Niche Biz: Designated Driving
At 6:20 p.m., a line pops up on the screen of Hur Rak’s palm-size digital wireless device with his first order of the evening: a shoe dealer has had too much to drink and wants to be driven home in his own car.
Mr. Hur rushes off into the subway and then finds his customer — and the car, a red subcompact — in less than 15 minutes.
“Speed is money in this business,� said Mr. Hur, 43, who received about $16 for driving his customer home.
“You want to get as many orders as possible before dawn breaks,� he said. “I sleep in the day, work at night, six days a week.�
Mr. Hur is a “replacement driver� who makes his living by delivering inebriated people and their cars home. There are tens of thousands of them operating in this hard-drinking metropolis of 10 million people. They go to work when Seoul’s streets blossom with neon signs and end their shifts well after the last lights blink off in the early morning mist curling up from the Han River.
Photo by Seokyong Lee.
FranchiseBrief.com on July 17th, 2007 11:09 am
OMG, that sounds like a terrible job! Having to deal with obnoxious drunk people at 6 in the morning….
Leave a Reply