Turo

[Jason]

I see some people here have used this service. I never heard of it until reading this article. I'm sure the rent-a-car companies have their lobbyists on this.

My first question would be car insurance. My personal car policy would not allow for this as I would assume that using my car for profit renders it a business use.

https://jalopnik.com/turo-guy-who-stree ... 1830471941

[Jin+Guice]

I've rented a car on Turo and considered buying a fleet of cars to start a Turo business. The main thing holding me back is my hatred and lack of interest in cars.

Turo insures the cars while they are rented under Turo.

We have an air bnb in our house, in my experience with that, legality will follow the money and there is a lot of money in the sharing economy.

[Jason]

I didn't realize that part about the insurance. This seems like a much better way to make money than Uber. Invest in a car and have other people drive it.

[Jin+Guice]

If you are a car person it's a great way. I don't think the margins are that great unless you know how to find deals on cars and/ or fix them up. It's got the same age restriction as Uber/ Lyyft, you need a less than 10 year old car I believe.

I think Uber is a terrible way to make money personally, it's a great example of a company exploiting common fiscal blind spots. I've yet to meet the Uber driver who depreciates their car when talking profit. I've rode around in a bunch of brand new 4 door trucks. For whatever reason, I think you'd be less likely to do this if you're renting out a fleet. There's also the obvious ERE benefit of avoiding labor with the Turo method.

[SavingWithBabies]

Getaround is in the same space -- I've used them in the past when in the SF Bay Area. Worked great but have to be careful with these services in terms of potential damage. As a user, we almost got hit for $700 of body damage but somehow they figured out earlier person did it (it was hard to see and we didn't notice it when picking it up). So have to do the walk around photos before and after use. I guess if you're truly paranoid, you'd do interior photos too.

[thegreatvoid]

Does anybody know how much money UBER is paying hollywood studios ? I swear that in every single movie / tv series I´ve watched in the last 5 years, the characters always take an UBER.

adversitising really brainwashes people. Nobody says search the Internet, it´s googling . taking a taxi / cab suddely became taking an UBER. watching television has become let´s watch NETFLIX.

i really dislike Silicon Valley and all those computer geeks. Just because they couldn´t get laid in high school, they´ve decided to pray on less intelligent people with their algorithms and time sucking bullsh++ inventions...

[suomalainen]

i really dislike Silicon Valley and all those computer geeks. Just because they couldn´t get laid in high school, they´ve decided to pray on less intelligent people with their algorithms and time sucking bullsh++ inventions...

Tell us how you really feel. Don't hold back.

[SavingWithBabies]

@thegreatvoid Well I'm one of those geeks and I understand the sentiment but you're barking at the wrong people -- the geeks are just the workers for the most part. It's business people (and admittedly a small number of the prior mentioned geeks) directing things and rich people with too much money making speculative investments to fund it.

On the consumer side, it seems like mostly a money thing too:

Uber = cheaper than a cab in most places, uniform experience, etc.
Netflix = cheaper than cable television without ads and fully on demand
Turo/Getaround = cheaper than a car rental, more convenient (if you can find one in walking/bicycle distance -- also 24x7 access if have remote unlock), choice of exact vehicle, etc

I personally dislike Uber as a company but I like Netflix. I don't understand how people can pay for cable television that has poorer quality than over the air TV and has as much or more ads. I don't watch much of anything these days (no TV setup in living room) but if I was going to, it would be Netflix or similar streaming services.

[Jean]

Can you rent a car on Turo without a credit card? I haven't found any information

[SavingWithBabies]

@Jean I think this is what you're looking for: https://support.turo.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ou-accept-

[unemployable]

I'm not really sure about Turo on either side of the transaction.

The rental car business model has two components: the cash-flow part, where revenue is collected renting the car out, and the residual part, when the cars are sold. Both components have a correlation to the overall economy and the rental companies have taken hits on both over the years. The commercial rental business is generally very competitive and enjoys economies of scale and barriers to entry such as already being at the airport.

I suspect the surplus one can capture with Turo is what would otherwise go to taxes -- like how a rental at the Phoenix airport with a base cost of $100 ends up being triple that, so your price your Turo at less than that but tax-"free". Eventually governments will catch onto this as they did with Uber and Airbnb, with the rental companies on the government's side.

There are things rental agencies do badly, however. Most obvious is business hours (good luck starting or ending a rental away from an airport at 8pm on a Saturday) and demanding a specific vehicle (perhaps you want a BMW 4-series for a few days, or for that matter a Camry, and it needs to be a Camry and not some other vehicle). I think "rental-sharers" would be best off focusing on these areas if they hope to add value. If you're just copying Hertz except that it's some random dude's random car, I'll stick with Hertz.

[Jin+Guice]

@thegreatvoid:

I've found all of these things extremely helpful from the user end. The cab situation in New Orleans was really bad though pre-Uber. Netflix still has no commercials and you can watch what you want on demand rather than only at a specific time. I do worry a bit about the deregulation of it all. Deregulation is great in the wild west phase (where I think we currently still are) but the more overweight midwestern dads* that are using this shit the more monolithic the tech bros get and the worse off everyone is.

*present company excluded

I see the problem as more of a symptom of our current consumer culture. Time wasting bullshit tech isn't a problem when you walk everywhere and you're favorite hobbies are reading, online forums with frugality nerds and gardening. Uber is a real life saver when you're already 10 minutes late to a gig and you realize the guy living under your house stole the tires off of your bike trailer, because it was designed in fucking Portland so of course the wheels aren't bolted on.

