If you feel like your income isn’t enough, or you think you can do more, money-driving can be a decent source of income. All you need is a reliable vehicle and a valid driver’s license.
In this article, we’ll show you 11 ways where you can get paid to drive, each with its average payment.
10 Creative Ways to Get Paid to Drive
We’ve included an overview of our top picks below. For detailed information on each pick, scroll down.
- Children’s Transportation
- Drive for Roadie
- Become a Mover
- Drive for Uber and Lyft
- Deliver Food
- Deliver Groceries
- Place Ads on Your Car
- Become a Tour Driver
- Rent Your Car
- Drive to Vlog
1. Children’s Transportation
Shuttling children can make you a lifesaver when the parents are genuinely too busy to accompany their children to every place they need to go to. While schools solve this problem by providing buses, children often need to go to various other locations.
If you know your way around kids, transporting them around can be a fun and rewarding experience for you.
How to Start
To become a child transporter, you should begin with volunteer work. Organizations like children’s hospitals and family shelters are great places to start. You’ll get some hands-on experience and build your resume that you can use to apply.
Potential Earnings
According to Talent.com, you can make $18.75 an hour or $39,000 a year working as a children’s transporter.
2. Drive for Roadie
Roadie is a delivery platform owned by the well-known delivery company UPS. It’s brilliant because it allows UPS to deliver items quicker and faster with the help of local drivers without hiring and training dedicated delivery drivers — everyone wins.
If you have a car that you love to drive around, why not turn some of those miles into money by delivering packages? You can set your schedule, deliver packages at your convenience, and stop whenever.
How to Start
Sign up with Roadie, enter your personal and vehicle information, have a clean driving and personal record, and you’re good to go.
Potential Earnings
According to Zippia, you can make $17.34 per hour or a little over $36,000 a year while driving for Roadie. It may seem a bit underwhelming, but keep in mind that it’s a flexible side job.
3. Become a Mover
If you have a decent physical shape and access to a van, you can become a mover with little to no experience. Other than handling objects with care and not hurting yourself in the process, there’s not much else required to become one.
How to Start
To become a mover, you should make your services known. Advertise on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube, and spread some flyers around to the locals.
After that, there’s the matter of having a suitable vehicle. Sedans won’t cut it, so you’ll need a van. Fortunately, if you don’t own one, renting can be a good alternative.
Potential Earnings
ZipRecruiter states that you can earn $18 an hour as a mover. That translates to roughly $38,000 a year.
4. Drive for Uber and Lyft
Among the most common methods to make some extra income while driving your car is transporting people using driving apps Uber and Lyft. The demand for rideshares will never stop, and the service is here to stay.
Also, being entirely dependent on your schedule, rideshares can be a supplementary source of income along with your primary job. You can also make the best use of promotions and surges to maximize your earnings within a short time.
How to Start
You should be at least 21 years old with a good driving record to sign up for either rideshare platform. Your car should also be modern enough, as 10-year-old family cars that have been sitting in the garage usually don’t cut it.
Last but not least, your car should pass a safety inspection, which typically checks your tires and the overall suitability of the car to transport people.
Potential Earnings
Drivers may earn up to $24 per hour driving for Uber and Lyft, at least according to Glassdoor. However, this largely depends on your location and how long you’re willing to drive every day.
Uber and Lyft are highly regarded as great work-life balance jobs. It’s even better that they can pay an average of $55,000 a year.
5. Deliver Food
If you like to drive cars from point A to point B but without having people on board, opting for food delivery can be the next best thing.
Food delivery apps are everywhere: DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates, Seamless, and many more.
Food delivery offers flexibility, an almost contactless experience, and decent payment.
How to Start
The requirements to deliver food typically depend on the app you sign up for. For the most part, you need to be 18 years old with a good driving record and have access to a car (personal or rental).
Potential Earnings
The average pay for food delivery is $20 per hour ($41,600 a year) in the U.S. Talent.com based these numbers on 2,291 salaries in 2023.
6. Deliver Groceries
Do you like delivering food but don’t like that sensation of urgency where you need to deliver the meal before it gets cold? Delivering groceries offers a similar feel to it but without the suspenseful timer.
Still, there’s the added time of the shopping process itself. Unlike food delivery, where you wait and pick up an order, grocery delivery services require some patience as you walk those alleys and find the items your customer needs.
Some communication skills are also needed. For instance, you’ll occasionally not find the specific product/brand your customer is looking for, so you’ll need to work it out with them.
