Earn extra money rent your truck

I remember my first truck. I bought it for several reasons, the biggest being I felt I could earn extra money with it. And, I did.  Now there’s another way to earn extra money if you have a truck you can rent it out for other people to use. you can earn extra money rent your truck.

 

 

Full disclosure

At the time, I was still in the US Navy. I’d had nine years of continuous sea duty. That means I’d spent most of the last nine years going to sea onboard ships, mostly submarines. Sea duty by any definition is arduous. You’re away from home a lot—at sea or in foreign ports. One year I was gone from home for ten months. Then, when the ship was in its home port, the crew was kept busy with major repairs and paperwork; there’s always something that needs to be done. When you’re assigned to sea duty, you work a lot of really long hours, sometime days at a time.

Foreign Ports

The movies tend make foreign port calls seem like one big party, even for the military. That’s fiction. Just because you’re in a foreign port doesn’t mean its party time. Sure, there will be occasions when you can take time off work. Then you can go party, or sightsee, or anything else legally allowed by communal consent of our government and the local one. (That statement is a bit simplistic, but I’m not going into who all has a say in a sailor’s liberty.) However, there will be times (lots of times) when the workload will not permit it, and you will be required to stay onboard ship, and work. Sorry, if that takes some of the romance out of your notion about a sailor’s life, but that’s the way it is.

Arduous duty

The long deployments include a number of aspects. To name a few, there is separation from family, long hours, intense work, and possible (probable) danger. Sea duty is considered arduous and, often, hazardous duty.

Benefits of Sea Duty

At times, service personnel in all branches of the US military are subject to less than ideal—call them risky, precarious, or hazardous—circumstances. It’s the nature of the work. Of course, there are means employed to make the situation as safe as possible, but the underlying dangerous (or at least inconvenient) conditions remain. Because of this, certain benefits are implemented. The main benefit of sea duty is additional pay, and it’s a significant amount.

The extra pay is an incentive for many Navy members to remain on sea duty. Regardless, sailors are also required to go to shore duty. Although the welfare of sailors and their families is taken into consideration, a sea/shore rotation has been worked out based primarily on the needs of the Navy. Remember, I said above that I had nine years of continuous sea duty? My rotation was long overdue. A point was reached when I had to go to shore duty whether I wanted it or not.

Shore Duty = No Sea Pay

When sailors go to shore duty, they lose sea pay. That makes sense, because the basis for receiving it is gone. Since sea pay is a significant amount of money, often it’s not long before it’s greatly missed.

BUT

I went to sea duty knowing it—the sea pay wouldn’t last forever. Before I left on the first cruise, my wife and I decided that we would continue to live on my regular pay and use the sea pay to bolster our emergency fund. Because we were frugal with our money and lived on a budget based on my regular pay, we didn’t need the extra money sea pay would provide to live a fairly comfortable daily life at the time.

For shore duty, I was assigned to the navy brig as a counselor. I worked Monday through Friday, 7am to 3pm. That was a sweet job, and I was home every night with my wife and kids. Since I was home so much more, we began to want to do “family things,” something more than just live our daily lives. The idea of more recreation, entertainment, and a nice vacation kept niggling at us. Those activities almost always translate into the need for more money.

We didn’t need we just wanted

As I said, on a daily basis, we were comfortable, our budget, however, didn’t include funds for too many “extras.” It’s true, we had been adding significantly to our emergency fund for several years. Could we “borrow” from it? NO WAY!! Well…everybody we knew took out small loans occasionally. (Usually, something they could pay off in about a year, and about the time they did, they were ready to take out another one.) Again, No way. As time had passed, we had learned to be frugal, and I hated debt. I understood the importance of being debt free. Still, some extra money that could be designated for “fun” would be nice. So, I decided to earn a little extra money.

(Notice I said that the money would be designated for fun. Any money I earn has to be incorporated into my budget. I don’t allow much for free floating funds. As money comes in we save it to apply to specific activities. That said, because we were already saving for upcoming bills, emergencies, and the future, we felt we could allowed for the money I was going to bring in to enhance our lifestyle—at least temporarily.)

After much consideration

I decided to clean windows on the side. There isn’t much startup cost and the work isn’t difficult, but no one wants to do it. And, I’d acquired professional window cleaning skills years before.

