Getting an Uber Eats car rental is an interesting strategy you can use to do Uber Eats. By renting a car, you can avoid all the wear and tear (and maintenance) that comes with using your own vehicle.
But is it worth renting a car to do Uber Eats? The short answer is that it depends. What can you make vs. what will your car rental cost? If you can get a good price on a car rental, it can very well be worth it. Most of the time, however, it probably isn’t going to be worth it unless you’re willing to work long hours on Uber Eats.
In this post, we’ll look at how an Uber Eats car rental works and take a closer look at whether it’s worth renting a car to do Uber Eats.
Uber Eats Car Rental Options
At the outset, you have to ask yourself whether you are even allowed to rent a car to do Uber Eats. The short answer is yes, you can. Uber Eats even has an official partnership with Hertz, one of the largest car rental companies in the United States.
So what are your options for an Uber Eats car rental? Here are a few for you to consider:
1. Traditional Car Rental
Getting a traditional car rental from a car rental company is the most obvious way to rent a car to do Uber Eats. However, there are some things you need to consider.
Most importantly, many car rental companies do not allow you to use the rental for commercial purposes. If you were to have an accident and the car rental company found out, you could have issues.
However, Uber Eats does have an official partnership with Hertz, where you can rent a car from them to do Uber Eats. Here’s the Hertz website, which provides more information about this partnership. If you’re looking to rent a car to do Uber Eats, I’d recommend starting here first to see if the rates make sense for you.
2. Hyrecar
Another option is Hyrecar, which is a car-sharing service similar to Turo, except it’s only for renting cars to do gig economy work.
Hyrecar often has more competitive rates compared to traditional car rental companies, so it’s worth checking them out to see if they operate in your area and have good rental options. When you rent with Hyrecar, you are renting a car from an individual, so it’s a different experience compared to renting a car from a large car rental company.
Importantly, Hyrecare provides insurance, which you can submit to Uber Eats to satisfy the insurance requirements that they have.
If you have a spare car or want to earn extra income from your car, you could also try renting it out on Hyrecar. I know some people do this with fleets of cars, allowing them to earn income from the cars they own.
Is Getting A Rental Car For Uber Eats Worth It?
If you’re doing Uber Eats part-time or as a side hustle, I’d say renting a car probably isn’t worth it. The only time I’d recommend a rental car is if you are doing Uber Eats (and other gig economy apps) full-time. Since the cost of a rental car is fairly high, you’ll need to work steady hours to cover your costs and make a profit.
Like anything, when you’re doing Uber Eats, you need to think like a business. That means reviewing your expenses, seeing how much revenue you can generate, and figuring out if the profit is enough for you.
If a rental car costs $300 per week, you’ll need to think of that as your baseline expense. Then factor in how much gas you’ll use each week. After you’ve figured out those two numbers, you can figure out how much you’ll need to earn each week to make it worthwhile. What that number is will depend on your situation.
The big benefit of using a rental car is that you won’t put wear and tear on your own car. Most people dramatically underestimate the cost of operating their car (studies show people tend to underestimate the cost of operating their car by 50%). Using a rental car helps you get a clearer picture of what you’re spending each week, which can improve how you do your deliveries.
Another Option – Renting Bikes (Or Ebikes) To Do Uber Eats
Perhaps an even better option – and the option I tend to use when I’m renting vehicles to do Uber Eats – is to opt to rent a bike.
Back before the explosion of ebikes, I used to do most of my deliveries using my city’s bikeshare system. The system cost me $65 per year and gave me unlimited free rides. I could do deliveries all day without worrying about bike maintenance and at $65 per year, I was paying just $9 per month to get access to a bike (the bikeshare system ran from April to November). I was more than able to pay for my bikeshare membership and earn a large profit too.
Uber Eats lets you do deliveries in other cities too, so when I’m visiting other cities, I’ll often rent a bike from the bikeshare system. For example, I visit Chicago a lot and always check out a Divvy bike and do deliveries there. A day pass usually costs about $15, which makes it easy for me to earn my money back. I get to explore the city and earn some extra money.
Bikeshares have gotten even better over the past few years with the addition of ebikes to the fleets. Most of these ebikes charge a per-minute rate. In Minneapolis, where I live, I pay 18 cents per minute to ride an ebike. That means I can ride for an hour for $10.80. During peak hours, I can earn $30 or $40 per hour doing deliveries, so even after subtracting my ebike costs, I can still earn a strong profit.
It’s just food for thought. If you need to rent a vehicle, I think renting a bike or an ebike is the better way to do it, particularly if you live in a city.
Final Thoughts
Using a rental car to do Uber Eats is a viable strategy in some circumstances. It’ll help you avoid putting wear and tear on your own car, which helps with maintenance and depreciation. At the same time, using a rental car is a useful way to actually see how much your car costs. Most people simply don’t know how much it costs to operate their car and don’t take that into account when determining their profits from Uber Eats.
For most people, a rental car will only be worthwhile if they’re doing Uber Eats as a full-time gig, rather than as a side hustle. If I were doing Uber Eats full-time and using a car, I might very well use a rental if I thought I could make enough profit to make it worthwhile.
Leave a Reply