Secrets of a Millionaire Tricycle Driver
A True-to-Life Story

How do you get RICH, or become a MILLIONAIRE? How do you get rich even if you are just a farmer, factory worker or a member of the middle class? This was a question posted by another Filipino in one of the more than 40 Yahoo Groups where I was a member. My reply in the Internet posting was, anybody starting from a farmer, a factory worker, or a member of the middle class has all the chances of becoming rich if he wants to. I am a living proof of this claim. I started my tricycle business from P500.00 old sidecar I attached to my five year old motorcycle. From one old tricycle my transportation business surged into 14 units of tricycles. From one small sari-sari store, it multiplied into three grocery stores and one restaurant. From being buried under the ravine of unpaid loans, my businesses and properties surged to a P5 million worth in two years, before I migrated to US to start a new kind of struggle in life – raise my small children, together with my Nurse wife, in America.

Hardest Beginning of my Life

On June 20, 1986, at Sorsogon, Sorsogon, the most devastating and unforgettable event in my life happened when my wife was a victim of a vehicular accident just four days after we got married. The tricycle where she was riding was hit by an overspeeding passenger jeep, which killed the driver of the tricycle only few minutes of his arrival in the hospital. My wife was in serious condition with a broken left arm, and seriously injured head. I was so afraid, she was next to die, when I saw her head bloodied and her scalp peeled-off from her skull. That horrible scene, seeing her covered by blood from broken left arm and injured head, was unforgetable to me, that even now, I’m always afraid of seeing blood.

The only cash money on my pocket that night was less than P20.00. We just got married four days before this accident happened. So, our supposed honeymoon period was spent in the hospital. The driver of the jeep that hit the tricycle immediately went into hiding in Manila. The policemen could not find him anywhere.

Because my wife and I were both government employees, she was operated in a government provincial hospital, and was paid through our MEDICARE policies. To pay off other medical bills that were not covered by MEDICARE, I applied for three months accrued leave from my office and took a three-month advanced salary.

By the time she was released from the hospital, I had no more money to support even our daily subsistence for food. So, I took another laborer job at Philippine National Oil Corporation (NAPOCOR) while I was on leave at Fiber Development Authority (FIDA). Even with this additional job, our life was miserably a hand-to-mouth existence, because of our expenses for my wife’s medicines and rehabilitation.

There were times when my wife and I would just split a small pack of Skyflakes biscuit for our lunch everytime we visit the clinic for her regular therapy in Legaspi City. The travel from our town to the rehab clinic was a one-hour bus ride, and the fare had to be raised by us little by little before the schedule comes.

When her therapy period was completed, we could not even buy a gift for our very kind and caring doctor. So, we gave him only a big ripe jackfruit to show him our gratitude for saving the life of my wife.

We Were Buried to Debt

My wife was able to go back to her job as a Nurse in a government hospital only after a year of recovery. I kept my job in FIDA as a Fiber Development Officer. We slowly recovered from this horrible incident, but we were buried to debt. Our GSIS house and lot loan had been unpaid for several months. Our house was bare, with only an old bed I scavenged from my parent’s house and a junk office table from my father’s office as our dining table.

To have extra earnings, I thought of driving a tricycle after my nine to five job. So, from our barely P500.00, my wife and I searched for old sidecar in the town, which I could attach to my old motorcycle. The motorcycle was a five year old motorcycle which I loaned from the National Food and Agriculture Council (NFAC), in line with my work as a fieldworker. It was my means of transportation in going to remote barrios and mountainous places, which could not be reached by public vehicles, because they’re either mountainous or had no public roads. It was loaned to us, and paid on monthly basis through salary deduction.

I only knew how to drive a two-wheeled motorcycle. So, when I got my tricycle from the shop, I started practice-driving it in places where there were less pedestrians and traffic. There were times that I would crash on rice paddies, or fall on shallow street canals. But I had to bear all the dangers, because I needed more money to start a family.

Tricycle driving was a dangerous and dirty job, but a very decent way of earning a living. There was a time when a male passenger threatened to kill me instead, after driving him and his three girl companions when I insisted on asking for their fares during a dark late night. There were times when my tricycle would breakdown in the middle of the highway, because of overloading. But these threats did not force me from stopping a decent way of earning a living.

Unlike the 8-hour job in the government or private establishments with limited income, making money in tricycle driving depends on how long you would be driving your tricycle in a day. The longer you drive it, the better chance to earn more.

My patience and perseverance slowly bear good fruits. I was earning more from tricycle driving, than from my meager monthly earnings in my government job. That was because I was driving my tricycle up to midnight, had a little sleep for three to four hours, and drive again at four in the morning. I would only stop driving when it was time to go back to my day job. I drove my tricycle for 16 to 20 hours per day on Saturdays and Sundays (a total of 32 to 40 hours on weekends), making my income almost the same as the combined income of my driving on weekdays (30 to 35 hours at 5 to 7 hours per day).

