What to Ask a Rider When You Take a Direct Booking

A rider who opens your booking page at your handle picks one of two things first: leave now, or reserve for later. Then the form asks them for:

• Their name. Required.
• A phone number. Required, and checked for a valid format.
• Pickup address. Required.
• Dropoff address. Required.
• Date and time, when they are reserving instead of asking for a ride now. Required for a reservation.
• Trip notes. Optional, one box, for a gate code, bags, or anything the driver should know.

That is the whole form. There is no card at that step. The page tells the rider so in as many words: no card is needed yet, and they will see a fare before anything is charged. A rider is asking, not buying, and lowering that bar is the reason people finish the form instead of abandoning it.

You review the request when it lands. Nothing is quoted and nothing is charged until you do.

Everything above tells you the shape of the trip. It does not tell you the shape of the ride. Five questions cover almost every direct booking, and none of them take more than a sentence to ask.

1. How many people, and how much luggage. This is the one that ruins airport runs. Four adults with four checked bags is a different vehicle than four adults with backpacks, and finding that out at the curb is finding it out too late. Ask it every time there is a flight involved and any time the pickup is a hotel.

2. A car seat or booster. Ask whether a child is riding and how old they are. What you do with that answer is your own call, on your own rules and your own insurance cover, and local law applies to you the same way it does on any other ride. Just do not learn it at the door.

3. The exact pickup point. An address puts you on the right block. It does not tell you the gate code, which building in the complex, which door of the office park, or which terminal and which level at the airport. One clarifying question here saves the five minutes of circling that turns a good booking into a late one.

4. Whether there is a stop or a wait. A pharmacy on the way, ten minutes at a bank, a second passenger picked up en route. Every one of those changes what the ride is worth, and you set your own rates on your own rides. Settle it before you quote, not after, because a fare you have already given is a fare you should honor.

5. Whether it repeats. "Is this a one-off, or is this something you do every week?" This is the single most valuable question on the list and the one drivers forget, because it is the only one that is not about tonight. A rider who answers "every Tuesday" has just told you they are a regular, and they told you before you ever had to guess.

If the trip has a return leg, treat it as a real part of the conversation rather than an assumption. Ask when they are coming back and whether they want you for it. A return that repeats belongs in the standing arrangement you set up for your regulars.

The trip notes box on the request is the right home for anything the rider knows in advance. "Gate code 4471, building C" or "two bags, one stroller" arrives attached to the booking instead of sitting in your head or in a text thread you will not find on Thursday.

Tell riders that box is there. Most people leave optional fields blank because nothing told them the field mattered. One line at the end of a ride does it: "When you book, drop the gate code in the notes and I will come straight to the door."

For anything you find out afterwards, on the phone or in person, write it down the same day. The number on the request is a real phone number, so a confirmation call is you picking up your own phone and calling a customer, which is a normal thing a business does.

Do not ask for anything you will not use. Every extra question is a reason to abandon a form. The intake is short on purpose.

Do not interrogate. Five questions in a row reads like a screening. Ask the ones the trip actually raises. A ten-minute ride across town needs almost nothing beyond the address.

Do not ask why they are not using the app. It puts a rider in the position of justifying themselves to you, and it makes a normal booking feel like a scheme. It is not one. You still drive Uber and Lyft, they still use them, and SOLODRIVE.PRO sits alongside the apps rather than replacing them.

Do not promise something you have not confirmed. "I can definitely do 5 AM" before you have checked your week is how a booking becomes a cancellation. Confirm it yourself, then say yes.

On an app-assigned ride, the intake is done for you and the record belongs to the platform. You cannot look up what a rider told you three months ago, because you were never given it. Next Tuesday the same person is a new match with a new first name and no history.

A direct booking inverts that. The name, the number, the pickup, the notes and the history of what you have driven for that person sit in your own customer list, which is a list of your riders that you can look at whenever you want. It is a list, not a marketing machine. Nothing in it sends anything on its own. Its value is that the second booking does not start from zero, because you already know the gate code, the terminal, and that they always run five minutes late.

Gridwise, Para and Solo can tell a driver where the demand is and what a shift paid. None of them hold the answer to "what does this rider need." That answer only exists if somebody collected it, and on a direct booking that somebody is you.

The repeat question is the one that pays. When a rider says the trip happens every week, you have a standing ride rather than a booking, and the intake you already did covers all of them. Same pickup, same time, same notes, one conversation.

From there you mark that rider as a regular. They consent, their card is saved, and SOLODRIVE.PRO bills that ride automatically each week on a Stripe subscription. The ride still happens the way it always did. The part that changes is that you stop re-asking, re-quoting and re-collecting for a trip you have already agreed on.

Every one of those arrangements started with one question at the end of an ordinary booking.

1. The request arrives with the name, the phone number, the pickup, the dropoff and the timing already on it. 2. Read the trip notes before anything else. 3. Ask how many people and how much luggage, if the trip could be tight. 4. Ask about a child seat, if there is a child. 5. Pin the exact pickup point: gate, building, door, terminal, level. 6. Settle any stop or wait before you quote. 7. Ask whether it repeats. 8. Confirm the ride yourself and give the fare. 9. Write down anything you learned that was not on the form.

Nine steps, most of which are reading. The two that matter most are the exact pickup point and the repeat question, because one prevents the bad ride and the other creates the next twenty.

What information do I need from a rider to take a direct booking?

Their name, a phone number that reaches them, the pickup address, the dropoff address and the time. Your booking page collects all five on the request. Beyond that, ask about passengers and luggage, a child seat if a child is riding, the exact pickup point, any stop or waiting, and whether the trip repeats.

Does the rider have to enter a card to book me?

No. The booking page does not ask for a card when a rider sends a request, and it says so on the form. The rider sees a fare before anything is charged, and you review the request before you quote it.

Do riders have to download an app or make an account to book me?

No. They open your booking page at your handle, choose to leave now or reserve for later, fill in the request and send it. There is no app and no account for the rider.

What should go in the trip notes box?

Anything you would otherwise have to ask for: a gate code, which building, how many bags, a stroller, a pet carrier, a preferred door at the airport. It is optional, so most riders leave it blank unless a driver has told them it is worth using.

How do I ask a rider whether they need the same ride every week?

Plainly, at the end of a ride that went well. "Is this a regular thing for you?" is enough. If the answer is yes, you set it up as a standing ride instead of taking the same booking over and over.

Should I ask for a rider's email address?

The booking request does not ask for one, and for most drivers a phone number is the only contact detail worth having. Ask for something extra only when you have a specific use for it.

What if a rider gives me a vague pickup address?

Ask one clarifying question before you confirm. "Which building, and is there a gate code?" or "Which terminal and what level?" takes ten seconds and is the difference between arriving and circling. Put the answer in your record so you never ask that rider again.

Is taking bookings directly going to cause a problem with Uber or Lyft?

Your app-assigned rides are still completed on the app's terms exactly as they are today. A direct booking is a separate ride a rider asked you for. There is a fuller answer on whether you can drive Uber and take private clients.