If you are one of those people in Metro Manila battling the existing hellish traffic conditions, you wonder how you can lessen the expenses your car needs to traverse the congested roads. While looking for ways to cut your gasoline and car maintenance experience, have you thought about making your private vehicle a way for you to earn extra cash on the side?
How can you earn using your own car?
Open it for carpooling services
Over the years, the ride-sharing industry has grown big enough to become a staple for people living in congested cities. Carpooling services, without the intervention of established ride-sharing companies such as Grab and Uber, is drivers driving for other people whose destinations are along the drivers’ way.
Opting to carpool, of course, would come with a fee. You can base rates on per kilometer Metro Manila taxi rates, or better, tone it slightly lower. Doing so would make it more likely for you to find more passengers. If you have a four-seater car, you can have at least three people paying you to drop them off along the way you are headed.
This will help you cut gasoline costs, and if you are doing well, it can help you pay for your car loan dues. But with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, social distancing measures should still be followed. As much as possible, limit the number of people you let inside your car and refrain from using air conditioning—because it lets air particles fly around your car.
If you can, install barriers that can protect you and your passengers from contracting and subsequently spreading COVID-19.
Accept delivery jobs
These days, you do not need to register to delivery platforms to do delivery work for other people. There are plenty of membership groups on social media platforms such as Facebook with people looking for and offering delivery services.
Try joining one or two and look for people who need help getting things from point A to B. Who knows? You can establish a good relationship with a few clients and have a stable income doing delivery work for them.
Of course, you should be mindful of what they ask you to deliver. Ensure that you are carrying stuff that will not put you in trouble with the law. The ease of finding delivery work online is also as easy as getting in trouble while doing it.
Choose your clients meticulously and exercise your right to reject clients you think will not do your delivery service career good.
Join official ride-sharing platforms
Currently, the Philippines only has Grab as its regulated ride-sharing platform. The disappearance of Uber from the Philippine radar in 2018 put Grab in the number one spot as the country’s only ride-sharing platform. Grab has been in a few clashes with consumers and the law alike in the past few years it has been operating in the country, but the Singaporean-owned ride-hailing company has been nothing short of compliant.
Signing up to drive with the company will give you the freedom to work for as long as you want, any day of the week. If you have a full-time job to attend to during the weekdays, you can opt to drive on weekends for as long as you desire, any time of the day.
Philkotse.com found that the daily income for a Grab driver who finishes 10 trips daily is 1,500 pesos. This might not be much to some but is still something extra on top of your main sources of income.
We have only laid down the easiest and no-fuzz ways of making a little extra on the side with your private car. You are still in charge of how you want to make something out of your personal vehicle.
Are these driving gigs safe?
If you opt to do business with clients directly, the engagement will come with its own risk. We have mentioned in the previous section that you should be careful about the clients you interact with. That applies to carpooling, ride-sharing, and delivery services alike.
After all, the ride is under your name. If authorities find something wrong with what you are transporting—be it a person or an object—you can get into serious trouble without even realizing first-hand. Transporting both objects and persons whose whereabouts before being inside your car are unknown–will also put you at risk—you can contract COVID-19 from people and contaminated objects.