Renting a Motorbike or Car to Drive: What to Ask First

What is actually on offer

Not owning a vehicle is the most common reason people cannot start. Four companies say something, and it is worth being precise about what each one says, because they are not the same offer.

• Picup does not supply vehicles itself. It names two outside vendors that put drivers on the platform with a motorbike, Lularides and iThemba, and it publishes what each of them deducts. This is delivery work and Picup mentions no PrDP.
• Pingo supports qualifying drivers with motorbikes, and does Checkers Sixty60 deliveries. This is delivery work, and Pingo's driver page does not mention a PrDP.
• Uber says you can sign up even without a car that meets its requirements, and points at a marketplace of partners who rent to drivers.
• Bolt points at a vehicle partner that rents cars to drivers.

Uber and Bolt are passenger work. That means a PrDP, an operating licence on the vehicle, and a practical minimum age of 21, on top of the rental. Picup and Pingo are the shorter routes if you have neither a vehicle nor a permit.

There is also a half-open door at Takealot: its form offers No Transport as a vehicle option and does not end the application if you pick it. But Takealot lists no rental arrangement and does not say what work follows, so treat that as a question to ask rather than a route.

Picup: the only published numbers

Picup names two vendors in its own help centre, and unusually it says what each one costs. These are the only figures anyone on this site publishes for getting on the road without a bike, which makes them the benchmark to hold every other offer against.

Lularides

Supplies motorbikes, safety gear and training. Takes 5% of your earnings, excluding tips. Picup says that covers onboarding, UIF, management, support, legal fees, and costs like the bike, the deposit, a helmet, gloves and a phone. What you get differs per driver, so the total does too.

[email protected], 010 140 9510.

iThemba

Runs a motorbike education programme and can cover the cost of a learner's licence and a driver's licence. It deducts R5 from your weekly earnings, excluding tips. If your bike is off the road, iThemba supplies a replacement at R400 a week or R90 a day. Contact: [email protected] or 078 242 0941.

The part that surprises people

Your Picup profile carries the vendor's banking details, not yours. Picup pays the vendor. The vendor takes its cut and pays you on by Friday each week. That is normal in this kind of arrangement, and it is also the reason to ask for proof of payment every week. Picup says you can.

Getting out

Lularides wants any outstanding amount settled, then gives you a letter of permission to hand to Picup. iThemba wants a month's notice, sent to both iThemba and Picup. Neither vendor is compulsory: Picup says in both articles that you can register on your own, for free, if you have the documents and a vehicle.

What Picup does not publish is the rest of it. A 5% deduction is not the price of the bike. Ask what else is charged, what the deposit is, and who pays when it breaks.

Pingo: read the wording twice

Pingo's arrangement is the one most people ask about, and two things in it are easy to misread.

“Contribute” is not “pay”. Pingo says the driver must service the bike at regular intervals, and that Pingo will contribute an agreed amount per month while the vehicle is under the rental agreement. That is help towards a cost. It is not money paid to you, and it is not income.

Its own two pages disagree about what the deal is. Pingo's home page calls these rent-to-own options. Its driver page calls them rented options. Rent-to-own means you finish owning the bike. Renting means you do not. Pingo does not explain which applies, and the difference is worth many thousands of rand.

So the first question to ask Pingo is simply: at the end of this agreement, do I own the bike?

Pingo does say drivers get access to a regional network of service centres, and that drivers who do not own a phone can buy one from Pingo. Ask what the phone costs and how it is repaid, too.

What none of them says

Picup's two vendors publish a deduction, and iThemba publishes a replacement bike price. Beyond that, we could not find any of the following on any company page on this site, and we are not going to estimate them:

• The weekly or monthly rental amount for the bike itself. A 5% deduction or an R5 weekly fee is a service charge. Neither is the price of a motorbike.
• The deposit, and whether it is refundable.
• What happens if the vehicle is damaged, stolen or impounded.
• Who pays for services, tyres and repairs beyond the servicing Pingo mentions and the replacement bike iThemba offers.
• What it costs to end the agreement early. Lularides says outstanding amounts must be paid, without saying what they are.
• Whether a rented e-hailing car comes with its own operating licence.

Every one of those is a number that decides whether the work is worth doing. If a page on any site tells you what a rental costs in South Africa without naming who put it out and when, treat it as a guess.

The questions to get answered in writing

Take this list with you. A real arrangement survives being written down. A scam usually does not.

The money

• What is the exact amount, and is it weekly or monthly?
• What is the deposit, is it refundable, and when do I get it back?
• Is the amount deducted from my earnings before I am paid, or do I pay it separately?
• Do I pay in the weeks I do not work, or when the vehicle is in for repairs?

The vehicle

• Who owns it, and can I see the registration papers?
• Who pays for services, tyres, repairs and the licence disc?
• What is the process if it breaks down mid-shift?
• For a car used for e-hailing: who holds the operating licence, and who pays the fine if it does not have one?

The risk

• What am I liable for if it is damaged, stolen or impounded?
• What insurance is there, what is the excess, and who pays it?
• Am I covered if I am injured?

The exit

• How much notice do I give to end this, and what does that cost?
• At the end of the agreement, do I own the vehicle or hand it back?
• What happens if the platform deactivates my account?

That last one catches people. A rental agreement and a platform account are two different things, and the rental does not stop because the work did.

Before any money moves

Rental is where the largest amounts are lost, because a deposit feels like a reasonable thing to be asked for.

• See the vehicle in person. Not a photograph.
• Read the agreement, and keep a copy.
• Go through the company's own route. Pingo, Uber and Bolt all give theirs. Somebody offering to rent you a bike “for Sixty60” over WhatsApp is not the same thing as Pingo's own arrangement.
• Ask who they are. A real fleet has a company name, a physical address and a landline. Check all three yourself.

Nobody legitimate needs a deposit before you have seen the vehicle and read the agreement.

Do the arithmetic before you sign

A rented vehicle costs you the same every week whether you work or not. That changes the job: a slow week is not just a small pay week, it is a loss.

Bolt gives about R5 167 a week for South African drivers in June 2026, after its commission but before fuel, rental, insurance, servicing and data. That is a median, so half of the drivers earned less. Start your sums there.

Write down the rental, the fuel at what you actually pay, the data, and the servicing. Subtract them. Then divide by the hours you would really be online. That number is the job. No platform does that calculation for you.