A fleet owner who posts as Agnes on YouTube says her household has brought in more than R100,000 a year on average, over more than five years of driving for Uber and Bolt. On The Journey with Agnes, she set out the five steps she says got her there, from buying the car to managing a driver once the business grows beyond one vehicle.
Buying the car: new, or salvage and repaired
The first decision is the vehicle itself. “If possible you want to get a brand new car because this car will be on the road every single day,” Agnes said, since a new car comes with warranties and guarantees that help with mechanical problems early on, and a first owner also knows the car’s full history from day one.
Where that is not affordable, she described buying a written-off, accident-damaged car through a salvage auction and repairing it, which is how she describes turning the business from a side hustle into something bigger. One source she uses is SMD‘s auctions of damaged and non-runner vehicles. She was clear about the risk: some cars “come in a condition that will cost you so much money to have it fixed”, so she advises bringing a qualified mechanic to inspect a car before bidding on it.
Registering to carry passengers legally
Once a vehicle is bought, Agnes said it has to be registered for public transport use before it can carry a paying passenger, “to get a double dis”, as she called it, using the industry shorthand for the operating disc issued by the Department of Transport. As she put it, “the double dis will allow you to be able to transport people.” E-hailing was formally brought into the National Land Transport Act’s public transport rules in regulations gazetted in 2025, which require both the vehicle and the platform to be registered with the National Public Transport Regulator, on top of the driver’s own professional driving permit.
Insurance and a tracking device
Agnes treats insurance and a tracker as a single step, not optional extras: “you need to have like a tracking device installed on the car because you’d want to be knowing where your car is if someone else is driving it,” she said, and pairing that with proper insurance. A tracker can also lower the insurance premium, she added. Our guide to business insurance covers what cover like this actually costs and what it should include.
Don’t wait on one app
Agnes said a new driver should not sit idle while one platform’s application is pending. “if for example you are on a waiting list for Uber, at least you can start driving, you can start with bolt or in driver already while you are waiting for your Uber,” she said, naming inDrive as a third option alongside Uber and Bolt. On quiet days, she said the same car and driver can shift to food or grocery deliveries rather than sit without a fare.
Hiring a driver, and the emergency fund
Once an owner is ready to add a second car, Agnes said drivers are commonly found through Facebook and Gumtree groups, but only after checking they already hold a professional driving permit and running a background check. She was direct about the money side: “the first few monies that you get in, save it, don’t just use it,” so there is a reserve when something goes wrong with the vehicle. Our cash flow simulator is built for exactly this kind of reserve planning. She also checks in on the car itself regularly: “weekly checks of the car”, or at least monthly if the driver cannot come in every week, “you want to see your car”, since an unsupervised vehicle can rack up damage nobody reports.
None of this is guaranteed income. Agnes frames it as a business with real capital costs and real risk, not a side income that runs itself, which is also the picture that emerges from our own reporting on the economics facing Gauteng’s e-hailing drivers.
