Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a City Bus Driver Built a 9000 Monthly Side Hustle in Transit Safety Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: Marcus drove a city bus for seven years. He saw the same near-misses every week — cars running red lights at the same intersection, a curb that delivery trucks kept clipping, a bus stop where passengers had to step into traffic. He filed internal reports. Nothing changed. Luna: So he started keeping his own records. Lucas: Exactly. He took photos with his phone, logged timestamps, measured the curb height against regulation standards. After about six months he had a dossier of about forty distinct hazards along his route. He showed it to his supervisor who basically shrugged. So Marcus thought — who actually cares about this? Turns out, private shuttle operators care a lot. Luna: Because they're liable if a passenger gets hurt on a poorly designed stop or a dangerous road. Lucas: Right. And unlike the city, a private company — say a corporate campus shuttle or a hotel airport van service — can't just absorb a lawsuit or shrug off an injury. Marcus cold-emailed twenty shuttle operators with a one-page summary of what he'd found and offered to do a full audit for five hundred dollars. Two said yes. Luna: Five hundred dollars for a weekend of work, plus he still had his full-time bus driving job. Lucas: He did the audits, delivered a detailed report with photos, measurements, and recommendations. Both clients loved it. One referred him to a property management company that runs shuttle buses for three apartment complexes. That became his first recurring client — fifteen hundred a month for monthly inspections of all their routes. Luna: What did the audit actually include? I'm picturing someone with a clipboard and a measuring tape. Lucas: Pretty much that, plus a laser distance measurer, a level, and a camera. Marcus checks things like: Is the curb height between six and seven inches? Is the shelter canopy clearance at least seven feet? Are there tactile warning strips at the edge of the platform? He cross-references everything against the Americans with Disabilities Act standards and local transit codes. Luna: So he's essentially a regulatory compliance freelancer, but focused on physical infrastructure rather than paperwork. Lucas: That's the niche. And it's surprisingly underserved. Most transit agencies have safety officers, but they're overwhelmed with vehicle accidents and driver complaints. Nobody is systematically auditing bus stops and shuttle loading zones. Marcus found that his clients — private operators — didn't have anyone doing this at all. He was filling a gap they didn't even know existed. Luna: How did he scale from two one-off audits to nine thousand a month? Lucas: Two moves. First, he packaged the one-time audit into a subscription. For two thousand a month, a client gets quarterly inspections of up to twenty stops, plus a monthly report of any new hazards along their routes. Second, he expanded to municipal transit authorities — but not as an employee. He pitched his service as a third-party evaluation that could help them apply for federal safety grants. Luna: And that worked? Lucas: One medium-sized city transit authority hired him for a pilot program: audit all two hundred bus stops in a district for ten thousand dollars. That's a six-figure annual contract if it goes full scale. Marcus is about eight months in and he's at nine thousand a month recurring from three shuttle operators and one municipal contract. Luna: I love how this leverages his day job knowledge. He's not starting from zero. He spent years noticing things. Lucas: That's the core lesson for me. Marcus wasn't a safety expert on paper. But he had observational experience that's hard to replicate. He knew which intersections were dangerous at 6:00 AM versus 3:00 PM. He knew which bus stops flooded after a heavy rain. That kind of tacit knowledge is valuable, and most people don't realize they can sell it. Luna: Did he run into any trouble with his employer? Bus drivers are public employees in many cities. Was there a conflict of interest? Lucas: He checked his city's ethics policy. It prohibited using city equipment or time for private work, but it didn't prohibit him from doing consulting on weekends as long as he didn't use city data. So he used his own photos and observations. He also made sure not to audit any city routes he drove — he only audited private shuttle routes and later the city district he didn't cover. Luna: Smart. So he kept it clean. But I imagine some employers might still see it as a conflict if you're essentially offering the same service the city could provide. Lucas: And that's why Marcus is conservative. He hasn't quit his driving job. He views the side hustle as a buffer. He told me his goal is to replace his bus driver income within two years, then decide. He doesn't want to put all his eggs in one basket until the consulting income is proven over multiple renewal cycles. Luna: What's the hardest part about running this kind of business? Lucas: Selling the first few contracts. Marcus said he sent about sixty emails before he got his first client. Most people didn't respond, a few said they had it covered internally. He had to find the right language — not 'I'll tell you what you're doing wrong' but 'I can help you reduce liability and improve passenger experience.' Framing matters. Luna: And once he had a few clients, referrals did the rest. Lucas: Exactly. And because the work is physical and location-specific, his reputation spread locally. Safety managers at different companies talk to each other. Marcus now gets inbound inquiries about once a month. Luna: So if someone listening wanted to replicate this, what's the first step? Say they're a delivery driver or a security guard or a maintenance worker who sees safety issues every day. Lucas: Step one: document everything for sixty days. Take photos, write down locations and times, note any regulations you suspect are being violated. Step two: research the relevant codes — ADA, OSHA, local building codes. Step three: decide who your client is. Private operators are easier to sell to than government agencies. Step four: build a one-page sample audit of a single stop, something you can show them. Step five: start emailing. That's the playbook. Luna: And you need to check your employer's conflict of interest policy before you start, like Marcus did. Lucas: Absolutely. Non-competes and ethics rules can kill a side hustle before it starts. But most policies don't ban independent consulting in a different sector or with different clients. You just have to read the fine print. Luna: Speaking of keeping things above board — you know, a couple of dollars a month from listeners is genuinely what keeps shows like this ad-free and independent. If you've gotten anything out of hearing how Marcus built this, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo goes to keeping the podcast going. No pressure, just if it's useful. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small thing that adds up. We don't run ads, so listener support is what lets us keep digging into these concrete stories. Luna: Anyway — Marcus's next goal is to write a standard operating procedure for his audits so he can eventually hire a part-time inspector and scale to multiple cities. Lucas: That's the next level. He's also thinking about offering training for shuttle drivers on how to spot and report hazards. That could be another revenue stream without requiring him to be onsite. Luna: So the side hustle might eventually become a small agency. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the beauty of starting from something you already know: you build authority gradually, you keep your day job until the numbers are solid, and you solve a real problem. Marcus isn't selling a dream. He's selling a service that reduces risk for his clients and gives him financial breathing room. Luna: If you want to dig into the exact checklist Marcus uses, we'll link to a template on the show page. And if you have a side hustle you've built from your day job, we'd love to hear from you — maybe you'll be our next episode. Lucas: That's it for today. I'm Lucas. Luna: And I'm Luna. See you next time.