The Answer: Is Turo Profitable?

Hello Guys. This latest article will be focused on making money on the car sharing app Turo. A lot of my readers ask me: is Turo profitable? The answer is very clear: yes, as long as you take the time to provide the highest level of customer support and consistent quality, you will make a profit. While some of you may claim that such a statement is easy to make, today I will show you an actual spreadsheet of four of the cars I rented out on Turo in May 2018. If you have any questions regarding the calculations or see anything I missed please comment below.

 

Recap from Last Time

Just a quick recap for new readers: my name is Jerry and I am a sharing economy entrepreneur. I started my Turo fleet in December of 2017 and have since acquired 9 cars that I rent out in the Los Angeles area. Aside from Turo I am a Super Host on AirBnB with 400+ completed trips. As my journey on Turo has just begun, I want to outline the steps that I took in becoming profitable. As requested, I have attached a financial statement to this article. There you can see 5 of my cars and how they performed during the month of May. When you actually think about the number of hours invested, the hourly profit of renting your car out on Turo is very attractive. One thing I want readers to note is that if you base your operations around higher end vehicles the amount of money you make will be even higher. If you take a look at my 2017 Mercedes E300 you will see that the car generated around $1,100 in net cash flow with only 7.5 hours worked! Take a look at the listing and see for yourself! All you have to do is check out the calendar and click back to May to check the booked days.

Your Market

One of the things that you have to consider before you use this financial statement for your business is you have to make sure my market is applicable to yours. Since I am located in the Los Angeles market, the competition is very stiff and there are a ton of cars available. This generally pushes the average daily rent down. Another factor is that I live almost 30 miles away from LAX and West Hollywood. This factor adversely affects my hourly income. If I optimized my operations on Turo and moved to a more centrally located home base I would shave off dozens of hours PER MONTH and have access to a more concentrated core of customers. To explain it clearly: Since I live a distance away from the vast majority of potential clients, I have to offer better service and a cheaper price to maintain competitiveness. Ask yourself: why would you pick a car that is a few dollars cheaper but you would have to spend at least an hour to pick up the car?

Optimizing Operations

Although I am in this disadvantageous position, Turo is still profitable for me. I estimate that if I were to move to a more centrally located area in Los Angeles my utilization rate and average daily rate would shoot up significantly. When customers don’t have a delivery fee to add on to their total my fleet will be my more competitive in winning their business. Hopefully this answers the questions of whether or not Turo is profitable. As long as you maintain consistent quality for your customers and manage your costs, you will see a profit. Renting your car out on Turo will allow you to tackle other ventures you’re interested in. By having the flexible schedule of a Turo fleet owner you will be able to take advantage of other avenues of income that you would otherwise be unable to realize. One example would be buying a kit like this to wash the cars from home instead of spending money at the car wash. Right now the Turo platform is still in its infancy – take action now and reap the rewards!

 

 

Conclusion

I will be breaking down the excel worksheet in my next article on how to optimize your operations. By optimizing and improving your process you will see even greater returns than what I saw in May. Who knows? You could eventually become the next Enterprise! As always, thanks for reading. If you are interested in a free hour of consulting use my referral link. Another thing to note is that I am wrapping up my FREE course on Udemy. In that course I will be outlining my entire process to students. If you want to claim the beta access and 1 hour free consultation click the link below and sign up for an account!