Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
“Real Life Investing” with Jason and Rachel Wagner is a multifaceted podcast that blends insights from real estate, entrepreneurship, family life, and political discussions. Known for their candid and engaging style, the Wagner’s explore how their conservative values shape their approach to both business and life. They often discuss their personal journeys in real estate, offering practical tips on topics like how to buy a house or investment property while navigating a challenging housing market.
In addition to real estate, the show frequently delves into entrepreneurial lessons, highlighting the importance of mindset, perseverance, and staying focused on long-term goals. They are open about the challenges they’ve faced and provide valuable advice for anyone looking to head into entrepreneurship or seek the best version of themselves.
Dinner table conversations are central to the podcast. The Wagner’s discuss their experiences balancing various topics that families face, while often featuring guests who share similar journeys. Political conversations are explored from a conservative perspective, particularly when they touch on how these beliefs influence their business decisions and personal growth.
With a blend of relatable stories and expert advice, “Real Life Investing” is a show that appeals to a wide audience, from aspiring entrepreneurs and real estate investors, to those seeking inspiration in their personal lives.
Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
56. Renting Tesla's on Turo: Profits, Logistics, & Cybertruck Adventures
We bought a Cybertruck. We rent it out on Turo. Here’s how it’s going and here’s the story of why we decided it was a worthwhile investment.
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Life Investing Podcast with Jason and Rachel Wagner. We want to talk about kind of a cool little thing that we've been doing with Turo, the car sharing platform. So, rachel, why don't you tell people everyone about the mastermind plan here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Jason came to me back in 2020 and wanted to buy a Tesla Model Y and I was like are you kidding me? We can't afford that. We can't buy a Tesla. What are you talking about? Back?
Speaker 1:in 2020. Back in 2020.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's like no, no, no, look at this great plan I have. We're just going to rent it out. We're going to rent it out on Turo to other people because we don't always need two vehicles. You know, they steal it or they're crazy, I don't know. It just seems like a really bad idea, right? And you're like, oh, come on, just trust people.
Speaker 1:Okay. The response wasn't just come on, just trust people Pretty close. The reason I felt like that was a good idea is because, tesla, you can only see exactly where the car is. There's a GPS on it, right, so we can pull up on the app. You can see exactly where the car is. There's a level of comfort.
Speaker 2:And you were like Turo has insurance.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, turo, and yeah, turo has an insurance.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So I just like I wouldn't like it rent out our minivan, right there's. There's no gps on our minivan. We just have to trust people like, okay, you're supposed to be back at this time, where's the car? You know?
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't remember the conversation about the gps, but that is certainly that's true.
Speaker 1:That's the biggest piece. Why I wanted to do it was because tesla had that technology where you could just see exactly and you can have some controls from afar?
Speaker 2:yep, yeah, so we did that. We bought the Model Y and we didn't pay for it. For what a year. Yeah, our payments were covered for a year through rentals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we had rented it out probably like maybe four times a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like three to four times a month and people were paying like between $200 and $250 a day to rent it at the time because it was the hottest it was the hottest car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was back when they were very new on the market. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And people were just very interested in renting it just to try it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Most of the people who rented it were just like I'm thinking about buying one, but I want to test it out.
Speaker 1:And so we did it. We did it over the course of the year, and we only had to pay 200 a month to own the vehicle so we used it a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean because it was only gone a couple times a month yeah, yeah, so it was and we never had any issues right it always came back and yeah people took good care of it and yeah, yeah, because, and this was back when there weren't like a ton of chargers either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. We kind of recognized that with the higher asking price of the rental, it did attract a higher quality client. So if you're going to be paying $200 to $300 a day to rent it, or $250 to $250, it was a higher price, so people were just going to take care of it a little bit more, and that's actually what we ended up finding. Only a couple of times I believe that I remember like they brought it back with I rented it, I let somebody who was going to drive it to prom and they had all of the sequins dresses that the girls were wearing and like the glitter was everywhere and I'm like.
Speaker 1:I am never allowing the vehicle to be rented for prom yeah, that was the worst thing that ever happened.
