Paid to Commute
by Late Nite LeRoy
April 28, 2000
You've seen it on city busses. Now you too can be the spectacle driving down the road. But in this case the ad revenue goes into your pocket. A new site, http://www.autowraps.com/ pays up to $400 per month to place wrap around vinyl "billboard type ads" on your car.
Of course they are hideous. Of course you'll be the laughing stock at church or the country club. But just as we keep separate e-mail accounts to capture most of the spam we have to endure with contest entries, you now can afford to have a separate vehicle exclusively for commuting back and forth to work. $400 a month is a good sized car payment.
There are some requirements. You must be a safe driver. Wrecked billboards get attention, but are seldom legible. You must drive at least 1,000 miles per month. And I doubt if they would take kindly to you putting ads for your own business on top of the sponsor paying for the major display. You are allowed to reject products related to sex, alcohol or tobacco, but you can't be selective about your favorite brand of soap.
They place a GPS unit on the vehicle which monitors both the locations you take it to and the speed at which you drive there. Bad drivers are not good PR for anyone. They also want to make sure the vehicle is out on the road doing its job, not hidden in a garage.
So once again we have to ask "what price privacy?" The application form as of this writing is NOT on a secure server. I hope they fix that soon. So on this somewhat public server, you must answer quite personal questions including social security number, drivers license number, frequent driving locations and usual demographic questions. And knowing all this, they now know where you drive this vehicle to via the GPS unit. On the other hand this could be the answer to preventing a spouse from cheating on you.
The good news is they don't care what kind of car you drive or how old it is. The vinyl material supposedly goes on and off without doing any damage to the paint. They guarantee this, although I am skeptical of this claim. So if you see LateNiteLeroy driving down the street surrounded by a rolling billboard, it won't be in a new Ferrari. But the jalopy you do see him driving may be making payments on something nicer back at home.
E-mail directly to: leroy@commutefaster.com
LateNite Leroy is webmaster for http://www.commutefaster.com
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