Why this is always a separate line
Night cleaning is production work: a defined route, done once, measurable. A day porter is presence — somebody on site while customers are in the building, handling what happens rather than what was scheduled. Those two things cannot share a price.
Bundle them and one of two things happens. Either the porter hours quietly expand until the contractor is losing money and the service degrades, or they quietly contract until the dealer is wondering where the person went. Neither conversation is pleasant and both are avoidable by writing the hours down.
What a dealership porter actually does
- Restrooms checked and restocked on a stated round, not once a day
- Customer lounge reset — coffee station, tables, magazines, waste
- Entry glass and door touch points through the day
- Showroom floor spot-attended, spills handled immediately
- Service drive kept presentable during peak write-up hours
- Trash from the service department pulled before it overflows
Notice what is not on that list: moving vehicles, washing cars, running errands, covering the switchboard. A porter who does those is a dealership employee with a different job title, and conflating the two creates an employment question neither of us wants.
How it is priced
Hours per day × days per week × the porter rate. That is the whole calculation, and it is deliberately boring. Porter hours carry a slightly lower effective rate than a production night crew, because the work is lighter and the equipment burden is smaller.
Four hours a day, five days a week is the most common shape. Eight hours suits a high-traffic store with a busy service drive. Two hours is usually a restroom round and not much else — real, but be honest with yourself about what it buys.
When a store genuinely needs one
A porter earns their cost when the restrooms are the thing customers remember. If your service drive runs thirty or more write-ups a day, if the lounge fills up on Saturdays, or if you have ever had a survey comment about the restrooms, the arithmetic works. If you are a quiet single-point store with light foot traffic, a good night route and an agreed restroom round may do everything you need for less.
We will tell you which we think you are. It is a small contract line either way, and we would rather you kept it than dropped us over it.