Did you know that you can get paid to drive your own car?
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You may have already heard of things like driving people around (e.g., Uber and Lyft), but there are other ways you can turn your car into a cash-generating machine.
Let’s look at all the ways you can earn money from driving!
How to Get Paid to Drive Your Car
Here are 14 ideas for you to consider:
1. Deliver groceries
If you live in an urban area and/or can find lots of customers that live in one location (e.g., assisted living facilities), you can earn $25/hour or more.
Grocery delivery sites need people to shop for and deliver groceries to customers.
2. Deliver Amazon packages
Amazon Prime Now and Amazon are both hiring delivery drivers through their Amazon Flex program in major urban centers across the country. To qualify for this job, you’ll need a smartphone so you can download and use Amazon’s delivery app. Positions pay up to $25/hour.
3. Be a mystery shopper
Mystery shopping, sometimes also referred to as shadow shopping or secret shopping, involves being tasked to go into different establishments, giving feedback to the mystery shopping company and eventually to the owners of these establishments.
The aim of this feedback is to improve the establishments’ products, policies and procedures, customer service, and overall customer experience.
Examples of establishments that hire mystery shoppers include restaurants, convenience stores, automotive shops, grocery stores, and many more.
Plenty of these mystery shopping companies give out assignments in multiple stores in multiple locations, so they normally prefer to hire those with their own transportation.
The pay for mystery shopping assignments varies from $3-$80, and you can earn bonus money if you complete deadline-sensitive assignments.
4. Rent out your car
If you aren’t interested in actually driving your car to earn money, sites like Turo offer you the opportunity to rent it out to others.
Yearly earnings from renting your car out vary by the value of your car and how many days it can be used, but some sites estimate yearly earnings up to $13,000. I give more details as well as a list of car-sharing websites in this article.
5. Turn your car into ad space through car wrapping
Believe it or not, there are legitimate car wrap sites that will wrap your car in advertising and pay you good money for it. You essentially get paid to drive a moving billboard for advertisers and businesses.
One such site is MyFreeCar, which offers up to $400/month if you end up wrapping your car with an ad.
Other car wrap sites include Wrapify, Carvertise, and Nickelytics.
You’ll have to be careful with car wrap scams, though. I’ve explained one of them here, and in a nutshell, it involves baiting with promises to give you thousands of dollars in exchange for renting out your car.
6. Perform microjobs and microtasks
Sites like TaskRabbit and Thumbtack need people to pick up dry cleaning, get movie tickets, assemble furniture at someone’s house, etc.
To complete these tasks, you’ll most likely need a car. Payouts from microtasks range from a few dollars to maybe $20; however, if you can schedule a series of tasks at nearby locations, you could earn at least $25/hour.
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7. Move large stuff
If you have a larger-sized vehicle like a van or pickup truck, you can offer moving services to people who are moving houses, taking home a large item they just bought from a store, or taking junk and scrap metal to a dump or recycling center.
You could list your moving services privately, such as through sites like Craigslist and Nextdoor. You could also sign up with websites and apps like Dolly, BuddyTruk, Lugg, and GoShare.
Check out our list of jobs for pickup trucks to learn more about earning from your large vehicle.
8. Host sightseeing tours
If you live in an interesting urban or natural locale, you can create custom sightseeing tours and charge tourists to take them to places they want to see: both the usual tourist spots and the off-the-beaten-path ones.
To advertise such services, consider teaming up with other local businesses and offering them a “pit stop” on your tour in exchange for advertising the tour and maybe even helping to sell tickets.
To make your tours a success, you’ll need a larger vehicle with big windows, such as a van. Also, consider jazzing up your tour with custom brochures, maps, and even souvenirs.
I’ve written about being a local tour guide here, including which companies employ local tour guides.
9. Chauffer for a wedding
If you have a custom, vintage, or sports vehicle on your hands, you could offer rides in it for wedding parties and guests. Being at the beck and call of a wedding party for rides to and from the church or courthouse, reception area, hotel, and/or airport could fetch you an easy $500 or more for the entire day.
Bonus: you might even get to eat some cake!
To get started as a chauffeur, it’s best to set up a website and post plenty of gorgeous photos of your vehicle(s) and offered services. You may also wish to take out liability insurance for your business.
10. Deliver newspapers or even the mail
These days, the old neighborhood paperboy route has been mostly taken over by drivers who cover larger territories and deliver newspapers, magazines, and USPS mail.
Some of these jobs can be found by perusing standard job sites like Monster and Indeed. You should also check with your local USPS office to find out if there is a need for a driver to cover a (usually rural) geographic location. Local distributors can also give you some routes to cover.
The pay varies based on your employer, but if you cover the same territories for multiple employers, you could easily make an extra $1,000/month.
11. Drive children around
Childcare for school-age kids doesn’t just mean caring for children in their homes anymore.
It now involves picking kids up and driving them to and from school, doctor’s appointments, sports practices and events, other afterschool programs and extracurricular activities, and of course, their homes.
HopSkipDrive is an app where you can sign up as a driver and be connected with families who need rides. The requirements are a bit stringent: you need to be at least 23 years old, have at least 5 years of caregiving experience, an excellent driving record, a clean background check, and a four-door vehicle no more than 10 years old.
But the pay is greater than what you can make through the usual ridesharing apps; you can make up to $60 per hour driving kids around.
12. Drive safely
Yes, we now live in a world where you can get paid to drive safely.
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Auto insurance companies are gathering information about drivers’ habits through smart devices in the covered cars or through smartphone apps.
For instance, State Farm has Drive Safe and Save, Progressive has Snapshot, Allstate has Drivewise, and so on.
The payment comes in either cashback or discounts on your premiums. For instance, Allstate’s Drivewise gets you up to 10% cashback just for signing up, and up to 25% cashback every six months for safe driving.
13. Deliver cars from one point to another
If you love long drives, there are companies who would pay for you to scratch your itch, as long as you’re okay not driving your own car.
Driving for hours on end can be lonely, but if you have a great sense of adventure, you might find this gig quite enjoyable.
Learn more about delivering cars from Point A to Point B.
14. Drive elders
The number of elderly people in the US is steadily growing, so if you live in an area with plenty of retirement communities, getting paid to drive elders to various appointments and errands can be a lucrative gig for you.
You can look for driving errands and gigs on websites such as SilverRide (San Francisco and Kansas City areas only), ElderCare.com, and Care.com.
Other ways to make money from your car (besides selling it)
There are numerous other ways you can profit from your vehicle, including the following:
- Posting car repair/detail videos to YouTube and then marketing those videos.
- Taking pets to and from vet appointments.
- Driving people to attractions that have limited/expensive parking.
Final Thoughts
Generally speaking, if you own a car, you’re in a great position to get side hustles for a few hours a week.
Cars are one of those properties that always depreciate in value over time. But getting one or more of these side gigs can at least offset that depreciation and put a little more change in your pocket.
Have you tried any of the above ways to get paid to drive? Can you think of other options for making money with your car, truck, van, SUV? Share these with us in the comments!
