My Turo Fleet Is Bleeding Money (IT'S BAD)

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]My Turo fleet is literally burning money and it's back. Last month, despite bringing in $4,000 in revenue across five rental cars, which is down from previous months, we ended the month $1,682 in the red. And the Volkswagen Pat alone cost us over $4,000 in repairs and towing expenses last month. But before we get into the story about how this piece of crap car is costing me a fortune, my other Volkswagen, the 2025 Jetta, hasn't been rented in nearly 60 days. And that's because it currently has a recall with no remedy. In March and April of this year, VW recalled over 48,000 Jetta due to a fire risk caused by a missing or loose transmission ground wire. And apparently, this electrical defect can cause components in the car to overheat, leading to potential engine fire, sometimes without warning. Whenever a car has a recall, Turo enlists your vehicle until the problem is proven fixed. And since there's no remedy available yet, the car has just been sitting in front of my house, not being able to generate rental income from bookings. To be honest, this couldn't have happened to a worst car on the fleet because out of all of my vehicles, this is the only one that's still financed with a bank and I owe 21,885.

[00:01:06]Carvana is only offering me $19,000 for the car, which means I would have to pay them $2,885 bucks to take it off my hands. On one hand, I hate to say that I'm kind of considering it because right now with the car not being rented out, it's burning a $66 per month hole in my pocket between the payment and insurance for the vehicle I still have to pay monthly. But at the time that this vehicle was being rented out, it generated $1,50 per month in rental income on average, or about $300 in monthly cash flow. So, at the time, the deal made sense, but now the car has become kind of a liability. But heading outside to the Volkswagen PA and now hopping inside the whip. It has a rental that's set to start in 1 hour at 5:00 p.m. that will make us $86.94 for a 2-day trip. Honestly, I'm just happy that the car is finally back to being rented out because after the whole fiasco last month where it broke down on a trip with a guest, it ended up not being able to be rented out for a couple weeks and the car only made us like $300 for the month of April. And that's just the revenue before expenses. The profit was negative thousands of dollars. I then spent some time getting the car vacuumed out, disinfected inside for the next renter. And then I took the car through the car wash, and took about 50 pre-trip photos, as I do before every Turo rental. The guest for the Volkswagen Pat is picking the car up right now. I finished cleaning it just in time, so fingers crossed everything goes smoothly. But to get into the story of how this 2014 VW cost me $3,786.3 last month, it all started on April 9th when I got a message from a guest who was renting the car on a trip saying, "Hello, the light on the Volkswagen Pat began flashing and beeping today as I arrived to work. For my internet search, it may be unwise to drive it. I am available to be near the car this afternoon if it needs to be towed. I work about 20 minutes away in Wakau, so it's a good distance to get home. Please let me know what you'd like to do. After getting this message from the guest, I immediately called a tow truck driver and drove out 20 minutes to go meet the guest at their place of work. Dropping off my 2024 Nissan Sentra as a replacement vehicle for the rest of their trip. In the end, the guest still gave me a solid five-star review since I was able to handle the situation quickly. But after I drove out with the tow truck driver to drop off the car at the repair shop, I got hit with a fat bill. The shop just sent me an invoice for all the suggested repairs, starting with $1,32.50 to replace the car's radiator. I'm guessing what the guest thought was an oil light flashing was actually the car warning her that it was about to overheat. And on top of that, the shop also let me know that the car has the wrong size tires on it, recommending a $644.92 replacement, along with suspension work for 1,700 bucks, a battery replacement, and wiper blade replacement, which if I did all of those repairs, it would cost me a whopping $4,981.

[00:03:51]Not great. I texted my brother about this repair quote since he used to be a mechanic at the shop I brought it to, and he said, "Fix the radiator for sure.

[00:03:58]Take it to the auto parts store for a battery and wipers." So, that's exactly what I did, costing us $1,674.20 at the repair shop and about another $225 at AutoZone. This expense comes on top of another repair earlier this month when the timing belt went out on the car costing me $2,118.

[00:04:17]The thing that really makes me mad about this is the Facebook Marketplace dealer who sold me the car claims he had fixed that issue already.

[00:04:24]>> I going to explain to you the timing change was like 15,000.

[00:04:28]>> That's the thing what you don't have to do anymore. Oh, you changed that out.

[00:04:31]>> You didn't have to worry about.

[00:04:32]>> But the fact that this issue already came up again only 6 months after buying the car makes me think that he either did a cheap or temporary fix on the vehicle that didn't last or covered it up. Very sketchy guy. All added up, I spent $3,942.20 to get the Pat back to being rented out.

[00:04:49]But before I tell you my plans for this car in the future, this video is sponsored by Monarch, >> a private and adree personal finance app that can help you better manage your finances, especially in times like I'm in where you have large unexpected expenses pop up. And my favorite thing about it is they bring all of your accounts under one clean dashboard from your banking apps, credit cards, loans, or even your investment platforms. So you can get a clear picture for where you're at financially and track your spending, debt payoff progress, recurring bills, and even your net worth. Just like with any business, if you aren't keeping track of your personal finances, making progress towards a financial goal can be super difficult. Like one goal for me right now is to save money to do renovations on my house. And from within the Monarch app, I can actually set that goal and track my progress towards it. Last month, between all my businesses and personal expenses, I spent over $10,000, which is more than usual, but that's mostly due to all the car repairs, my basement flooding, and cost to develop an app I'm working on. And through Monarch, I'm able to account for these expenses with their flexible budgeting tool that helps you separate between your fixed versus variable expenses.

