Can You Drive For Uber In A Rental Car?

One of the downsides to being an Uber driver is that you are very dependent on your car and your smartphone. It is not too big of a deal if your smartphone breaks, but if you have an issue with your car you can’t just go out and get another one at the drop of a hat. So can you drive for Uber in a rental car if you need to?

Watch this video to see the answer, then read the video transcript below.

Why would you use a rental car for Uber?

Your car may break down from time to time, you may get into an accident, something may happening where your car goes out of commission.

What I have found is that a lot of drivers that find themselves in this situation, they ask me if they can use a rental car to drive for Uber.

Obviously if you are driving for Uber, you need a car to do it, or if you are delivering, you need a car to do it. When your car goes out of commission you have no way to make money. The short answer is, “No, you actually can’t drive for Uber in a rental car because Uber requires your name to be on the insurance card.” You wouldn’t be able to add that vehicle to your profile.

Your name has to be on the insurance card. You can’t do that with rentals

Let’s say you get into an accident and you go rent a vehicle from Hertz, or something like that. You wouldn’t be able to add that vehicle to your Uber profile and that is why you wouldn’t be able to drive. Do drivers still do it? I have heard of stories of drivers going out with rental cars and, even though they can’t add it their partner profile, they will still go out and drive a red Mitsubishi when they have a black Toyota Camry on file. Obviously you risk being deactivated because the first passenger that says something to Uber, Uber is going to reach out to you and probably temporarily deactivate you and see what is going on.

I think this most commonly comes up in accidents because when you get into an accident, Uber immediately deactivates you from the platform once the accident is reported by either you or the passenger. They do that because they feel like your car is unfit. If it is just something cosmetic, you will still get temporarily deactivated, until you can send them some pictures.

If you do get into an accident and your car is out of commission, not only do you have not have a way to make money, but you also have to pay if you are using Uber’s insurance, a $1000 deductible.

Let’s say you find yourself in an accident and now your car needs to be repaired and you have to pay $1000 deductible. You have no way of making that $1000 because you can no longer drive for Uber if you don’t have money saved up.

That is why this situation comes up and it is a really tough situation for drivers who find themselves getting into accidents or when their car goes out of commission.

What to do if you find yourself without a car

If you guy find yourselves without a vehicle and you still need to make money, try to get added to the insurance of someone you know.

For example, my wife is on my insurance car for my car and vice versa. I actually added her car to my Uber profile as a backup just in case. If something happened to my car and I needed to get it repaired, or accident, or whatever and I still needed to make money, now I can go use my wife’s car to drive for Uber. It is always good to have that backup plan just in case. Sometimes people ask me if they can get a friend to share a car with. That won’t work most of the time because your insurance won’t allow you to just put random people on.

In order to do that, you need commercial insurance. Sometimes insurance companies will allow you to put your roommate on the car. Even though it might not be your family member, you might be able to do your roommate. You need to check with your insurance. What it boils down to is Uber wants to see your name on the insurance card in order for you to be able to drive that car. That car doesn’t have to be in your name, the registration doesn’t have to be in your name, but your name does have to be in the insurance card.

You can get away with using another car for delivery, but it’s still against policy

I have heard from some drivers that have gotten in this situation and had gone and driven for delivery services with someone else’s car. Let’s say you get into an accident, your car is out of commission and you have a friend’s car that you can use. You won’t be able to do Uber with that, but you can go and use delivery because with delivery you go to the restaurant, you pick up the food and then drop it off at the house, and nobody even sees your vehicle.

It makes sense, but you do need to watch out because I have reached out to DoorDash and Postmates and asked about this. Postmates told me that you are not allowed to do this because you wouldn’t be covered by their insurance during that time/ DoorDash actually said that you could do it, but I am not sure exactly how the insurance would work in that situation.

I understand, you get into an accident and you need to pay that deductible, or you really need to make money, you have to figure out ways to hustle and make that money. It is a choice between paying rent and driving delivery service with a rental car, I think most people are probably going to do the latter. Just make sure that you are aware of the risks.

Renting a car through Uber-approved services

There are a couple of exceptions of being able to drive with a rental car. You will never be able to go out and rent a random rental car, but Uber does have a partnership with Enterprise rental. You absolutely have to go through that partnership and it is only in certain cities. That is something to check out. Then there are a couple cool startups in limited cities.

A couple that come to mind are EverCar and HyreCar and they basically allow you to rent on demand vehicles that are eligible for rideshare services like Uber and Lyft. We have a bunch of those types of options in our new vehicle marketplace. I hope you guys enjoyed the video, feel free to like, comment and subscribe and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care.