Ever since we started Expique 6 years ago, one of our goals has been to help our tuk tuk drivers increase their earning potential through offering legitimate and proffesional services. Up to now this has been via tours.
We hate to say it, but tuk tuks have a bad reputation in Bangkok. They are often associated with scams. However, from our experience it is a small minority who fall into this category and most drivers are simply hard working people who are trying to earn an income.
The biggest testimony we can give to our drivers is that of the drivers we have worked with in the last 5 years, less that 10% no longer work with us. Compare this to guides, office staff and across industries then this is an amazing retention rate even among freelance teams. They are extremely loyal and hard working.
An example of this has been with our Christmas Tuk Tuk Tours. When we first tried this 5 years ago we only told them to wear part of the Santa outfit. They went beyond this and dressed up in full. Each year they have got more involved and happily spend hours to decorate their tuk tuks.
We have always aimed to try and increase earnings for drivers and as we have grown as a company we have been able to give each driver more work whilst also growing our tuk tuk team. This year we were hoping to significantly increase their earning opportunities by providing a wider range of tours throughout the day.
Sadly the impact of COVID-19 has hugely impacted tourism and currently we are unable to give any tours to drivers. In addition with people staying at home and using more and more online delivery services, drivers get less jobs from locals. We estimate they have lost at least 70% of income. We therefore return to our vision of supporting drivers to earn a decent income, but we too have had to review how.
Therefore, we are launching new services and with these comes this website. We hope to help drivers find new opportunties by providing services such as delivery or by renting our drivers and tuk tuks to support people for a day. We hope to find businesses who would benefit from access to a driver. Maybe we can find people to “Adopt a driver”.
In the short term we look to make no profit out of this and guarantee a driver a minimum pay for making themselves available for delivery. The first 500THB earned everyday goes straight to the driver without us taking anything to cover our own costs.
Please help us achieve our goal of supporting drivers.
ADOPT A TUK TUK
Alternatively if you have a need for a regular driver, then contact us about
“Adopting A Tuk Tuk”
This could be to use for daily deliveries, to take the kids to school, to do your shopping, to regulary take guests around Bangkok. When adopting a tuk tuk we also give the option to add your branding or quirky designs to the tuk tuk.