[Jin+Guice]

@unemployable:

In my experience with app based rentals (again air bnb), there is a lot of money to be made. You become basically a black market operator but pass 99% of the risk onto the company. You are also a very small operator in a still somewhat niche market. The app company takes care of payment collection, advertising and insurance for you. The catch is you need to watch out for overhead since humans are relatively easily tricked by buy now pay later (or in this case cash today, maintenance/ capital expense later). I still think someone who is savvy in buying cars/ maintaining them could easily make a living with 5-6 vehicles (my definition of "living" is $30,000/ year). Taxation and competition will push profit margins down eventually but I think there is still another 5-10 fat years ahead barring any major economic downturn. Never underestimate how averse normal people are to doing something slightly weird.

[SavingWithBabies]

@J+G I don't worry about the monolithic nature as much because I think most of these startups are (in my opinion) making a fundamental mistake: they assume by building a brand they will be the next in line to 30+ years of consumer success after they disrupt the establishment. But I think this is wrong -- the younger generation is not as brand loyal. They are happy to take the discounts that practically all startups use as a slush fund to aid in growth. But as soon as the next startup comes along that offers a better deal or is more compelling in some way (even novelty works), those customers are going to ditch the old startups (and sometimes all it takes is for the slush fund discounts to go away).

I think this is basically a lie that all startup people tell themselves these days because the goal is to grow as fast as possible so that revenue goes up and it all looks great for the IPO or initial public offering on the stock market or as an acquisition on the private market. Then everyone cashes out and goes on to the next thing. That customers might not be sticky long term is a problem left to the stock market investors. The root problem is lack of true value creation.

Of course, there are exceptions. I think Netflix is one -- they saw that the establishment was not going to continue to allow their growth which threatened the conglomerates existing businesses further down the chain from content production. So they tried to cut them off by making the licensing costs exorbitant. But Netflix saw it coming and spearheaded becoming a studio with production of their own television series and movies.

@unemployable For me it was convenience and cost -- I could rent a vehicle on Getaround in increments of an hour (or a full day at a discount) and I could easily get to that vehicle.

[7Wannabe5]

I am a fan of Uber because it allows me to more easily work/reduce the margin of work/home/transportation expense triangle. For instance, I am currently free double couch-surfing, but I took a teaching gig for the next 6 weeks that is convenient to get to by bus in the morning, but very inconvenient in the afternoon, and too far/dangerous to walk or bike, so I split the difference with Uber. Moving closer to my temporary job would be more expensive and more of a hassle.

[Jean]

@Jean I think this is what you're looking for: https://support.turo.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ou-accept-

Thank you!

[thegreatvoid]

What pisses me off , is that we have created this "Mafia -economy "
It used to be that someone would sell a good or provide a service , and except for the government taking it's share ( taxes) , the person would reap the benefits from his labor .

Present year where more and more people are paying by credit card instead of cash , three players ( visa , MasterCard , American Express ) are taking a cut of 2 to 3 % from every transaction.
On the one hand everybody hates wallstreet and the greedy bankers , but people would rather give money to a company that doesn't produce anything of significance , instead of the money going to your local mom & pop store , who can use the money to improve their store and give their employees Higher salaries .

Just as an example from my own industry. Many people nowadays book their hotels through a platform like booking.dot.com or Airbnb , but most consumers don't know that the hotels pay 15-20% commission .
On the one hand it's a good platform , because as a small business we can reach many more people than back in the day . .

It really shows the morals of the people , when they would rather give 15% of the money to some tech nerds in Connecticut , than to the people who clean your room , prepare your meals . Do the real work.

But on the other hand , it really pisses me off when long time regulars , reserve a room through the platform instead of directly, out of pure laziness and because they get bombarded with ads on tv saying it's cheaper although it isn't .

[Chris]

Just as an example from my own industry. Many people nowadays book their hotels through a platform like booking.dot.com or Airbnb , but most consumers don't know that the hotels pay 15-20% commission .
On the one hand it's a good platform , because as a small business we can reach many more people than back in the day . .

Right, the OTAs provide value to the hotels, otherwise the hotels wouldn't be their customers. Presumably the hotels benefit more by reducing their vacancy than by the reduced revenue per room.

Similarly, for credit cards, it's a fact that people who pay by card spend more (and more often) than those who spend by cash. This is especially true for restaurants, where it's relatively easy to upsell to the customer. The restaurant doesn't care if the customer can't afford the drinks and dessert... that's AmEx's problem to deal with.

[Stahlmann]

...

We have saying here: ,,The one gram of trade is more worth than 1 kilogram of work"

EDIT: Actually, this goes back to Jewish proverb like ,,The one gram of trade is more worth than 1 kilogram of work of production".

[SavingWithBabies]

@Jason Came across someone's experience with Turo while watching a BiggerPockets video:

https://youtu.be/4JbrYpsR0cQ?t=2664

Talks about how the insurance works if your car gets totaled while being rented on Turo. Summary is it ended up working out well. He was making $400-700/month renting out the Prius C he bought for $10,000. Then got an $11,000 payoff from insurance.

Looks like the differences between Turo and Getaround are:

Getaround can be by hour or day, Turo is by day
Getaround has option to get a device put in your car that offers remote unlock hooked into their system so you don't have to meet the people who are borrowing your car. It's not required but a lot of people have this option (at least in SF Bay Area).
Turo requires you to meet the person who is borrowing your car, suggests checking their license, walkaround, even potentially offering pickup, etc.

On the one hand, if I'm lending someone my late model sedan, I'd like to know who is renting it, if my car was okay when they picked it up, how much gas was in it, if they had a license, etc. On the other hand, the remote unlock feature means I don't have to be there so someone could rent it while I'm at work (although I work from home so not really an advantage to me but I could be away on vacation). I do feel a bit more comfortable with the Turo approach though as the owner participant.