AdrianG -
You should look @ what vehicles TelePizza and Dominium are running. Are they using company owned vehicles or are they using driver owned ? What are others doing in Lodi and why? And most importantly, what is your goal in getting into delivery? Do you want your sales mix to be predominantly delivery or is delivery for you the occasional order?
If you want to become a delivery company and are just starting out in deliver or just want to start testing the delivery option I wouldn’t recommend investing in co. owned vehicles. The hassle factor of getting & maintaining the vehicle (not to mention a new level of angst “Where’s the car?” “Is the driver stealing gas?” etc) is more expensive then just paying a driver for the use of his car. Once you’ve established yourself as delivery oriented company, then invest in the cost / maintenance / supervision of a vehicle. You also need to make a plan B when the vehicle(s) are in the shop. You’ll probably find that your employee mix will be X% drivers with company owned vehicles and Y% with driver-owned vehicles.
If on the other hand, you just want to add delivery to your already established (and bustling sit-down) then adding a cheap co. car (to replace the Ford) is the way to go. Just remember that if the car is used only for occasional deliveries then it is actually very expensive. Also, if you are going to get a company owned car, please make sure that you assign a specific person to the car. In my experience, wear-&-tear on a car is proportional to the number of people allowed to use the car.
Jerry