Speaker 2:Not that big of a deal. That was funny though so yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So now we've done the same exact thing and we bought the cyber truck yeah, now the cyber truck is a hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1:That was the foundation series, and I think it ended up being like $110,000 out the door with taxes and fees and whatnot. Our payment we put down $25,000 into the vehicle and so our payment is about $1,300. Okay, Ouch, yeah. So we rent the Cybertruck doing the exact same thing. Now this is our third vehicle. Now it's not a primary vehicle. It is available whenever we would need it, but it's not something we drive every day. And so I have it out on Turo and just within the first few months of doing this I mean, it's October 21st right now and let's see, we've already earned $3, four hundred dollars. We've made two payments so far of that would be twenty six hundred, so we've made thirty four hundred. We have another eleven hundred coming in from bookings that are already booked and so far it seems to be doing okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been working. And we've only had one horror story.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess kind of we kind of had like a couple we had a little a ding. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't anything major. So yeah, somebody had a little bit of a.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So how this whole process works is that I have a Realtor lockbox. It's a realtor lockbox, it's a century lock lockbox. It scrambles the code and I just leave the truck parked in my driveway and the customer comes. I give them the one day code for the lockbox, they grab the key out of there. I send them three tutorial videos to watch, to like how to operate the truck, because just different. And then they're on their way and so I never meet them.
Speaker 2:I give them a lockbox code. We've got a ring cam at the door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've got a ring cam and again we can always see where the vehicle is. And so, yeah, I never actually meet them. And they take it for one day to three days and then they bring it back and they leave in the driveway and they put the lockbox or the key back in the lockbox and they go and again, I just I never meet them.
Speaker 2:And you provide them like video tutorials on how to do the basic stuff of working the vehicle. Just the basic Tesla tutorials and they choose up front, like do they want to charge it or do they want to bring it back? Yeah, there's a couple.
Speaker 1:Yep, there's a couple add-ons, Just like you would a regular rental right, yeah, if they, if they supercharge it while they have it out. You know it bills back to my credit card and then I just actually what's really cool is that Turo now has the ability to link your Tesla account so that you don't have to manually build them back. It just does it for you, which is super awesome. It has that functionality for tolls as well. It's not as good, though. It's Illinois, Illinois reporting the tolls. Getting it to the platform is like it's not that seamless imagine that yeah yeah, all right, so let's get into the juicy stuff here.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we just had a guy take it this last weekend and he came picked it up and then he messages me and he's like hey, man, is the truck still drive if there's a zero percent battery? Well we had a.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a little bit of a heads up because we were leaving scarlet soccer game and you're like, oh, the truck's supposed to be back by now. And I'm like, well, it's not. I haven't gotten any notification that there's been any movement. And so I open up the app and I look at the truck and I was like, oh, it's got three percent battery and he's not near a supercharger and he's over an hour away. It's definitely not going to be back. And like two seconds later, jason gets this message hey man, does the car stop driving if it hits 0%?
Speaker 1:Let me read it to you. This is better. Hey, your reservation ended at noon. What's your ETA? That's me texting him. He says I'm charging it because it was on one.
Speaker 2:Which he wasn't charging it.
Speaker 1:And also, you live about an hour from me, I'm 35 minutes from you. Will it cut off at zero? Okay, please charge it. Yes, I can't imagine the truck will continue to drive at 0%. I've been to two charging stations. They weren't working. So come to find out he went to non-Tesla superchargers. Or he went to non-Tesla stations in which I didn't have the attachment for him to go there Because there's charger stations all over the place, but fair mistake, fair mistake.
Speaker 2:Not everybody knows that just those generic chargers work for Tesla yeah.
Speaker 1:I said okay, fair mistake, not everybody knows that. Just those generic chargers work for Tesla. Yeah, I said okay, drive safe, keep me updated. And then he says what's your phone number?
Speaker 2:Well, and so I'm still monitoring on the app because I'm like this is not going to work out. There's no way this guy is going to make it. There's no way he's going to make it. And I'm watching and I can see he's driving 90 miles an hour on the highway with 1% left and he's got like five miles to go and I'm like dude.
Speaker 1:So when you're driving an electric vehicle, you want to preserve energy, and so you don't go fast.
Speaker 2:And normally, like I haven't done it in the Cybertruck, so I don't know if it works on there, but in the Y it will say to you, as you're heading to your destination, keep it under this speed.
Speaker 1:If you want to make it there, right, yeah, yeah, he's going 90 miles an hour. He's going 90 miles an hour. Here's what we did learn is that the truck will still drive below zero zero.
Speaker 2:So on zero, it does drive yeah, it said you'll reach your destination with negative two. And so we're like does that mean it's gonna allow him to go to negative two? And so I'm googling, you know like what happens? And it said there's a small amount of reserve, but it doesn't tell you how much reserve there is yeah, so it's just an open question.
Speaker 1:So I guess yeah. So he made it to the supercharger. This is the craziest thing. So he made it to the supercharger and as he's going to drive up to it on negative two, the truck dies.
Speaker 2:Right in front of the supercharger.
Speaker 1:He's like eight feet away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so not close enough to plug in.