Using the family car, I was able to start a window cleaning route with the local businesses. My sales pitch was “I will be in this part of town every week on this day and I can clean your windows every week or every two weeks or…. I gave the perspective customer two prices one price was to clean the windows inside and out, and one the price was to clean the windows outside only. I would tell them how much it would cost them. They could decide what service they wanted.

There was a problem

When I was out with the family car, it was unavailable to my wife. With three little kids at home, that wasn’t a good plan. I decided I either needed to buy another vehicle or quit cleaning windows. Maybe I could find something else to earn a little extra money?

In the end, I decided to buy another vehicle. A pickup truck seemed to be the logical choice. I could use it for hauling my window cleaning tools. Also, if I wanted to, with a pickup truck I could do more than just clean windows.

Of course, the decision to buy a vehicle presented another problem—funding the purchase; I wasn’t about to go into debt. We did have a category in our budget for replacing our car. We’d been saving for about 18 months and figured we’d have it fully funded in another year. We decided to redirect some of that money to buy a used pickup truck. After we researched models and prices, we started scanning ads in the paper and watching for “For Sale” signs in back windows. It took us about three weeks to find what we were looking for and about four months to replace the money we’d “borrowed” from ourselves. I worked really hard during those four months; I wanted to get back on track with the real reason I was working as a window cleaner—earning extra money for recreation.

The Hard Way

I’m going to repeat myself here: During those four months that I spent repaying my auto fund, I worked really hard. Not only did I clean windows, I did some hauling, and even some landscaping. (Ok, I’ll be honest…I mowed some lawns.) And, I did it all with just me and my truck because that’s the only way I knew to do it.

The easy way: Earn extra money rent your truck.

They say there—usually—is more than one way to do something. Earning extra money with your truck is no exception. There was the hard way, being out there doing all of the work myself. Then, there is the easy way: earn extra money rent your truck . Get paid for allowing someone else to their own work—using your truck. (I so like this idea.)

It’s possible this alternative was available in some form back in the ’80s and ’90s, but the idea never crossed my mind. Even if it had, who would I have rented it to? My friends? Who does that? You lend it to them. Recently, however, I came across a service that I think, had it been available, might have offered some possibilities. With current technology—the internet and phone apps—they can help you get word out about availability and give you some guidance to a smooth transaction. Check out Fluid Market.

Fluid Market is a Truck Share coordinator that works via a smart phone app (similar to an Uber setup) to allow you to list your truck (and some other types of equipment) for rent. Or, if you’re in the market, find someone (local) to rent from. As with any other facilitator they have a list of requirements each party must meet. Payment for any usage of your truck is made to Fluid Market and a large percentage is passed on to you. This setup could yield a nice stream of passive income.

Questions

The idea of renting out you private vehicle, probably, raises a lot of questions. Here’s some that hit me right away:

1) Who would I rent to? How will anyone know my truck is available?

2) How do I find out if the person who wants to rent my truck has a valid driver’s license?

3) How do I know I’ll get paid?

4) What about insurance issues?

5) What exactly does Fluid Market do for me? What do I have to do?

I’m sure you’ll come up with plenty of others.

A Few Quick Answers

You’ll conduct business via a smart phone app. Fluid Market has a plan for you to promote the use of your truck; you’ll be given particular websites and groups to post information to. Most responses to your offer should be local. Rental transactions will be contractual. Everyone that wants to rent your truck will have a background investigation conducted through the department of motor vehicles, so you’ll know the driver has a valid driver’s license. You’ll be paid weekly. Fluid Market has a policy for some liability, damage, and theft, but you are required to maintain your own insurance on your vehicle.

Check It Out For Yourself

I’m sure the above doesn’t provide you with nearly enough information. My intent has been only to present the possibility of earning extra money by renting out your truck. If you’re interested in what Fluid Market has to offer, check out the website. You’ll certainly want a better understanding of both the offer and the process of this business than I can present here.

Conclusion

As the old saying goes “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” There’s also more than one way to earn money using your truck. You can use your truck to do a lot of work yourself, or someone else can pay to use it while you are otherwise employed (or at leisure).

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