[00:05:53]Breaking it all down by different categories you can customize. Using their AI insights tool, it told me I spent $5,600.94 operating the Turo fleet last month, which is up thousands from previous months. This AI can give you info using your real financial data and even give you helpful insights on what you could do next with your money. So, I'll leave my link at the top of the description so you can get 50% off the app works seamlessly crossplatform on both their app and web browser. And they link with over 13,000 financial institutions. So, check them out below. But on that note, the Jetta lost us $650 last month, while the Pat behind me lost us another 3,786 bucks. And that's after accounting for all the revenue generated and the expenses. But I guess starting with the least profitable cars on the fleet and moving to the most profitable, the Toyota Corolla brought in $1,692 in booking revenue for April. The Corolla is currently out of rental right now and it booked out pretty well last month until April 23rd when it got hit by another car on the freeway in typical Milwaukee hitand run style fashion. But luckily, there wasn't any major damage.

[00:06:56]Just the mirror on the passenger side for the car broke off, and it only cost $75 to fix, which the guests luckily covered by leaving cash in the glove box. Funny enough, this was the same guest that also had issues with my facade. So, she's been having bad luck lately, but she still gave us a five-star review on the profile, and she still consistently rents cars for me.

[00:07:14]After all expenses, the Toyota Corolla profited $8556, but the cars actually managed for a client who owns the vehicle, and I just take a 30% management fee. So, they got paid out $564.85 while I made $290.71.

[00:07:30]Moving forward to May, the car took 2 weeks to be back to being rented out because Turo took forever to relist the vehicle even after I submitted all the paperwork and even photo evidence that the repair job was completed. Turo customer support is literally some of the worst in the business. Like every representative that picks up barely speaks any English and has like no knowledge of Turo policy. Let me give you guys a live demonstration.

[00:07:57]>> Hi, thanks for calling Turo. My name is Hannah. How can he help?

[00:08:00]>> Never mind. Hannah was actually probably good. But if you guys are a Turo host, you know that the support has consistently gotten worse over the last few years. And I think this is marked by the company's goal to reach profitability before doing an IPO. And Turo's goal to become a profitable company has resulted in less smoking claims getting approved, higher fees on earnings, and less control over pricing.

[00:08:20]All leading to reduced Turo host income.

[00:08:22]But before we get into my plans for the fleet moving forward, the last two cars that were the most profitable last month was the Nissan Sentra coming in in second place with $1,4379 in revenue or $73844 in profit. And then in first place, we have the Subaru Outback, which brought in $1,412.80 in revenue with a whopping $1,15940 of that being profit. That brings our total profit operating the fleet last month to negative $1,682.

[00:08:53]But my cut on that is actually worse since again the Corolla is a car being managed for a client. So despite all the work I put in managing Turo cars, we lost two vans last month. And although this might seem like a temporary slump for the Turo fleet, May is not looking a whole lot better. With both the Jetta and Corolla spending time off the road not earning any income. On the bright side though, things are starting to look up because a recall for the Jetta just became available. Averaged out over the last 4 months, the Turo cars have brought in $4,400 in revenue, while the profit has averaged just $1,90 monthly.

[00:09:24]I don't want to sell all the Turo cars quite yet, but I think it's time to restructure things.

[00:09:29]>> First up, I want to sell the Volkswagen Pat, so we're going to get it listed for sale today.

[00:09:33]>> So, I use photos of the car to get it listed on Facebook Marketplace, and we're going to try and get $5,000 for the vehicle to see if anyone bites. I put in the listing description all the fixes I did to the car along with what it still needs in terms of work because we're not going to scam anyone. On that note, the Toyota Corolla just got back from a rental and my plan for this car going forward is to keep managing it.

[00:09:54]Since it's a client's car, I get a 30% revenue share on its earnings every month. And so far, it's been performing pretty good, about middle of the pack for the fleet. And on average, every month the client is getting payouts of about $500, while my share on that is 250 to 300 bucks. And considering that this vehicle is only $10,000, that's not a bad return.

[00:10:12]>> I'm also going to keep managing the Subaru Outback myself, but for the Nissan Sentra and VW Jetta, I want to try something a little different by having a Turo management company in Milwaukee rent out the cars for me. Of course, they take a 30% cut of the revenue, which definitely eats into the profit. But with my business focus shifting to vending machines over these next few months, I want to free some time up and honestly see how much these cars will make me in fully passive income. The cars aren't going to be dropped off with the management company for a couple more days since the Sentra is currently out on a rental right now and it doesn't get back till tomorrow.

[00:10:44]And the Jetta is also at the shop right now getting a recall fix. So, if you guys made it to the end, be sure to drop a like on this video. Leave me a comment down below letting me know your thoughts. And otherwise, I'll see you guys in the next video next week hopefully. Peace out.