How to Start
Start by finding the app that suits your needs the most. Uber, Shipt, and Instacart are among the most popular, and signing up involves downloading the app and providing your personal information. You’ll also need to have access to a car or a scooter, whether owned or rented.
Potential Earnings
While it’s possible to make more, the average grocery shopper in the U.S. makes around $18 per hour (a bit over $38,000 a year), making it a decent entry-level job for students or adults seeking to improve their income.
7. Place Ads on Your Car
Some companies like Carvertise and Wrapify are willing to pay a few hundred dollars every month if you drive around with their ads displayed on your vehicle. The plus here is that you don’t need to do anything else.
Take your car in the morning, go to work, or any other side gig we mentioned on this list, and you’ll be earning money as you drive. This method is a decent way of getting passive income with almost zero extra effort.
How to Start
Sign up for either company using their official websites. Fill in a few pieces of information like your vehicle’s type, model, and year, as well as your home city.
You “may” have a couple of ad options to choose from, but in most cases, you don’t have much choice. Fortunately, most drivers don’t mind whatever is displayed as long as it’s not offending anyone.
Potential Earnings
It’s a little hard to put an accurate estimate on hourly and yearly income over this one, as most drivers use car ads as a passive source of income. Add to that, companies can pay differently per campaign. Nevertheless, you should expect around $180-$250 a month.
8. Become a Tour Driver
If you know your city’s tourist attractions and fancy showing them to tourists, why not become their local guide? Some online companies allow you to create an official private driver profile so you can be visible for tourists to hire.
Your job would involve showing/taking them to highlights where they can have a good time and take photos of their journey. While not a must, knowing some information about the history of the attractions can enrich the experience. Who knows, you may get a good tip as well.
How to Start
The best thing about becoming a tour driver is that being a licensed tour guide isn’t a must. Companies like ToursByLocals allow you to work for them even if you’re a passionate local.
Their application process is as easy as it gets, and you can work as a guide even if you use a rental car.
Potential Earnings
According to Glassdoor, a tour guide makes around $24 per hour or $56,500 a year. You can earn more by working extra or by getting tips from tourists.
9. Rent Your Car
This isn’t a “get paid to drive” gig; it’s more like a “get paid to let others drive” sort of job. If you have a vehicle that spends more time collecting dust in your garage, renting it to someone can be a decent method for passive income.
Since you’ll be entrusting your vehicle to a complete stranger, it’s strongly recommended to do so through trusted rental car companies like Turo, which is essentially Airbnb for cars.
How to Start
Start by downloading Turo on your phone and putting in your information as well as the vehicle you’re willing to rent out. Turo will find potential borrowers and handle the insurance part.
It’ll also give the borrowers a device that allows them to open the car without having to take your key from you. This takes out the fear of having your key duplicated.
Potential Earnings
According to ZipRecruiter, if you’re lending out one car, you should expect a passive income of $23 per hour or roughly $50,000 a year. You may boost these earnings by providing more than one car.
10. Drive to Vlog
Unlike everything we’ve mentioned so far, this one can be the most lucrative, but it can also be the most difficult to do.
You may have come across videos of people recording their driving and camping trips around cities and states. These videos are often calm and quiet, giving people a sense of serenity. You’ll be surprised by the number of people who enjoy watching such videos.
The best aspect is that the car doesn’t even need to be yours. There’s a YouTube channel called Rental Car Camping where the owner rents cars and takes 30-minute-long videos of how he spends the night in different places and weather conditions. Some of his videos get millions of views.
How to Start
You’ll need a good-quality camera and a feel for the best videography angles. You may start with your phone and slowly build your way up to getting a professional camera and microphone.
You won’t need to download an application or work for someone else, but you’ll need time and dedication, as you won’t be making any money for a considerable amount of time.
Potential Earnings
Getting an estimate on vlog earnings is nearly impossible, as your videos earn more money when they get more viewers. To give you an example, every 1,000 views yield $18.
Similar Tutorials to Check Out
If you don’t find the gig you’re looking for, consider checking these out too:
- HyperCar: HyperCar offers similar services to Turo if, for any reason, you decide that Turo isn’t for you.
- Jobs Like Uber Eats: Do you love the concept of Uber Eats but not Uber Eats itself? Find seven jobs that are almost identical to it here.
Final Words
Whether it’s by transporting people or food, there’s always a way to make some extra cash while sitting behind the wheel. You can also amp up your earnings by wrapping your car in paid ads or renting it out to someone else.
Last but not least, you may start your driving vlog, which can earn you a lot of money in the long run in exchange for some dedication in the beginning.
