Farm-out

A farm-out is a trip you sold but another company runs, usually because every car is committed or the pickup is 300 miles from your garage. You keep the customer, the booking and the invoice. The affiliate supplies the chauffeur and the vehicle and is paid a net rate, commonly 15 to 30 percent below what the customer pays.

In the trade, farming out is how a 12-car operator serves a national account. The margin is thinner than running the job yourself, but the alternative is turning the work away and watching the account find someone who can cover it. Farm-outs also cover the reverse case: an affiliate in another city sends you their work, and you are the one running it.

The money risk sits in the handoff. The customer still sees your name, so a late car or a lapsed insurance certificate is your problem, not the affiliate's. The common mistake is assigning a farm-out by text message and losing sight of it until the complaint arrives.

How liverybook handles it

A dispatcher assigns a trip to an affiliate from the inline subcontractor select on the run board, and the row shows Sub Driver and Sub Vehicle columns. The affiliate's driver updates status from en route through completed through a tokenised link, with no login, and cannot cancel a trip or mark a no-show. An affiliate's compliance status (blocked, expired, expiring_soon, pending, compliant) is computed from approval status and insurance expiry, so a dispatcher can see before assigning whether the paperwork is in order.

Related terms

• Affiliate
• Compliance gate
• Dead-head
• Run board