Before my current businesses took off, I looked everywhere and at anything for the possibility to make extra money on the side. I wanted to be able to pay my debts off faster and save extra money.
After I had my kids, I wanted the extra money to set it aside for birthdays, Christmas, and to pay for them to be in lessons and sports.
Bottom line: I always had a reason to have a side hustle.
I’ve never owned a truck, but I’ve always thought it would make the perfect tool to set up a bunch of different side hustles.
If you own your own truck (or SUV or van for that matter), congratulations! You have an in-demand piece of equipment you can easily use in tons of different ways to make extra money. Chances are you invested in that truck, and now you can make it work for you.
So… what are your options? You can do anything from local deliveries to landscaping, to advertising, and quite a few things in between. Here are eleven ways to make extra money with your truck.
1. Rent Out Your Truck
While you can offer your services, sometimes people just need to rent a truck for a job or for the day. You can offer your truck for rent so other people can do whatever they need.
There are likely requirements your state will need you to meet, like third-party operator insurance, so make sure to check your state and local laws.
Using a truck-share platform might make it simple. Options include:
2. Make Local Deliveries with Your Truck
By far one of the quickest and easiest ways to earn extra money with your truck is to start delivering.
There are so many different opportunities for deliveries it’s a snap to find something which suits your personality and schedule.
Food
The rise in food delivery since the beginning of the pandemic was like a rocket taking off, and it hasn’t slowed down in the months and years since. You can deliver meals with services like DoorDash, GrubHub, Uber Eats, and Postmates.
If picking up and dropping off hot meals isn’t your thing, you can deliver groceries and alcohol with Postmates and Instacart.
Maybe you have a small bakery in your town that needs daily deliveries early in the morning.
If that works with your schedule, it could be perfect for you.
Furniture
Running an ad or two on Craigslist for furniture delivery can be lucrative, especially if you cost less than the company your client has purchased from. But don’t limit yourself to just people who’ve bought new furniture from a store.
Antique stores, second-hand stores, smaller furniture businesses, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace purchases, and even garage sales all have a need for furniture delivery.
With a pickup truck, you’re perfectly positioned to help people who don’t have one send and receive new or used furniture.
Flowers
While the big national flower sellers typically have their own delivery, your local flower businesses or garden centers probably don’t. It can be as simple as giving them your number and offering daily deliveries at a specific time.
With a pickup truck, you have all the room you need to fit plants and flowers for delivery.
Firewood
Delivering firewood can be a lifesaver for a lot of people, particularly during the winter months. Not all wood companies offer delivery and a cord of wood isn’t moveable in a car.
Whether you want to be casual and just place an ad for those who can’t get delivery, or strike up a deal to do all deliveries for a company, delivering firewood is a good way to earn extra money with your truck.
Building Supplies
Smaller building supply companies may not offer delivery, and some items are too big or bulky to transport in a car.
If you have a company who needs help with deliveries, this could be a potential opportunity for you. Think about wood mills and scrap yards as well.
Pick Up and Drop Off Donations
Lots of people love to donate their old furniture, clothing, and household items to various charities.
Listing yourself as someone who can come pick up these items and deliver them to the charity of their choice can be hugely helpful and a great side hustle.
3. Dump Hauls and Clean Fill
While it might not be the prettiest way to use your truck, being available to haul items and garbage to the dump for people is a great way to use your truck to make extra money.
In fact, this one is almost always a slam dunk – everyone needs things hauled away to the dump at some point or another, and are very, very willing for someone else to come do it for them.
You can charge in a couple of different ways: all-inclusive of the dumping fees, or your customer can pay the dump fees and your fee separately.
Research the cost of dumping items and typical load weights before deciding which way you want to go.
Clean fill is leftover material from excavating at construction sites which can be reused in other construction projects because it’s free of anything toxic. It usually has dirt, rocks, gravel, and even glass and ceramics.
A lot of the time people are looking for clean fill in order to grade a surface, fill holes, or build artificial mounds and hills.
So if you can connect with construction and landscaping companies, you can potentially fill a gap by delivering clean fill to the people who want it, and removing it from the people who need it gone.
4. Landscaping Services
There are a few ways you can use your truck to offer landscaping services, too.
If it fits your schedule, you can list yourself as a landscaping business, and offer services like grass cutting, weeding, gardening, leaf removal, and other lawn care duties.
You can use your truck to cart your equipment and haul away anything, like bagged leaves, that need to be removed. For this, you’ll have to set yourself up as a business with all the appropriate permits and insurance, so if that’s beyond what you’re looking for, this isn’t a good fit.
But if you want a fairly steady, if seasonal in some locations, job to do with your truck, this one is legitimate.
Another option is to connect with local landscapers and lawn maintenance companies and offer to do product deliveries. You could deliver anything from soil to mulch, to rocks and gravel, to pond supplies, to water barrels, to sod, to equipment, and more.
You could go one step further and introduce yourself to the wholesale suppliers of these products and offer delivery through them for their clients.
Like lawn maintenance, unless you’re in a temperate climate, this is probably a seasonal job. But the potential is there to use your truck to make a lot of extra money in the seasons they operate.
5. Snow Plowing
If you live in a climate with four seasons, snow plowing is a good way to make money with your truck for four to six months of the year. And it’s a nice way to turn your landscaping side hustle into a year-round opportunity.
While it does require you to invest in a plow for your truck, it’s a good investment if you live in a snowy area.
You can plow for private businesses with parking lots, as well as pick up driveway clients. Especially those with longer driveways, or long country laneways.