Speaker 1:No, and he's forward-facing. So he's not backward-facing because you have to back into these superchargers, because the charging port is in the back. He's forward-facing and so he calls me. He's like hey, man, how do I get this thing into neutral?
Speaker 2:You won't believe this, but the truck died like eight feet away from the charger and I just want to get into neutral so I could push it and you know we'll get it connected. And no panic in his voice, right, just like super chill. Yeah, well, he whatever he's.
Speaker 1:You know he just kind of made it sound like you know, driving on e was like something he did. You know, like he, he ended up saying man, this is why I'm not gonna get during this conversation. He's like man, this is why I'm not gonna get electric vehicle, because you know what? It's a lot harder to like get back going again if you just got a gas vehicle. You just gotta get some gas and put it in there and like you keep going and I'm like okay, it's, it's very clear.
Speaker 1:like you, you've been in this situation before you drive on E, just because, like you could, just you could just tell, and so, anyways, I'm like trying to figure out, like, how do I get into the neutral? I don't know, it's a good question, and you really can't do anything when the car runs out of battery. Like you can't do anything Right, and that is kind of the scary part, because everything locks up on you. So we sent a tow truck out there through the tesla app. I went out there and I thought that they would send out like a charger person to like charge you, but that's not. That's not the case. I don't think they do that they used to do that.
Speaker 2:I thought they used to do that, I don't. They must not do it anymore, because now they yeah.
Speaker 1:so now they just they send out a tow truck that would take you to a charger. Well, we just needed the tow truck to tow it eight feet. Well, the first guy that came out, he's like Tesla. Gave me their number. He's like but it's a Cybertruck, I don't know what I'm doing, and so he's like we've done plenty of Teslas but honestly haven't done a Cybertruck.
Speaker 1:So first guy couldn't help him and he wanted to charge him $80 for literally doing nothing. And so now I'm hearing it from the customer who's like, man Jason, this guy, he came out here, he didn't do anything, and now he wants to charge me $80. I'm like, well, I don't know, it's a call, it's a service call. He and I'm like, oh man, so now I got, it's got a good point right. So I'm the middleman calling the tow truck company and saying, hey, man, he went out there and literally didn't do anything. He's like, yeah, but he's got to get paid. I'm like, yeah, but he didn't do anything. And he's like, okay, I'm going to send out another guy. And, long story short, the second guy came out, didn't speak English, but at least was able to tow the truck eight feet and get it connected.
Speaker 1:Oh, and in the meantime, here's the funny part. So I'm on the phone with the customer the whole time and I've never met him, but I was doing a showing nearby and I knew where the truck was. I'm like, oh, I'm only five minutes away from him, let's go check out the scene. Oh, I'm only five minutes away from him, let's go check out the scene. And so I did an undercover. Undercover. Just sit there and he is at a. He's at a supercharger that is just jam-packed. I've never seen so many Teslas parked in full at the supercharger. And everybody is like staring at this tow truck with the cyber truck, you know trying to back it up into this space and everybody's just like they've got their family out of their car, they're watching, they're going up to him. It's just like it's a scene.
Speaker 2:I know I was cracking up. You call me and you're like, hey, I'm here. And I was like, oh, how's it going? I haven't made myself known, I'm just sitting here watching the Cybertruck on a tow truck.
Speaker 1:I was just like, oh, my God, it's kind of comical. Yeah, and so, anyways, here's what happens. He does finally get it connected to the supercharger and he calls me. He's like Jason, we've got it, but it's not charging. I'm like, oh, I think I read about this is that you have to jump it. There's another smaller battery that you have to jump to unlock charging the big battery. And so I told him that he's like dude, this guy doesn't speak english, it's so.
Speaker 1:So, again, I'm making so many phone calls back to the tow company and I'm telling him I'm like hey, I think you have to do this. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll talk to my driver. And anyways, ends up happening they finally get it charged. We get the notification that the, the cyber truck, is charging and he calls me and I'm like dude, let's go, because it has been five hours since it died. It has been five hours and I'm sitting there watching this guy. I'm like dude. This guy looks like he's just about to bail and he told me over the phone that he wanted to bail. He's like dude, the first tow truck driver. He's like dude, you should just leave the car. He's like man, I'm not going to do that, though.
Speaker 2:He's like you know, but I do got to get to work. I'm shocked he didn't leave the car. I mean, I thought for sure with that first, like when he ran out of battery. I thought he was just going to leave it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like, yeah, yeah, I thought he was going to leave it too. So then he gets it all charged up and I'm thinking, you know, it's like it's like six o'clock 6 pm and he's already he was supposed to return it at noon and he's like, hey, hey, so is it gonna be like, you know, like another full day charge or another full day that I have to pay for for having the vehicle? And I'm like, yeah, I think so. He's like, well, well, in that case, I think I just want to keep it another day.
