and small panels are the most they can handle. They just don't have what it takes to fly the bigger, heavier stuff. And if you can't fly big stuff, you're going to lose sales.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top