After few months of working double job in a days and nights, I was starting to become a role model in our town. More and more government employees were buying their own tricycles, too, and started driving for a living at night times and weekends.

The P1500.00 Buy-and-Sell Business

One day, my brother-in-law who was working in Yamaha, informed us that there was a repossessed RS 100 in their branch. The company was selling it for only P1500.00. So, I immediately bought the motorcycle, out of my savings from driving a tricycle. I repaired the motorcycle myself. I learned repairing motorcycle by simply watching the mechanics at first. Then, I would try doing the job repair myself until I developed the skills from trial and error. This was the same thing that I did when I learned building and repairing computers and servers in New York City, which I will tell you later in this book.

After few days of testing the RS 100 motorcycle, I started displaying it at the place where the tricycle drivers were parking to pick-up passengers, and informed everybody that I was selling it for P7000.00. In just few days I got a buyer for the motorcycle, and immediately earned P5500.00 from my investment of P1500.00!

Out of the motorcycle sale, I joined the Gubat St. Anthony Credit Cooperative (GSACC) with P500.00 initial share capital. The GSACC is one of the millionaire credit cooperatives now in the Philippines. I was only a kid when this cooperative was founded on April 8, 1964 by 30 Gubatnons with the help of a parish priest. It started with P222.00 share capital from each of the founding members, or a starting capital of P6660.00. As of 2005 the coop has grown with 3,703 members and an asset of P85,162,531.18.

Another portion of the sales of that motorcycle was deposited in a local Philippine National Bank for our emergency needs. The accident that happened to my wife, with me having less than P20.00 only in my pocket was a big lesson to me. So, I always make it a point that I had savings for any kind of emergencies.

Next Project, A Sari-Sari Store

After I invested a share capital of P1500.00 to the GSACC, I applied for a loan of P3000.00, or double the amount of my share capital from the Gubat St. Anthony Credit Cooperative. I used this money to open a sari-sari store which was a couple of blocks away from my home. The store place was once a big grocery store abandoned by the owner, when they moved to Mindanao. With my meager capital of P3000.00, the commodities that I was selling did not even fill-up one-third of the store’s space. So, people passing-by, see mostly empty glass display cabinets and shelves instead of products to buy. Some of my neighbors would even make fun of my store. But the mockeries did not bother me.

I started filling up the store with more commodity products by buying more stuff for sale from my extra earnings from tricycle driving. Since my wife and I were working from our government jobs at daytime, the management of the store was delegated to our maid at daytime. My wife manages only the store at night, while I also drove my tricycle. In just a few months, our sari-sari store was starting to look like a real grocery store, with more commodities on display filling up the once empty glass displays and shelves.

With our income doubling every month we started to buy some little luxuries in life, like a second-hand TV set and a second-hand VHS player. We were cooking now in a single-burner fueled by Shellane gas, instead of firewood. We had two maids now – one working exclusively in our store, and the other working at our home.

A Never-Ending Challenge

When my wife left for USA to work as a Professional Nurse in New York City, I was left with two young boys to take care and the businesses to manage. So, I resigned from my 10-year job in the government.

My freedom to work as full-time businessman gave me more ideas to grow my business. I was learning a lot of tricks to make more money by using other people’s money. When Beer na Beer was introduced in the market, the distributor would leave piles of cases in my store to be introduced to customers. But since the customers were accustomed to drinking San Miguel Beer, the Beer na Beer stayed in our storeroom untouched. I then thought of selling them at manufacturer’s price, with no profit for me. The new beer brand started selling, but its proceeds were used by me in buying and selling rice, charcoal, and sugar. Even if I didn’t make profit from Beer na Beer, I was making 5 to 10 times of profit from rice, charcoal, and sugar that were faster to sell when they were repacked.

I used the same strategy with the chocolates left to me by Serg’s, but payable in three-months with post-dated check. I would sell the chocolates at no profit, then roll the proceeds on other fast-selling items. For three months, I was using the money from Serg’s company to make more money for my store.

More Strategies to Build Business

I’ve thought of adding a new unit to my tricycle, which I was driving at night. But then, I’ve realized it was better to apply for a one-year loan on three brand new motorcycles, instead of fully paying one brand new motorcycle. I knew that agents had commissions on the sales of motorcycles. So, I never transact business with them. Instead, I directly dealt with managers and owners of the dealer stores to get lower prices for the motorcycles.

With three units of tricycles, I was earning three times what I would earn from just one tricycle. In less than two years I was operating 14 units of tricycles simply by using the same strategy – getting three motorcycle loans with down payments from the money to be used to fully pay one new motorcycle. Since the income was pyramiding from the growing fleet of tricycles, it was very easy for me to pay-off one motorcycle loan every month.