Speaker 1:He's like I just want to get my money. I'm like, okay, I said, all right, well, we'll just extend your trip and keep it. And you know, whatever, there's nobody, nobody behind you, so you can. And so that evening he's like driving it all over and I get a notification that says charge the truck because the battery life is like down at five. I know. And what's funny is that when we were having a conversation about him asking if he could keep it longer, I'm like, yeah, sure, I said you know, just make sure you don't get yourself in this situation again.
Speaker 2:And he almost did, I know. I opened it up and I was like what, this thing is down to 7%, like what, oh man.
Speaker 1:So funny, so funny, so funny. But no, it came back in one piece and we're all squared away. So yeah.
Speaker 2:So here's a million dollar question. You obviously get rated as a host for the vehicles and then you get to rate the renters. So what did you rate this guy?
Speaker 1:I gave him a four. He gave him a four out of five. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And why did you give him a four?
Speaker 1:Because actually I was impressed that he didn't leave, because I thought that was going to be the case, that he was just going to abandon the vehicle and then he would have got a zero or like a one. But no, he was nice the entire time. He picked up my phone calls, he called me back, you know, he kind of kept me updated and whatsoever, but at least he didn't leave, yeah. And so I gave him a four and I wrote in the comment took care of the car, because it came back in one piece, right yeah, it did and clean, it was clean and yeah relatively clean and I said one small hiccup but would invite him to to rent again would you?
Speaker 1:I, yeah, I would, honestly, I would like I actually liked the guy. I thought he was great. I thought he was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I would just tell him don't get in that situation again. But the thing is is that he probably would get himself in that situation just because no chance, I would run to him again.
Speaker 2:But you and I are different, yeah.
Speaker 1:I give people chances.
Speaker 2:You do people usually learn from their mistakes. Well so I guess he did, because he didn't take it to zero, he just took it down to six right or seven. It got close.
Speaker 1:You know who's to say that. He was gonna, you know, bring it down to zero again.
Speaker 2:But you know it got close and so yeah, I would I would run to him again how many rentals do you think we've had in total between the two vehicles?
Speaker 1:oh, I can tell you. Oh, okay, yeah, I actually have that stat. The truck has completed nine trips. We've got like five pending, right now like upcoming okay and the model y for the. Over the course of the year it did 38 trips 38.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, okay, so like 47 trips in total and we've only had one real horror story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, and that wasn't really a horror story. A horror story would be.
Speaker 2:Well, we thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be abandoned an hour away from our house with no charge, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1:That would have turned it into a horror story. Yeah, but the funny thing about this guy was he's like so, jason, so who's paying for the tow truck? And I'm like, well, you kind of got yourself in this situation, don't you think it's like something you should cover? He's like, yeah, man, but like it, it ran out of battery and I was like from from your doing right, it was like he wanted to pin it on me.
Speaker 2:it's like cover yeah, it was my problem yeah and you're like well, could you have gotten out of that situation without the tow truck?
Speaker 1:he's like no yeah, yeah, yeah, so anyways, yeah, just just a funny debacle there, but yeah, so that's tarot. So far, so good. I mean, look, it's the same thing as renting apartments, it's, you know, you're not. It's not always going to go well. Majority of time is going to go well, but you just need to bake in some things of like somebody's probably going to do something stupid yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:What would have been unfortunate is if you had another rental lined up for that day and yeah, that would have sucked then you have to cancel that and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahceling on somebody Changing somebody's plans would have been a double whammy there. Yeah, but overall, yeah, no, pretty good, pretty good. Somebody's probably going to ask well, how does the insurance work if somebody gets in a car accident? So you can choose your different deductible amounts. I actually choose the 90%, which is I take 90% of the revenue. T, which is I take 90% of the revenue. Turo takes 10% as their fee and that actually covers the insurance part of it too. So my deductible is like 2,500 bucks. So if you want that lower, you can go to like a zero deductible and you just agree to give up like 50 or 40% of the revenue.
Speaker 1:Now maybe I would do that with a lower value car. I wouldn't do that with a car that I'm renting for 300 bucks a day. That's a lot of money, you know. So I'm okay with taking a higher risk on it. You know, is it going to bite me in the butt? I don't know, who knows, figure that out. If it does bite me in the butt, then you just adjust it, move forward. It's kind of the trial and error thing. Some people have a different risk tolerance than others. But anyways.
Speaker 1:Yep, so that's how that works, all right. Well, if you found any value in the show, you have more questions about Turo. I'm not a total expert, but I've done it a few times. Happy to help, all right, we will catch you on the next one.