The middleman economy which is spreading all over the place from real estate with its big example Airbnb to any product or service that could be sold. In the auto industry in particular there is a big expansion in the middleman concept. I have seen several corporations coming up in the market to tap into the rental car business under many names including carsharing, ridesharing among them: Turo, Avail Car Sharing, and HyerCar
Every single corporation took a slightly different approach but they all have the same concept: they carry the overhead for the management, but they don’t have any risk because they don't own any physical assets. The two people in the process are totally at risk are the car owner and the renter. The owner may be doing the process or hiring somebody else to do it, but at the end of the day, the full operation is done by the renter and car owner. When the damage happens to the car the middleman corporation do you have the insurance to cover the car damages, and the car owner has to go through the process to get his claim processed. The owner of the car responsible for the operation and delivering the car gets the car checked out after each trip. This is his duty and that’s his time to be paid for not by his car rental. This article will go through each company one by one. So, let’s start wiser biggest one among them which is
he process of renting your own car in Turo is extremely easy. You just need to list your car and publish it and wait for somebody to book a trip on your car. It's absolutely worth trying and could bring you some money from a car that has no use in your garage. However, there are some calculations that need to be made before making this decision. If not carefully analysed may by the end of the day you may be paying money and not making money or losing money not getting profit. Some rules are made by Turo you need to consider in this analysis.
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It has to be less than 10 years old
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Mileage on the car should not exceed 130,000 miles
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The car should not be branded or has no salvage title
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The mileage allowance on the car per day is a minimum of 200 miles per day.
Based on the last condition, if you list your car for months your car will come back with about 6000 miles in a year this car will make about 72,000 miles. So, the calculation needs to be made to avoid depreciating your car so fast while not getting the right return for your car and your time.
Therefore brand new cars are absolutely not a recommended option to invest in rideshaing platforms because the high depreciation on the car will never bring you the value of the car back. in case if you buy a car that’s brand new for $25,000 do you want to get back in a year about $16,000 or so but you were going to be putting 72,000 miles on the car really draining the value of the car down. My recommendation is to get to the used car market and get the most economical option about six to $10,000 max and at the same time this car has to fit the conditions for titling and mileage.
Then we’ll go to the operation part which is delivering the car or giving the car to the renter. It can be a little bit of a hassle if you don’t do it professionally. So, you keep it as low contact as possible. It’s not a process of making friends nor enemies. It is business and you don't need to get too close to your customers. Car has to be ready, clean and the key is ready. So, when the customer will come in time you have already taken the car pictures ,and waitin for the renter ID to deliver the car.
Don’t take it personally when the person brings the car back dirty, always smoke smells or anything like that, and try to be as professional as you could to document all this situation and report it to Turo. You might be able to get a refund and to charge the renter and get some money for you to clean up and get the smoke smell away from the car.
This is a situation that usually causes troubles and may lead to some altercation that is not really worth it in the business that you’re doing. One more thing about insurance, Turo offers different packages of insurance which also affect your earning percentage. So, it is important to pick the right package for your car.
Another model is avail carsharing this company is offering a different service where they host your car and they do the full operation. They offer you fixd earning or they offer you flexible earning. As long as your car is rented you are getting money from the program that they offer. Sometimes they offer $300 guaranteed earning per car and if the car was rented for a month for more than 300 you can get the extra earning as well. This model is a little bit of peace of mind since they are fully covered, the operation is handed out to the company and they do that role for you. They get the car from the customer, clean it, sanitize it and have it ready for the next trip. At the same time they have a good communication message with you regarding your car about the maintenance of the car, but they have very limited maintenance to the car itself. The covers tires and battery, but if anything happened in the car like check engine light came on or any any problem happened this will not be taken care of by the Avail Car Sharing. You have to go get your car fixed and get it back to them. It’s a little bit less stressful approach to the process of the rental itself but it could be useful for a reliable car that is not coming up with so many problems. Avail Car Sharing offer their service around the airport and they used to restrict their service for travelers only, but I don’t think that worked out very well for them and then they switched back to offer their service to everybody resident or non-resident. I have dealt with in there good service the earning is not as high as you can as you can make with Turo but at the same time you don’t have to do that much work to invest.
Another example is HyerCar which is another company that popped up right after Turo and they do the same thing except they have only one option as for the insurance packages. They also have a bigger cut for the car rental earning. I think the owner keeps about 60% from the gross earnings and HyerCar gets 40%. It's a very big cut of the earnings while in Turo you have several packages you can get to choose from.