WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THE FIRST TIME HOSTING ON TURO

My plan for this summer is to use a popular car rental site to offset my transportation costs. For the first time, I will be a host at TURO and not a renter.

If you’re not familiar with Turo, it’s a major car-sharing company that lets you book vehicles directly from their owners, similar to renting an Airbnb room. It has over 450,000 listings throughout the US and Canada, so it is available in most major cities, and it is more affordable than booking through companies like Hertz and Enterprise.

I would like to share my journey with this platform and talk about my experience of hosting my car.

The first thing you need to do on Turo is create an account and fill out the form. Your car’s details will need to be filled out. Some restrictions are imposed by Turo:

Your car can’t be older than 12 year

It can’t have rebuild\salvaged title

It cannot have more than 250 thousand kilometers on it.

Have fair market value of up to $200,000

The following is my personal point: “It’s important not to get emotionally attached to your car. It’s inevitable that wear and tear will occur, and you’ll need to embrace that with a business mindset.”

Once you upload the pictures and complete all the details, you are ready for your first booking. Mine did not take long. My car got booked within five hours, and I realized that was a mistake immediately.

By default, Turo allows you to set automatic car pricing, and I did not want that. I apologized to the renter and cancelled the trip because the rate was too low, and my profile received an automated comment “The host cancelled the trip 1 day before it began”. When people read reviews, they will see this message. No charges were incurred, and it appears that this can be done up to 10 times.

Having updated the price and added some more listing details, I have activated the listing again and again, my car has been reserved real fast. My first booking was for a 3-day trip in which I was getting paid $129 for each day. Turo charges a 30% fee for providing their services, which includes the insurance fee in the event that the car is damaged. To learn how to claim compensation, continue reading.

The things that you need to do prior to give your car to someone:

1. The outside, inside, wheels, mirrors, and everything else in the car needs to be photographed. The total number of photos I took was 116, which is not overkill. As long as you provide proof in the form of photos, you will be able to get your money back in case there is any damage. It must be clearly evident that the damage did not exist before the trip began.
2. Disinfect surfaces and clean the car. It’s part of Turos’ check-list, so you’ll be reminded of it.
3. I recommend you to purchase a phone holder and two charging cables (Android and iOS). Your passengers will appreciate this, as I have had a few frustrating experiences having to hold the phone myself.
4. Measure the remaining thread on your tires. In the event of an accident, the renter might say that worn out tires prevented them from stopping. Under that scenario, you would not receive compensation.
5. Instruct your guest to take pictures before the trip begins.
6. Check the expiration date on your guest’s license and take a picture of it. Please do not hesitate to cancel if something goes wrong, the money won’t be worth it.
7. Make sure to leave registration and vehicle insurance papers in the car and tell your guest where to find those.

As soon as I had done all that, I had to wait for my guest, who was about an hour late for a pickup. This type of thing will happen all the time. People will fail to show up at a predetermined time, and that is fine with me.

After verifying his driver’s license, I gave the guest the keys. I had made sure to answer all their questions about the car before they left. In the coming days, I’ll try to forget about it and concentrate on my work, and I hope my car doesn’t have any issues.

As I waited, I explored the application further and watched several YouTube videos about starting a rental business on Turo. I learned a few things that will help optimize your earnings:

1. There is an option to deliver cars to the renters address, and it seems that airport delivery yields the highest returns. Not only people tend to rent those more often, you can also set your own price for car delivery/pickup
2. Turo offers the option of renting out additional equipment and services. Provide the guest with a child seat or refuel on delivery, so they don’t have to worry about filling up the car.
3. You can offer unlimited mileage for extra charge
4. Put your car keys in an RFID bag and invest in the lock to make contactless pickup possible

5. Purchase gas gift cards on eBay/Amazon. The cards often come with a discount, such as buy $100 for $95.

If you want your guest’s first 5 star review on your platform, you should make it as easy as possible for them. Having excellent customer service goes a long way, and everyone is now in the business of selling experiences, not things. Keep that in mind, and you’ll do well!

My goal is to automate this side hustle so I can include it in my monthly passive income updates . My next post will show the condition of my car before and after I get it back, you will learn about my first guest’s communication and how easy/hard it is to make money from this source. In addition, I will research the best ways to maximize earnings from the platform and create a list of cars that are doing well.

I sincerely hope that this has been helpful, and you didn’t waste your time reading this. Thank you