People pay well for someone who can come plow their driveway whenever it snows, without having to call around and find someone or shovel it themselves.
Whether or not you need special licensing or permits varies from state to state, so make sure you check your local requirements. Some require nothing for plowing on private property, and others do.
Also, check with your insurance to see if you can or need to carry extra.
6. Use Your Truck as Advertising
Advertising always has money flowing into it.
And for this, you don’t have to do anything special or any extra work beyond just driving around in your truck to make the extra money. If you’re willing to advertise for a local company or small business, you could try a couple of different routes.
First, and easiest, you could have them pay to wrap your truck. In this way, you function as a perpetual billboard for the product or service of that company. Check out Carvertise.
Have them pay you monthly for renting this “ad space” and you’re making money with your truck without even trying. This could potentially even be a company you already work for, but it doesn’t have to be.
Second, you could tow a sign around behind your truck. This is a little more involved since you’ll need a towing package and you’ll be towing something a lot of the time that you’re out and about driving.
But if you’re staying local for the day, you can offer to be a roving billboard for something or someone. This works great for companies trying to attract customers to their store on the specific day you’ll be towing the sign, maybe for a big blowout sale or during a festival.
7. Offer Moving Services
One of the most common ways to make money with your truck is by moving stuff.
You can set yourself up as just the delivery service, meaning the people who are hiring you will load and unload your truck, and you will just drive from point A to point B.
This is definitely the least work while still making a profit. If a person or a business is moving locally, this could be a great place to position yourself to make extra cash with your truck.
There are a couple of ways to charge for this service as well. Either as a whole price that you’ve quoted, or a set price per trip plus a certain price per mile.
Alternatively, you can start your own moving service. You can be the one who does the heavy lifting of loading your truck, driving it, and unloading at the new location.
As long as the person or company has packed boxes and emptied furniture and appliances, you’ll be there moving it for them. For this, you might want to have a friend or business partner that can help you out.
For both of these options, you’ll want to add extra insurance that covers damage to their property, in case something is broken or lost during the move.
8. Amazon Flex
You have the perfect vehicle to be an Amazon Flex delivery driver.
With a truck, you can deliver items which are oddly shaped or larger sized, so you’re in demand. Basically, you’d be signing up to deliver any Amazon orders coming through your local Amazon facility or office.
You typically need to sign up in shifts, and they range from 3-6 hours depending on the day and the facility you’re working with. This works best if you have a schedule which allows you to take shifts during the day since the evening and weekend ones are competitive.
But don’t rule it out even if you are looking for evenings and weekends, since you have a truck, they may need you for special deliveries.
Amazon pays anywhere from $18-$25 per hour while you’re delivering during your block, and pay is on the higher end for bigger vehicles.
Don’t forget to keep mileage records – while Amazon Flex doesn’t pay you for gas, you can claim the cost of gas on your taxes.
9. Start a Towing Service
This one is a little more involved, but if you want a permanent way to make extra money with your truck you can start a towing service.
First, you’ll need to figure out what equipment you need, and any permits and extra insurance.
You’ll also want to decide what kind of limits you’ll have on your business:
- Will you just do pick-ups for the local police?
- What hours will you be available?
- Will you have the equipment to tow someone out of snow?
- Will you just focus on ATV vehicles?
- Do you have a storage facility?
Maybe you don’t even want to go full-out with a tow service, and only offer to tow cars for people from point A to point B.
For example, maybe you can list yourself as someone who will tow a car that won’t start to a local mechanic. Or a dead car to the scrap yard.
In this case, connect yourself to the local auto scrap facilities and mechanics and ask them to keep your card on file for any towing service they might need.
10. Pick Up Scrap Metal with Your Truck
Scrap metal can be a lucrative game if you’re reliable and fast.
Listing yourself online as someone who does free scrap metal pickup means you can have access to all different kinds of possible metals to sell without having to pick through too much.
If you like to take things apart, this could be a really fun way to make extra money. Of course, with this method you’re not getting paid by the person you’re picking up from, but paid by the metal you take to the metal scrapyard.
Another way to make money with scrap is to drive your truck around the night before or the morning of garbage day and grab anything metal you can take to scrap.
Again, you’re not getting paid until you actually scrap the metal you find, but it can still be a fun (and free!) way to make extra money.
Of course, you could charge people for picking up the metal, but you’ll have to check your local listings and see what’s out there already.
If other people offer scrap pick up for free, you won’t find many people willing to pay you upfront to pick theirs up.
11. Do Odd Jobs Which Require a Truck
One way to cover a bunch of the things listed above is to list yourself as someone who can do odd jobs around your neighborhood that need a truck.
Painting, gutter cleaning, garage clean up, yard maintenance, leaf removal, anything that requires moving bigger pieces of equipment or supplies could be something that someone in your neighborhood needs and is willing to pay you for.
You’re not boxing yourself in with only one service, the work is always different, and you can ask for referrals and keep a steady flow of client work coming in.
Start Making Money with Your Truck
Now that you know, what do you do next?
To choose your side hustle, honestly consider these questions:
- What is your schedule like, and how much time do you want to devote to making the extra money?
- How much physical work do you want to do?
- Are you willing to get extra licensing, insurance, and/or permits to do the work?
- Do you want to be the only one who drives your truck?
- What kind of outreach and advertising are you comfortable or willing to do for your side hustle?
Hopefully, these eleven things have set your mind to work with what you could do to make extra money with your truck. Maybe reading these sparked some new ideas about what you could do.
Is there anything we missed? What’s the most exciting idea for you? Leave a comment below!
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