GH: Renting Out Other People’s RVs: How to Build a Six-Figure Business

Here's an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the Side Hustle Show Greatest Hits collection. Getting paid to rent out other people's stuff? It's true. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show, because your earning power doesn't have to stop when your day job does. Now, you know I love a rental business model. It's one of the four types of passive income. You can quiz your friends what the other three are. I'll fill those in at the end of the show. But today's guest scaled his rental business in a unique way, by renting out other people's RVs, with their permission, of course. Could you do the same thing? Could you apply the same idea in a different niche? Well, stick around to find out. From firesidervrental.com, Gar Russell. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.

Hey, Nick. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here with you.

Well, I'm excited for this one. We're covering how Gar convinced other owners to trust him with their RVs, that's a big step, the logistics of running this thing, and the bumps in the road along the way. Now, I wanna start off with, you have this idea, like, it's gonna be a fantastic birthday present for your lovely bride, or an anniversary present [laughs] rather. And, "Hey, honey, we got this RV. Let's go. We're gonna have all these fun times in the woods," imagining the years of outdoor fun and adventure ahead of you, and her reaction is not quite [laughs] what you're hoping it will be.

Yeah. We got to the campground, and we got set up. I thought all was going well. The first morning, when she's chasing our toddler around and seven months pregnant with number four, and she said, "I'm going home, baby." And I thought, "Oh, what did I forget?" And I didn't forget anything. She was just miserable, and she was done camping.

Oof.

And we were supposed to be there six more days. [laughs]

Ah. Yeah, so that's not how anybody wanted it to go down.

No. Nope, not at all. And I went right into panic mode of, "Oh my gosh, I just bought this RV for a lot of money, and my wife doesn't wanna be here," and jumped onto Craigslist and threw it up for rent.

Okay, so you've got this big, expensive asset/liability at the moment, but hopefully it turns into an asset, [laughs] sitting in the driveway, and said, "Well, shoot, what am I gonna do with this thing?" So you turn around, put it up for rent on Craigslist. What kind of reaction does that get? Any takers?

Yeah, you know, it blew my mind. I literally had inquiries coming in within a couple hours. So the light bulb, like, immediately went off. People are, "Hey, I need it for this weekend," 'cause that was in July when I purchased it for.

Okay.

So it's, like, in the middle of summer, and people are like, "Oh, hey, we're going camping this weekend or that weekend," you know?

Sure.

And so it was, it was wild.

Any sort of, like, driver vetting? Do you need, like, a commercial license to drive one of these things? I'd be intimidated driving around something of that size.

No, you go right to what people typically ask when I ask them for their RV is, "Okay, who's gonna be driving this? What's that gonna look like?" And so, yeah, there's, just like Airbnb and Turo, there's