Auto & vehicle
Funding for mobile mechanics
The calls come in faster than one van can take them, and half the money still lands in the same account as your mortgage. The work is not the problem — the record of it is.
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How a funding partner reads your business
Much of what a partner reads is in your bank statements, and it comes down to three questions. Everything below is me walking you through your own answers, so nothing in your statements surprises you later.
When does the money come in?
Job days, invoice terms, or a slow drip all month. The pattern matters more than the total.
How steady is it?
One great month doesn’t tell anyone what a normal month looks like.
What was each deposit for?
If a reader can’t tell, they assume the worst. A sentence of explanation fixes it.
The record before the money
Everything about this trade reads well to a funding partner except the record of it. Paid at the vehicle, mostly by a card link or a tap on your phone. No rent, no bay, no utilities. The constraint is hours in the day. The characteristic failure is a real business with a personal-account record, and a partner cannot see a business that has no separate record.
Four things make a one-van file readable, and none of them costs much.
- A business bank account, with the work actually running through it. Opened under an EIN, in the business's name. The number is free from the IRS and takes one sitting; the bank asks for it; and the account is what starts the clock on a statement history anyone can read. The EIN guide is the same-afternoon list. Eight months of card payments into personal checking is not eight months of history. The history starts the day the account opens.
- Invoices in the business's name. Whatever app you invoice from, its export is the cheapest underwriting document you will ever produce: a job, a customer, a date, an amount, and a deposit that matches. In your own name, invoices prove you did the work. In the business's name, they prove the business did.
- Card or app, not cash. As far as a statement is concerned, a cash job with no invoice trail did not happen. Some invoicing vendors suggest taking a parts deposit on bigger tickets; however you handle it, the payment should land in the account with an invoice behind it.
- The platform payout, explained. If some of the work comes through a marketplace, the deposit is smaller than the invoice and lands on the platform's cycle rather than the job's. Say so up front; the section below is how.
Do those four for three months and you have a file. Skip them and there is nothing for anyone to read, however good the work is.
Two lines of credit you already have, and why they do not help the file
Most mechanics are already borrowing, twice, before they ask anyone for money.
The first line is the tool truck. Snap-on runs an informal weekly account on the truck and a formal extended-credit program behind it (Toolguyd on Snap-on's two tiers, 2026-09-24). Mac Credit is an open line for purchases over $300, paid to the distributor who visits each week, provided through Midland States Bank (mactools.com, 2026-09-24). The other trucks run their own versions. All of it is underwritten on you, the technician, and paid to a dealer who visits a shop. The second line is the van loan, underwritten on the vehicle as collateral, by a dealer, a credit union or the truck maker's own finance arm.
Neither proves the business exists apart from you, which is the one thing a partner reading a one-van file is trying to see. A weekly truck payment leaving a personal account tells a reader "technician". A business account with invoices behind the deposits tells a reader "business". Keep the tool account current. It just is not the record.
What a platform payout looks like in your statement
Wrench, which has owned YourMechanic since June 2022 (the acquisition announcement, 2026-09-24), works with mechanics as independent contractors, by its own terms (Wrench's terms, 2026-10-05). The platform's share of the ticket is not published, and how often it pays out is not something we could pin down, so take the two things a statement will show. The deposit is smaller than the invoice, because it is your labour net of the platform's share. And it arrives on the platform's cycle as a lump, not as one settlement per job.
Neither is a problem if it is explained. Keep the platform's statements, state gross and net, and say which deposits are platform work. Ask the platform whether it supplies the parts; if it does, that work carries no parts float, which changes what you are borrowing for. What does look like a problem is a weekly lump with no invoices behind it, from a company whose name is not yours, in an account that is not the business's either. That is three explanations at once, and a file that needs three explanations goes quiet.
The second van, not the first
The honest version of this page is that the money is usually for the second van, not the first. A first van is vehicle finance, priced against the vehicle, at a price neither product here can match, and we do not arrange it. And a first-year file is usually younger than its own bank account, which is what the first section was about.
What a partner can read is the file of an operator whose first van is already full: calls pushed to next week, a route that could be two routes. What that operator is buying is not a van. A second van earns nothing until there is a tech in it, and the tech's first weeks come out of your pocket before the second route pays, so the hire, not the vehicle, is the binding constraint. Around the hire sit the things a vehicle lender will not fund and an advance or a line can: the second set of daily tools, the scan tool and the subscriptions that decide whether a diagnostic call is your job or a referral, and the parts float that keeps same-day same-day. That is why the estimator on this page opens lower than the site's default. The smallest sensible ask, sized against a slow week, is the right one. The advance guide has the arithmetic for testing it, and a line of credit, if it is open to you, is the cheaper shape for a parts float that turns over in weeks.
Three kinds of mobile work, one of them ours
Consumer work, paid at the vehicle on the day, is the trade this page is written for and the steadiest deposit shape in it. Fleet work on net-30 is an invoice you are owed, not a deposit you have; when it is most of the month, the unpaid invoices are a factoring shape, and invoice factoring is the page for it. And a mechanic driving a dealer group's or a chain's mobile van on a wage is an employee, which is a fine job and not a business; this page is not written to him. If your work is the first kind and the record is in place, an advance and a line of credit fit the way the section above describes. Which one fits is our read, not an offer. Partners decide.
How it works
You talk. I work. You choose.
- 1You say
Tell me about the business.
What you do, what you bring in, what you need and when. One short form, about two minutes.
“I need $40,000 for a second truck before spring.”
