When you first think of peer-to-peer car sharing you might not think of it as a ticket out of your day job, but for Phil that’s exactly what he chose to do!
Rewind back to when Phil used to have a desk job - “I wasn’t happy doing a 9-5 job, it wasn’t really my personality so I started other businesses outside of that and eventually quit.” Starting by renting out his spare room on Airbnb, Phil then became an Airbnb superhost where he learnt the importance of giving a 5* service to guests to maximise occupancy.
After running Airbnbs for several years, Phil decided to dip his toe in the water with a peer-to-peer car sharing platform (different to Karshare) in January 2020 and bought his first car to share with others on the platform. By the end of the month, he’d broken even for his monthly payments on that car and decided to purchase more to share.
“I realised early on that car sharing will no doubt follow the same patterns in terms of popularity and peak periods as home sharing does. So to break even in the slowest month of the year in two weeks was very encouraging”.
Once the potential of car sharing from a financial aspect became clear, he began to invest in purchasing more cars in order to car share. After a while, Phil started to face issues with the platform he was using at the time. “Costs were rising for both renters and owners which was becoming commercially unviable as a host.”
”Sometimes renters could pay £250 to rent your car and a host would see about £50 if you’re lucky. At this point I was thinking, shall I start my own version of a car sharing platform?” as the prices kept increasing.
“I explored other platforms but wasn’t particularly enthused by them”, until he came across a Karshare advert on Facebook. After getting in touch and speaking with the Karshare team, Phil was keen to get on board. “To be honest, I love it. I love the values that Andy puts through the business, he’s not looking at a position of greed and Karshare don’t want the renters to be ripped off.”
“Once I found Karshare, I realised it was not only reasonable for me, but it was reasonable for renters in terms of costs too. Because of this, my car’s utilisation increased dramatically when I moved them to Karshare, and as a result my earnings increased a lot.“
“Customers are so much happier now as they’re not having to pay hidden fees at the last minute at checkout. Karshare doesn't try to hide anything - they’re very transparent with their prices.”
When asked if he’d recommend Karshare to other owners, Phil said “from an owner’s point of view, there’s definitely strong earnings potential. I think it’s very easy because it’s self check-in and you don’t have to speak to anyone as it’s all handled through the app - it’s completely hassle free and hands off. There’s a very high earnings potential and you’ve got complete flexibility as to when you want your car to be rented out or not. It’s also risk free as the renter’s use Karshare’s insurance when on a trip.”
After being with Karshare since April 2021, he notes that “one thing I do really like about Karshare is the community feel. You really don’t feel like you’re alone.”
'Compared to the other platform I was on, you don’t feel supported at all, but with Karshare your mind is at ease all the time.”
Because of the support, the no hidden fees for renters and the company’s ethos, Phil now has 8 cars on Karshare and continues to rent these out to members in his community.
“You can definitely feel the difference of Karshare because of its company values and how much they want to help both the renters and car owners.”
Find out more about sharing your car here, or if you’re interested in renting one of Phil’s cars in Manchester, you can do so here:
