Should I Tip The Bounce House Guy?

We always get this question from new customer renting inflatables and games for their parties and events, "Should we tip the driver? and how much would be normal to tip them?" Well we wanted to educate customers a little bit about what goes into the process of delivering those fun and colorful bounce houses.

The Delivery Process

Drivers usually start off their day arriving at the warehouse as early as 7am, sometimes even 6:30am to start loading up their deliveries for the day. They have to load everything one-by-one into their van, pickup, or box truck, double check everything to make sure they didn't forget any small items. Once everything is loaded up, then they start their route, going from their first delivery, to the second, to the third, and so on. Sometimes drivers have up to 8 locations they deliver to in one day. Once arriving at each location, drivers have to setup everything and make sure to educate everyone how things operate. After their last delivery, drivers are then able to rest before their pickup times.

The Pickup Process

Drivers then head back to pick everything up that same night. They go to each customers house again, one after the next, roll up the inflatables, sometimes get muddy and wet while picking up water slides, and load them back up into their car. Once finished with all the pickups, drivers must head back to the company warehouse to drop off all the products. Sometimes drivers finish the day as late as 11pm or 11:30pm. Having to pickup for instance items from 5 locations that are all around 8pm pushes the drivers pickups back until late night when they finally finish. By the end of the day, drivers will have driven anywhere from 100 to 200 miles that day going from one location to the next (So Cal traffic doesn't really make this part very enjoyable).

So Why Should I Tip The Driver?

Pizza Delivery Peronnel

So now that you are a little more aware of what goes into the delivery and pickup process of those fun bounce houses and water slides, lets consider a few things. In the U.S. it is usually customary to tip for services anywhere from 10-15% depending on the level of service. Consider a Pizza Delivery Personnel for instance. A Pizza Delivery Personnel usually does not drive more than 10 miles to get to the customers location, carries a pizza that is no more than 5 pounds, and the end result keeps you satisfied for a temporary time, let's say for instance 1 hour until you digest the food.

Jumper Delivery Personnel

An Inflatable Delivery Personnel on the other hand, will deliver a product that usually weights anywhere from 200 pounds all the way up to 600 pounds! Will drive up to 30 miles to deliver your product, and will driver back at night to pick it up again. The majority of people that rent bounce houses or inflatable games do so to leave a memorable impact in the mind of their birthday child or their guests attending. Our products usually provide fun and entertainment for a group of people (sometimes for up to 50 people), and leave a smile on the faces of children for the wonderful and exciting time they had during their special occasion.

Now compare a Pizza Delivery Personnel and a Jumper Delivery Personnel, taking into account the work each do and the product they deliver, along with the satisfaction you get from each, who would you want to tip more?