- 2I do
I take it to funding partners.
I get it in front of partners who work with businesses like yours. I do not underwrite, price or decide.
Your request, told once, to people who can fund it.
- 3You decide
You pick, or you walk away.
Interested partners contact you with their terms, if an offer comes. Compare, pick one, or walk away.
“This one gives me the runway without crushing cash flow.”
The arithmetic
How much are you considering?
Play with the numbers
Pick a shape of money, drag the sliders, and watch the math change.
An advance is priced by a factor rate, not interest. Put in the amount, and the rate if somebody has quoted you one.
The arithmetic
- Advance
- $15,000
- Factor rate
- 1.30
- You remit in total
- $19,500
- Cost of the money
- $4,500
An illustration, not a quote: nobody has offered you these terms. Real terms come from a funding partner and depend on your cash flow, and fees can sit on top of the factor rate.
See my optionsEach one has its own page, with a worked example: all six calculators.
What the money buys
What owners in this trade actually spend it on.
A second van, outfitted
The van is half of it. Racking, a compressor, a jack, a second set of the tools you reach for daily. What it returns is a second route — the jobs you currently push to next week, done this week, by someone who is not you.
A scan tool and the subscriptions behind it
Module programming and OEM software access are what decide whether a diagnostic call is your job or a referral to a shop. The subscriptions renew, so price the year rather than the tool.
A parts float
Starters, alternators, brake sets and batteries fronted before the customer pays means you take the job the same day instead of waiting on a deposit. On mobile work, same-day is most of why the customer called you instead of a shop.
Your own bookings
Booking and dispatch software, a wrap on the van, the local listings that make you findable. Work you source yourself keeps the whole ticket instead of a platform's share of it.
Which one fits
Which financing fits your situation?
I don’t recommend a product without seeing your numbers. Below is how owners in this trade usually think the options through: possibilities to explore, not an offer or a recommendation. Where none of them is the right move, the table says so.
| Your situation | What might be worth exploring, and why |
|---|---|
| The calls are there and you want a second van, but you have been out on your own under a year. | Of the two, an advance is the one underwritten on the sales themselves rather than on trading history — and it is the expensive one. A second van earns nothing until there is a tech in it, so the hire, not the vehicle, is what has to be ready first. |
| Most of your money still lands in a personal account. | Neither, yet. Underwriting reads deposits into the business, and a personal account is the most common reason a file of this size goes quiet. Open a business account under the EIN, run the work through it, then come back. |
| What you actually need is the van itself — a used cargo or service body. | Not the van: a vehicle is collateral, and a dealer, a credit union or an equipment lender will price it as one, usually far below a line or an advance. Ask for equipment financing on the form and the request goes to a partner who does it. Tools, parts stock and the weeks of fuel before the second van fills its book are working capital, and that is my side of it. |
| You have picked up a fleet contract or shop overflow billed net-30, and it is eating your cash. | The unpaid invoices themselves are a factoring shape, and you can ask for factoring on the form. The jobs that pay at the vehicle, card or transfer on the day, are what a partner reads — a line of credit fits the gap when terms work is a slice of the month rather than all of it. |
Which shape fits is my read, not an offer. Partners decide what they will do with a request, and on what terms.
Questions
The ones mobile mechanic owners ask.
Read this before you talk to anyone:
What is the most common reason a mobile mechanic's file stalls?
The money is landing in a personal account. Everything else about this trade reads well — paid at completion, mostly by card, low overhead — but a partner cannot separate the business from the owner if the deposits do not. Opening a business account under an EIN and running the work through it is the single highest-value hour you can spend before asking anyone for money.
Most of my jobs come through a platform. Does that revenue count?
It counts, as long as the payout lands in the business account. What changes is the cadence — a platform pays out on its own cycle, so your deposits are a weekly lump rather than a card settlement per job, and the platform's cut means the deposit is smaller than the invoice. Say so up front, because the gap between what you bill and what lands is otherwise the first thing that looks wrong.
Should I take an advance to buy the second van?
Usually not. A van is a financeable asset on its own, at a price an advance cannot match, and the van is rarely the binding constraint anyway — the tech to drive it is. An advance suits what a vehicle lender will not fund: the tools, the parts float, the first weeks of a second wage.
I do not have an EIN yet. What do I do?
Get one this week, before you fill in anything else. It is free from the IRS and takes one sitting online, and it is what the bank asks for to open the business account whose deposits a partner reads: a file needs a business name, an EIN and an account in that name that agree with each other. The guide walks through it.
I am one van and one tech. Is that too small?
We cannot tell you what any partner will do with a file, so we will not pretend size decides it. What we can say is what makes a one-van file hard to read: a personal bank account, no EIN, invoices in your own name, cash jobs with no record. Those are fixable, and they are worth fixing before you hand your number to anybody.
Does my Snap-on or Matco account count as business credit?
Not in the way you would hope. Tool-truck credit is underwritten on you as a technician and paid weekly to the dealer who visits, so it tells a reader that you buy tools on credit, not that a business exists apart from you. What proves that is the business account, the EIN and invoices in the business's name. Keep the tool account current; it is just not the record.
Get funding options
Tell me about your mobile mechanic business.
About two minutes, and no credit pull from me. Tell me what you do, what you bring in and what the money is for, and I take your request to funding partners. You can strengthen it with a bank connection afterward.
Free to you. Funding partners pay Addy for the introduction.
Addy is not a lender, and does not underwrite, price or decide who gets funded.
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