Kyle runs a side hustle out of his van, brings in up to $US9,700 a month: I only have to ‘work three weeks out of the year’

When Kyle Stockford went a few months without selling a painting, he decided to pick up a side hustle.

It was 2021, and Stockford was a full-time abstract artist making colourful collages. Without sales, he needed another way to subsidise his living — so he turned to his brother, who’d been doing people’s yard work and helping assemble Ikea furniture through gig site Taskrabbit, a US site similar to AirTasker.

Stockford signed up to do similar gigs, making ”$US16 to $US18 an hour ($A24-$A27),” he says.

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But the real money was in helping people move: The 29-year-old now charges as much as $US98 ($A142) per hour on Taskrabbit to load up his Chevy Express van with other people’s belongings and transport them across the Boston area.

College move-in season is his busiest time of year: Stockford’s side hustle brought in $US9740 ($A14,104) in August 2023 revenue alone, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. It brought in between $3000 ($A4500) and $5000 ($A7500) most other months, leading to a total of just over $36,600 ($A53,000) in extra cash last year.

“I’ll be doing Taskrabbit for a while,” Stockford says. Here’s how he built his moving hustle.

“‘I’m driving around this big van, and I’m not making any money with it’“

Stockford bought his van in 2018, during his final year at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He wanted a vehicle that could help him transport paintings from Massachusetts to potential buyers.

After roughly a year on Taskrabbit, Stockford got “kind of antsy about the fact that I’m driving around this big van, and I’m not making any money with it,” he says. He bought straps, moving blankets, gloves and some bungee cords to prepare his vehicle, and himself, for a more intensive set of jobs.

“It wasn’t much,” he says. “Probably around $US50 ($A75) in supplies from [Harbour Freight Tools].”

Stockford says he started out charging $65 per hour, and booked an early gig helping two Northeastern University students move from the school’s campus to their new apartment. The job took less than two hours, and he made about $US130 ($A195), he says.

“I was struggling, because it was just me,” says Stockford.

Focusing on smaller tasks — like one-bedrooms or Facebook Marketplace pickups — helped him book more jobs per day. He learned to put a lot of effort into customer service, too.

“I started to realise how stressful moving can be for people,” he says. He’d tell them, “Don’t worry, this will be over in about two hours.”

“‘I can work three weeks out of the year, make a bunch of money’“

Stockford’s repertoire-building work in 2022 paid off last year. “2023 was insane,” he says. “I worked pretty much every day in August” and about halfway through September.

He felt himself improving at the gig, he adds. If he was working with college kids, for example, he’d know to ask for keys or codes to get in and out of dorm rooms. He’d bring door stoppers and a roof rack for mattresses, park as close as he could and, depending on the task, bring a second Tasker in to help.

“You know what to expect after a little while,” says Stockford. “It’s kind of the same group of furniture and the same couple trash bags of clothes.”

Stockford lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts, so traffic getting in and out of Boston can be tough — and the gigs themselves can be exhausting. “A lot of third floor walk-ups,” he says.

But despite the side hustle’s seasonality, it’s successful enough for Stockford to eschew full-time work. He balances 10 to 20 hours of moving per week with a part-time job as an art handler and preparator at the McMullen Museum of Art in Boston College.

The combination of gigs gives him time to keep working on his own art, too.

“I can work three weeks out of the year, make a bunch of money and then just shut it off,” says Stockford.