The business that I started from P500.00 was now more than a million peso business. It grew from one tricycle to 14 units of tricycles, and one small sari-sari store to three grocery stores and a restaurant.

With the combination of my business earnings and my wife’s dollar remittances, we started tripling our monthly amortization for our GSIS housing loan until we fully paid it off. My wife’s income was more focused in developing and beautifying our house, while my business earnings were more focused on expanding our business.

Making More Money

When you are known to have an established business, it was easy to transact business with other businessmen based on trust only. One time I borrowed P100,000.00 at our local Philippine National Bank, to be paid in one year period. While my papers for the loan application were in process, I dealt with an owner of a big department store where I was going to spend the P100,000.00 – to buy office supplies. I told him that my purchase was worth P100,000.00, but the check to pay for it was not in my hands yet. It was still in the bank for loan approval. He agreed to deliver the items to my customer on that same day, based on his trust on my words alone.

My customer on the other hand immediately paid off my delivery on the following day, just on the same date that my check for P100,000.00 loan was released in the bank. If I knew that I could do that deal easily to that big supplier by simply using words of trust, I should have not applied for that P100,000.00 loan from the bank.

I immediately paid my supplier with the P100,000.00 check released by the bank, and in less than two days I paid off my bank loan which was supposed to be paid in one year period. That fast repayment established my good name in Philippine National Bank. So, everytime I need a bigger capital for bigger transactions, the bank would always approve my loans immediately.

There was a time when I learned that the GSIS was re-acquiring a lot of unpaid houses and lots from their housing loan project in our area. I immediately grabbed the opportunity of buying the cheapest property I could buy. I found and fully paid one property that was worth P25,000.00 only, and spent P80,000.00 more on its development. I sold it later for P320,000.00, more than double the price I invested on it.

Making Money From Childhood

How did I learn to make money or to be in business? In my childhood days (from isang kahig, isang tuka family) I learned doing it by selling vegetables from our backyard every morning on weekdays. Out of the sales, I would buy pan de sal for breakfast of our family. On weekends I would do the same, and buy rice and fish from vegetable sales. Then in the afternoon, I would sell “Taliba” and other newspapers on commission basis. So, I would have baon for my weekdays in the school.

When I didn’t have papers in the school, I would initiate a raffle in the classroom, with a handmade raffle tickets as a game on our vacant periods. One would get a raffle ticket from me in exchange for one tablet paper. From a class of 20 to 30, I would earn a lot of tablet papers, because the first prize was five tablet papers, second prize was four, and third prize was three. I kept the remaining 18 or more tablets as profit everytime I held raffle during our vacant periods. Actually, nobody minded the prize so much, because everybody was having fun participating in the raffle.

In high school, I thought of making money from the abandoned pechay and radish vegetables left during the summer vacation by students in their plots for Agriculture class. I opened the proposal of selling those abandoned vegetables to my Agriculture teacher, instead of letting them rot in their plots. My Agriculture teacher approved with no hesitance. The planting area was so vast that I had something to sell everyday. From the sales, I bought Agricultural tools and gave them to the school. But most important, I was earning money from the share of the sales – from plants that were abandoned by students. When classes reopened, I was big hero, because of the new tools I bought for the school – tools that could not be purchased or supplied even by the local or provincial Department of Education.

Your Turn to Get Rich

How do you get rich even if you are just a farmer, factory worker or a member of the middle class? This was a question posted by another Filipino in one of the more than 40 Yahoo Groups where I was a member. My reply in the Internet posting was, anybody starting from a farmer, a factory worker, or a member of the middle class has all the chances of becoming rich if he wants to. I am a living proof of this claim. I started my tricycle business from P500.00 old sidecar I attached to my five year old motorcycle. From one old tricycle my transportation business surged into 14 units of tricycles. From one small sari-sari store, it multiplied into three grocery stores and one restaurant. From being buried under the ravine of unpaid loans, my businesses and properties surged to a P5 million worth, before I migrated to US to start a new kind of struggle in life.

Anyone can become rich, even a millionaire if he wants to. But the main reason why most Filipinos can not do so, is that our parents and our culture has taught us that the best way to earn money is finish college, then find a good job. We were taught to become servants for the rest of our lives, by telling our children to study hard, have good grades to have stable jobs in the future. This cycle of idea had been in our culture for hundreds of years.

We have soaring unemployment, because there are thousands who are merely looking for jobs, instead of learning to make money in our own businesses. More and more are going to different countries around the world with one simple objective – to serve other people in order to make money. We were never taught how to make our own money, or let other people make money for us.

Now, you should be lucky, since you will be reading more ideas on how to get rich by starting like a tricycle driver, or a lowly Chinese immigrant who buys and sells scrap metals and empty bottles. Then, rise-up from the society as respected, moneyed person. As a bonus, I’ll be showing you, too, on how to earn dollars in the Internet, without going anywhere, by only staying at your home or by simply using your local Internet Café.