6 Steps For Setting Up Your Uber/Lyft Car

What are the tasks and things you need to do so that your car is ready to go out and drive for Uber and Lyft? Stick around, because at the end of the video, I’m going to share with you the sixth step, which most drivers don’t even consider. It can be very, very lucrative.

Take a look at the video below, then scroll to the transcript to see the points Jay covers.

Recently I purchased a new car. This car right here. This is my 2017 bad-ass black Honda Accord Hybrid. But before I could drive it for Uber and Lyft, I had to do these things. So what were those things? Let’s jump right into it.

Get Rideshare Insurance!

First thing I did was get rideshare insurance. So if you’re like me, you thought, “Rideshare insurance, man, that sounds really, really expensive.” Well as it turns out, it’s not. It’s maybe depending on the company you go with, it can be 20% more expensive.

But if you work with Geico, which I did, it’s actually turned out to be less. So what you got to know about insurance is that if you just drive with your personal insurance, you’re gambling with your financial future. You need to get the ride share insurance. And I did a whole video just on rideshare insurance, and we have an insurance marketplace where you can find insurers in your state..

Upload Your Documents

It’s really simple to do. Both Uber and Lyft lets you do it right through the app. And you’re basically going to take a picture and upload it or you’ve already taken the picture and it sits on your phone and you’re going to upload that. You got to put in the color, the make and the model. All of that and get it in there.

Get Your Vehicle Inspected

The one thing that you’re going to have to go out and do is to get your car inspected. If you’ve got a Hub, either an Uber or Lyft Hub, that’s the easiest way to do it because it’s free. So in San Francisco I’ve got two Hubs, one for each about within 10 minutes of each other.

What I did is I went to the Uber hub. I asked for a paper inspection because that’s one you can take a picture of. And the reason you want to do that is to take a picture of it because then you can use it for the other service. So I generally go to Uber, get it inspected, get the paper inspection and take a picture of it. And then I uploaded that to the Lyft through the Lyft app. Then Lyft has your inspection form and then you’ve got to wait a little bit to get it approved.

The other thing you can do when you go to the Hubs is you can get all your trade dress. If you don’t have a beacon, you can try and get a beacon from Uber. But you can do all those things when you go out and get your car inspected.

Apply Trade Dress

Trade dress is basically the stickers you need tasty legal. You want to, as you can see in this picture here, put the two in the front and the two in the back. This way, when passengers look for your car, they see the stickers and they know you’re an Uber and a Lyft driver.

Put the stickers in the windshields in the front and in the back. At the Uber and Lyft hub, they’ll tell you exactly how to do it, but it’s not that complicated. Just stick them in and you’re good to go.

Prepare Your Car For Passengers

The things you absolutely need: You want to have tissues in your car, and the ability for your passengers to charge up their phones. As you can see again here in this picture, I have a lot of chargers. And passengers get impressed that there’s a lot of chargers.

And you need to have tissue. So if someone’s coughing or blowing their nose, you can hand it to them. I don’t even offer gum anymore and I definitely don’t offer water. I’m really bare bones because I want to keep my expenses low and it does not seem to make any difference to my rating. I still have a really high rating.

So get those cords, make sure that at a minimum, you have an Android and an iPhone charger. Okay, I’ll show you. This is a great little tool here. This way you got three different chargers, okay, connected. And then I have an extension cord that’s connected to that. This thing goes all the way back into the back seat.

That, and then on this side I’ve got another iPhone one and then I’ve got another Android one. So I’ve basically got two of each in the back and that’s plenty. And then if somebody sits in the front, I’ve got chargers up here too. So I have plenty of chargers. And your passengers will be very happy and very impressed even if they don’t use them.

And that will affect your rating more than handing them gum or water. Trust me, save your money. You Don’t have to spend a lot of money on gifts.

Self Promote!

The sixth thing that I told you that a lot of people don’t even think about is you want to set up your car so that you can self promote.

There are a few things. One is my business card. I’ve got literally hundreds of these business cards. Some people say, “Do you do anything else?” I say, “Yeah man, I just started a podcast. It’s for passengers and for drivers.” So I hand them a card, right? Because the more people I can get checking out my podcast, the more popular it is, the more downloads I get, the more I can charge advertisers to be on the podcast.

I also put signs on my windshields for the podcast. And another thing you can do is you can set up your license plates, so that they advertise for you as well.

The other thing that’s useful about the business card is if somebody asks you, you know, “Can you really make a living doing this?” “Oh heck yeah. If I work a full week, I can make $2000.” They might be interested in becoming a driver. Hand them your card, tell them to go to your website or put your referral code, if you don’t have a website, put your referral code on your business card.

And just hand them that and say, “Go type that in. And it’ll show you exactly what kind of an offer they’re currently offering in this market.”

Self-promote. Don’t be embarrassed to promote yourself. Go make some extra money on top of this. Get started on your plan B. Self-promotion.

Thanks for watching the video. I hope you learn something here. Y’all go out and have a great day. Be safe out there!