How to Start a Turo Business:
The 7 Steps I Took With My First Car

By Quinton Heck · Charleston, SC

In November 2024 I had no cars on Turo, no fleet, and no idea what I was doing. I bought one cheap car, filmed the whole process, and set out to prove the thing works in 90 days. Today I run 12 cars full-time. This is the exact process I followed for car number one, with the real costs, so you can skip the part where you guess.

Heads up: some links on this page are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. I only list gear I actually use.

Every step is on camera in the video, including the DMV run at 4:50pm and the moment the listing went live.

1. Know Turo's requirements before you shop

Two hard rules: the car has to be less than 12 years old and have under 130,000 miles. Anything outside that can't be listed, no matter how nice it is. Set your used-car search filters to match so you don't fall in love with something you can't use.

2. Find a car with high perceived value

My sweet spot for a first car is roughly $5,000 to $15,000 — cheap enough that a $50-a-day rental makes sense, but something that reads as a nicer car than it cost. I went to cars.com, set a 30-mile radius, minimum year 2012, under 150,000 miles (then filtered tighter), max price around $8,000, and looked for clean, boring, dependable.

Then the step most people skip: look the car up on Turo. Search "2014 Ford Escape" in a market similar to yours — not Vegas or LA if you live in a mid-size city, because those rates won't apply to you. Mine rented for about $48 a day. Quick math: $5,500 ÷ $50 = 110 rental days to pay off the car. Not exact, but it tells you whether the idea is in the ballpark before you spend anything.

3. Get it inspected

I did the multi-point inspection myself with a multimeter, tread gauge, and infrared thermometer, and then realized most people won't and shouldn't. If you're not mechanically inclined, pay a mechanic about $100 to do it. A hundred dollars against a transmission you didn't know about is the best trade in this business.

4. Pay for it

Two options: cash, or a loan. I took a private-seller auto loan through my bank for $5,500 — they write the check to the seller and overnight it to you. With a loan, the title goes to the bank until it's paid off; if you pay cash, the title comes to you. (That loan was at 12%, which everyone told me was insane. The car paid it off three and a half years early.)

5. Sort out insurance

You still need your own personal policy for when you're driving the car yourself. Turo's host protection plan covers the vehicle during trips, deliveries, and pickups, and in exchange Turo keeps a percentage of each trip — the higher the coverage, the bigger the cut. I usually run the plan where I keep 75–80%. Check what your own insurer allows for car-sharing; rules vary by state and carrier, and it's worth knowing before the first booking.

6. Register it — and budget for the bill

This one surprised me. In South Carolina I paid $56 in property tax, then walked across the hall and paid $336.61 to register. Nearly $400 before the car earned a dollar. It's not optional — driving unregistered is illegal — so build it into your startup number so it doesn't feel like a punch.

7. List it: photos first, price second

As a brand-new host you're competing against the same model with 40 trips and five stars. The only lever you control on day one is the listing itself.

Photos. I shot mine on a Canon EOS M50 and cleaned them up in Photoshop because I already do photography. You don't need that — shoot on your phone in good light and pay someone on Fiverr to edit them. Better photos than the other guy is the whole game.

Price. List slightly under what comparable cars go for, or use Turo's dynamic pricing. You're giving up a few dollars a day to buy reviews. Once the five stars stack up, raise it.

Over-deliver. Clean car, honest description, fast replies. You're judged entirely on reviews at the start.

I hit publish at 11:22pm on November 6th. It booked within 12 hours.

One more thing: track every dollar from day one

Before the first rental I built a spreadsheet with a tab per car, expenses by month, and a year-to-date sheet that pulls from all of them. Sounds like overkill for one car. It isn't — it's the only way you'll know which car is making money and which one is quietly eating it once you have three. Every number in my monthly fleet breakdown comes out of that habit.

The tools I bought for that first car and still use: an AUTEL OBDII scanner for pre-purchase codes, a multimeter, and a tire inflator that lives in the trunk. The rest is on the tools page.