The scheme Queensland drivers meet most often is run by the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR). Approved inspection stations are the only businesses in the state that can issue safety certificates, and each inspection is done by an approved examiner accredited by TMR. A certificate is needed when a registered vehicle passes to a new owner (a sale to a licensed dealer is one of the exemptions), when registration moves to Queensland from another state or territory, and when an unregistered vehicle goes back on the register. Sellers no longer need one before advertising, only before handing the car over. A licensed dealer's certificate is valid for three months or 1,000 km and anyone else's for two months or 2,000 km, and a certificate covers a single transfer. The Queensland Government publishes the inspection fees and indexes them every 1 July, so if your site quotes a safety certificate price, it needs a quick edit each July. Text changes like that are part of the monthly hosting.
Approved inspection stations also issue certificates of inspection, the yearly check for booked hire vehicles, taxis, limousines and other vehicles TMR lists. Modifications follow the Queensland Code of Practice: Vehicle Modifications and TMR's approved person scheme, and defect notices are cleared on the terms printed on the notice. Your website doesn't have to explain any of that machinery. What it does need is an exact list of what you're approved for, written in TMR's terms, so a customer who checks doesn't find a mismatch. For other licences that apply to your particular business, the government's ABLIS service asks a few questions and lists them. MTA Queensland, the peak body for employers in the state's automotive retail, service and repair sectors, has its head office at Eight Mile Plains; if you're a member, the site can say so beside your approval number.
Brisbane customers usually want a workshop near home or work, and they search by suburb. Take Rocklea, on the south side: its neighbours include Moorooka, Salisbury, Oxley, Sherwood, Archerfield and Coopers Plains, and a Rocklea workshop that names them gives nearby drivers a reason to call. North of the river the same applies to whatever suburbs surround you. One clear list near the bottom of the home page, written as people say the names, does more than a line about servicing greater Brisbane.
Rocklea also shows why a workshop site has to be easy to change. It's a mostly industrial suburb with many transport businesses, beside Oxley Creek, and it's counted among Brisbane's most flood-affected suburbs: it was badly hit in 1974 and again in 2010–11. In February 2022 water went through its businesses once more, 1.8 metres deep inside one Rocklea store and warehouse, and crews spent months afterwards clearing the tyres, gas cylinders and chemical drums the flood had carried off its industrial lots. After something like that, customers want to know three things: whether you're open, whether their car is safe, and whether you look at vehicles that have been under water. A notice at the top of the home page answers all three, and we change it whenever you send new wording.
Brisbane also has a 4WD island inside its own council boundary. Moreton Island (Mulgumpin) has no sealed roads, the vehicle ferry leaves from the Port of Brisbane at Lytton and only takes four-wheel drives, and every vehicle needs a vehicle access permit, bought before it drives on the island. A bayside workshop that fits suspension, tyres or recovery points, or checks a 4WD over before and after a weekend on the sand, should say that plainly. We're an Adelaide team and build for Brisbane workshops by phone and email; one of our Queensland clients is Queensland Dance & Performing Arts at Thorneside on Brisbane's Bayside, whose site is shown below.
