Buy a car on installments to run services, shoulder the burden of gas and bank interest

Near 5pm, Mr. Nguyen Van Duy – Grab car driver – found himself an iced tea shop on Do Duc Duc street (Nam Tu Liem district, Hanoi) to rest and wait for rush hour. According to Mr. Duy, as soon as he heard the news that gasoline prices had risen to a record on the afternoon of May 11, he decided to temporarily not accept guests during peak hours.

“In Hanoi, most of the roads are congested during rush hour. If you want to travel 3-4km, it sometimes takes an hour. The price of gasoline is so expensive, so it will certainly make a loss if you drive. Well, I’ll wait until the rush hour is over, I’ll continue running, less loss“, Mr. Duy said.

The car was bought by Mr. Duy more than 2 years ago for more than 600 million VND to run a shuttle service. In which, he owes the bank nearly 400 million in the form of buying a car on installment. For a long time affected by the pandemic, Duy had to work very hard to pay nearly tens of millions of dong to the bank every month.

Recently, when the epidemic is under control, he tries to drive from morning until late at night so he can earn extra income, make sure to pay the bank on time and maintain a family life. However, the price of gasoline kept going up, forcing Duy to calculate every ride.

“This high gas price makes me not dare to accept customers during rush hour. Income will certainly decline and this situation will continue, because gasoline prices often increase sharply but decrease very small“, Mr. Duy said.

Many technology drivers accept to quit their jobs when petrol prices are getting more and more expensive. (Illustration)

In the same situation, Mr. Ta Tu Thanh (from Tuyen Quang), a car driver who picks up passengers at Noi Bai airport, was also fed up when he heard the record price of gasoline. Thanh calculates that this month, in addition to his car loan installment payment, his income is about to be further affected by the cost of raw materials.

Thanh said, there are a lot of drivers picking up passengers at Noi Bai airport to the inner areas of Hanoi, so the competition is very high and there are not always customers. In addition, the drivers here also have to bear many different entrance and exit service fees, so the daily income is not called high.

“Running a shuttle to pick up guests at the airport, the most important thing is to have a regular number of customers, people who go often will just call me. To maintain these relationships, I always have to arrive earlier than the plane’s landing time and then lie down to wait so that customers don’t have to wait or miss their flight. Now every time you need to stop the car, you have to turn off the engine and accept the heat even on the upcoming hot summer day, to save fuel,” said driver Thanh.

Deciding to sell a new car he bought for more than a year right after hearing the news of a sharp increase in gas prices, Mr. Nguyen Van Ngoc said he would find another job to make a living because driving a service car had to suffer too much. difficult, when gasoline is increasingly expensive.

Before that, Mr. Ngoc bought Toyota Vios in installments with the support of more than 300 million from the bank to run a carpooling service to pick up passengers from Nam Dinh to Hanoi. Every month, Mr. Ngoc has to pay more than 6 million VND to the bank to buy a car, plus the cost of maintenance and petrol is more than ten million VND. The record high gasoline price broke the “suffering” so Mr. Ngoc decided to sell the car, pay off the bank and change jobs.

“Just think that driving a service car will be leisurely because the distance from Nam Dinh to Hanoi is not too far, besides calculating the income and the amount to be paid to the bank can still be balanced. But after doing it for a while, I realized the difficulties and costs beyond the calculation to spend. Now that the price of petrol is so high, I don’t have much left for each passenger trip. It is not possible to increase the price of the car, because many customers are familiar with it and it is also the general price, “said Ngoc.

On many social networking forums, many other car drivers are also inviting each other to sell cars or quit their jobs because in addition to the high gas prices, discounts for car-hailing app owners such as Grap, Be, Gocar not low either.

Many drivers said that the fact that they have to rotate their money every month to pay the bank plus the higher and higher fuel costs makes their effort less and less, not to mention when they suffer heavy losses.

On the afternoon of May 11, the inter-ministries of Industry, Trade and Finance announced the adjustment of gasoline prices in the direction of increasing most of the commodities.

Specifically, gasoline E5RON92 increased by 1,491 VND/liter, the retail price was 28,959 VND/liter; RON95 gasoline increased by 1,554 VND/liter, the selling price was not higher than 29,988 VND/liter. Similarly, the price of diesel oil increased by 1,120 VND/liter, to 26,650 VND/liter. Kerosene increased by 1,340 VND/liter, sold at 25,168 VND/liter. Particularly for mazut oil, the price remained unchanged, selling at no higher than 21,560 VND/kg.