Any tips for drilling out a vault door lock ?

Hi

Bill in Tulsa here i wish I could say things are fine. However between repeated vandalism, all summer long street construction, and as always something happens. I have really developed a bad feeling for the Car Wash business. If things don't get better I may have to close soon.

I am looking into selling and I hope to fine out my land is worth a little more than the business. Maybe I can sell the land Norris Streetman who is right here in Tulsa says it will be hard to sell it as a wash.

Anyways enough bellyaching I have a bay medeco vault lock some one dug out a bit with a screw driver. I have tried a few metal bits to drill it out but most seem to snap or you can't seem to get a bite to start it. Have drilled out coin box locks, abus padlocks but this seems tuff any suggestions would be appreciated. If I was making any money I would call the locksmith for $100 but can't do that unless no other choice.

I do hope that life is treating all of you well.

Thanks,

Bill in Tulsa

Hopefully anyone else who replies with a solution will do it in a private message like I did.

This happened to me two years ago. I will send a private e-mail to you to tell you what the locksmith did.

Take care.

Joe

Bill,
The self serve business can be a little rough at times depending upon what kind of competition you have, your pricing, how your place it maintained, etc. I had a self serve in a remote location, very low traffic count, in the middle of a stretch of woods and did $85K gross (eight bays) while a much better/newer self serve with double my traffic count do $28K gross. Naturally he went out of business.
- Be sure that your place is well maintained. Any graffiti must be removed ASAP. Monkey see - monkey do.
- If something isn't working, then put a sign on it "out of order". Most vandilism occurs because something did not work and the customer lost money.
- Do you have good lighting in your bays.
- It has to look like people would want to come there.
- Give alot of soap that cleans.
- Visit the wash twice daily. Morning and evening. Spend your saturday's there. Offer free air freshener from a spray bottle. Converse with your customers.
- Be sure your vacuums suck and not just make noise. Change the bags or add another motor if necessary.
- Customer pay attention to your start up price more than the time.
- My price is $1.25/3 min.for the bays and $1.00/3 min. for my vacs. What is yours ?
- Your customer is smarter than you think. They want what they pay for. Don't ever try to outsmart the customer on quality, time and money.

Now this is an important one:
Put up two fake cameras - one in the front of the wash and one in back. Post signs in each bay next to the coin box and next to the change machine that the property is under 24 survellience. I have an 1-1/2 gal. pipe (two 10 ft sections put together with a coupling). The camera then is 20 ft up
The coupling makes it easy to mount the camera on the end of pipe - them put the sections together. I have real cameras now, but for 7 years I only had the fake ones.
This will cut the vandalisn down alot.

The above items are good basics.

Now the big question is:
Do you like this business ? Once you have answered this to yourself then you will know what to do.

Good luck.

Joe