I’ve seen debates regarding whether it’s worth it to offer delivery to your guests. Some swear by it, others flat out refuse, and some (like me) see it as a necessary evil. Luckily Turo recently added the ability to set your delivery and pick-up availability separately. I’ve been asking for this feature forever! Let’s go over some pros and cons of offering delivery, then go over how I do it and why it can get really complicated.
Pros:
1. More bookings – When you’re first starting out as a Turo host it’s beneficial to try to get to All-Star status. One of the criteria is getting to at least 10 completed trips. Offering delivery is a way to get some additional bookings from people who either don’t live close to your home location or want the luxury of having a car brought to their front door. I can attest that without deliveries I would probably have half the trips I do now, maybe less.
2. More money – This one is easy. Adding the delivery fee adds up to $120 extra to your trip earnings. And best of all Turo only keeps 10% of this. So even though it’s much easier for me when guests select to pick up my cars, I get bummed when I see the earnings. That extra $120 is glaringly missing and cuts my earnings severely for shorter trips.
3. Take advantage of busier areas – If you don’t live in the middle of a big tourist area or population center then it can be hard to get people to pick up your cars. In order to expand your business you need to be where the people are renting, or offer delivery there. I do this by offering delivery to NYC and some airports. Depending on how far you live from these population centers, this can be tough.
Cons:
1. Extra expenses – Tolls, parking, gas (or supercharging), public transportation, Ubers. Delivery can get expensive. You really need to calculate your expected costs and subtract that from your delivery price. If your expenses outweigh the fee then it’s probably not worth it. I’m able to offset some of the costs because the NYC area is full of public transportation, which, as you can imagine, is vastly less expensive than Ubers. But you’re trading dollars for time. Which brings me to my next con.
2. Delivery is really time consuming – Like I said above I use public transportation as much as possible to offset the costs of deliveries. But this often means it takes a lot longer to get to or from the destinations. There’s also limitations based on bus/train schedules, like some don’t operate on weekends or the last train/bus leaves at an inconvenient time compared to when the guest is returning. And a lot of times there’s no direct route to the destination, which means transferring, layovers, still needing to use an Uber (or taking a long ass walk!). All of this just makes a long process even longer. I recommend getting a partner or spouse to help out. My wife sometimes drives with me or picks me up if there aren’t any other good options. This is a tremendous help!
3. It gets complicated when you have multiple deliveries in one day – This one is the hardest part. The mental gymnastics it takes to coordinate multiple deliveries and/or returns in a single day is extremely difficult. Like insomnia-inducingly difficult. Like makes-me-question-this-whole-business difficult. So what should you do? You can update your availability to limit delivery days/times, or you can change your settings to only allow delivery on one car at a time. Basically you just have to figure it out. That’s the best advice I can give, and it applies to a lot of aspects related to Turo. Figure. It. Out.
A few additional tips:
Airports aren’t so bad – If you live relatively close to an airport the delivery process isn’t so bad. There’s ample parking for a reasonable cost (at least compared to, say, midtown Manhattan), remote check-ins are pretty painless, and the garages/lots are typically secure. I’ve left cars overnight at airports with no issues. There’s also usually some public transportation options to get there. I don’t mind these deliveries.
Utilize remote check-ins where possible – Communicate with your guest ahead of time and see if they’re ok with doing a remote check-in. This allows you some flexibility of when you actually drop off the car. This is helpful if you have multiple deliveries in the same day, or you have other obligations.
Try to plan other activities around your deliveries – This is especially helpful if you get your family involved in your Turo business. I had a delivery in Connecticut and ended up visiting an aquarium with my wife and kids out there that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise gone to.
Identify as many public transportation options as possible to your most booked locations – Most people have a preferred method of getting around and don’t consider other options. Like some people will only take trains and won’t think about buses. Explore all the available transportation methods to airports and other areas you deliver to often. Search Google maps for multi destination routes as well, such as home-airport-work. And don’t forget to search weekday and weekend schedules, as they’re usually not the same.
Conclusion
Deliveries are hard. But when you’re starting out they’re pretty much necessary to grow your business. Unless you’re able to store your cars in a prime area, you’ll need to offer delivery. Hopefully we’ll all get to a point where it’s not essential to deliver our cars, or we’re able to hire out the task, but until then it’s just part of the game.
