Ridesharing from a FReepers POV (It is literally a blessing from God and saved my life!)

First off, the last part of my title. I lost my pay. I didn't lose my job, but my investors pulled their money from my pay to pay someone else they felt was more important to pay. Either way, I'll deal with that later. But here is the skinny:

I had to take an emergency flight to say goodbye to my father, who I am very close to. He's got Cancer and it will take him soon. The chemo has ravaged his mind and his body and I was called across the country to say goodbye.

Upon my return, my investors had made a decision. To stop paying me a salary. They would fund the rest of the project, just not my pay. A whole 'nother story and it's not what this story is about. Either way, I had no backpay, no savings (I just moved here) and I had to go home and tell my family the bad news. I had no money. We were going to lose the house. I couldn't make the rent due in just a few days. I couldn't pay our $1400/month healthcare bill and I would not have the ability to provide the life-saving medicationf for my wife. I wouldn't be able to get us back home in a few weeks for a trip to see our families. I wouldn't have enough to do anything. I had no money.

On the way home from that fateful meeting I actually stopped at a favorite gun store and asked him for a job. I told him I would work for commission only. I mean, I can sell guns. Just bring them through the door and I'll sell it to them. I delivered the news and then went to work immediately. The next day.

40 hours later (Which was about 3 days it turns out) I still hadn't made a single sale. One morning I came in and another guy was there who wasn't scheduled to be there. I was the only person working on commission. Everyone else was hourly. This guy said he was just hanging out. A car pulls in, he runs outside to greet him. The two walk in and the customer proceeds to buy $10,000 worth of guns - 2 of which on a whim. They weren't marked "sold". After this other guy took the sale from me, he left. I complained to the owner of the store and he told me exactly what kind of person I was. I was worthless P.O.S. and I wouldn't amount to anything. I was a pathetic loser who should eat things and then die. He made it clear how decent of a person he was. I'm glad he did so after I only wasted about 30 hours working tirelessly for him.

Anyway, having wasted a ton of time there, I recalled the first Uber trip I had taken to the airport to see my dad only a week prior.It was pleasant. The woman driving had a Toyota Tundra truck. It was clean and respectable, and she mentioned that while it didn't get Prius mileage, it was still enough to do her job and make some money while she interviewed for other jobs. The ride back was another woman who was about to have a very important interview the next day. I haven't seen her since, I assume she got the job.

I decided to give it a shot. What could I lose ? I had a "typical" job for a few days and I made exactly zero dollars doing it. At least with Uber I could control the losses ?

First off, no one needs to talk to me like that. Second - I had an option. If this were 5 years ago, I wouldn't have an option. I would have gas station 3rd shift jobs, fast food and other retail spaces. But here is this whole new idea that is there for people like me. You can just start. There is no interview, just up-front requirements. This new economy is a god-send - literally - to the millions of people out there who need to get back to work. I've got the requirement: A 4 door car newer than 2004. I am blessed by being to find and maintain it up 'til this point too. Seriously, on paper this solves many problems that have plagued many people.

So here is the jist of ride-sharing: I make about $13 an hour. Everyone makes about that because certain things all balance out. If you work in Brooklyn you'll make about $30 an hour but your costs will be higher. If you work in a rural area you'll do the same but your work day will look a bit different (You may sit at home with the app running. Who knows?)

In my area I have some pros laid out at my feet: I live near a HUGE corporation. I live near a major airport. I live near about 200 companies who have all setup small offices to support that huge office. I live near a state university. I have super rich neighborhoods and super poor ones. I have 2 historical downtown areas that are always having something happening. I live near a complex bike trail system. I live near a large medical complex with satellite offices everywhere. I have a concert venue.

About the only things I'm missing are a train station and a large government installation.

There are TON of people out there complaining about their Uber and Lyft experiences. I find that they are in the wrong. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I don't like "Having a job" and "Working for other people". I've always run my own business and had to work 4 times as hard as anyone else to make a successful impact. I'm used to it and it's in my blood now. I look at Ridesharing like this:

Like selling things on Ebay or Amazon, they charge. What you're doing is selling goods. You can rent a store and sell goods. You can rent space at a bazaar and sell goods. Or you can pay the fees to Ebay/Amazon and their shipping fees and sell your goods that way. What Ebay and Amazon do is give you access to their market place. And the more effective their market place is at selling your goods, the more they charge you for access.

So Uber and Lyft aren't employing you - they are charging you for access to their effective marketplace. What you as a driver are doing is deciding that you want to drive a cab. You aren't getting a livery licence, you aren't dealing with the Mafia (More on them still..) and you aren't having to bother with making business cards and leaving them around for someone to pick up. You are immediately tapping into the Uber/Lyft marketplace and they are trusting you to start to represent them. For that, each company takes 25% of your earnings.

Ebay can take 25% as well. And the USPS takes like 40% of your profits if you need to ship. Amazon makes more money in sly little ways that you may not even understand. Ever.

But Uber and Lyft take the money as you make it. And they do your taxes as you earn the money. They even take the money out of your tips per laws of the state in which you operate. They do everything for you. All you have to do is provide the actual drive. They don't tell you how. They don't really train you. It's not that they care, they do.. But they trust you to do well on your own.

As an entrepreneur this makes sense. This is a great deal, actually. If I wanted to sell Avon products I would have to pony up dough. If I wanted to sell insurance I would need to comply with alien-language contracts and payments that would make a Timeshare salesman jump off a building.

If you approach it as an employee being managed by a faceless company, you'll be on your way to disaster. What you are is an independent business owner buying access to a marketplace to perform that service. And for this, may God bless Uber and Lyft. Because without them my family may not eat this week. Our utilities would be shut off. We would become homeless. This new model is working.

I told you I make $13 an hour. That's after a few things have happened. The truth is that while I'm driving for Uber and Lyft, I'm making $1 per minute. About $1 every 2 miles. I do a normal "UberX" pool and a normal "Lyft" pool. I have a Chevy Avalanche which is the same operating costs as a Suburban but I don't qualify for "XL" services because I lack the rear seats. My car is a black luxury SUV and I have experience as a chauffer but I can't run UberBlack because they require a commercial licence and insurance policy. That's all ok because if you do have an XL car you still get regular calls with the occasional XL request. Working XL pools (If you can get in one exclusively) will get you about $17-$20 per hour if you're good. I only say that because I get $13 an hour without the XL perks.

If you drive "Black" services you have to have a livery licence and a commercial insurance policy. The insurance itself is about $1000 a month. And do you know who runs the livery game ? The mafia. So don't think you're getting out of that office cheaply either. You'll run a far more expensive ride, but your costs will bring you right back to "X" rates pretty quick.

If you can always run, you'll make great money. If you need to wait for calls (I do) then you'll need to develop a strategy.

I have a "Hotel strip" in my city. It's great to get people from there to the airport (I make about $20 in 10 minutes and the trip is easy) but it's not possible to know when those people will need it, or how often everyday. Some people leave at 3am and others leave at 4pm. There is no crystal ball. But throughout the day they want to be driven somewhere. If your hotels are far from the airport then chances are they have a rental car themselves.

Airports and other transportation centers put you in a Queue. So you'll arrive and park and then the list of other drivers gets their runs in the order that they came. In general 2 people on every incoming flight will take a rideshare from the airport. Again, making sure that your most popular hotels are within a decent ride. You'll need to make at least $20 per ride here unless the queue is low. (Again, measure the planes coming in and assume that 2 people per plane will request a ride. Then compare that to the "in queue" numbers to see what your chances are.)

Bars are full of people who don't effing tip. They stumble to your car and you KNOW what's next. I wouldn't even bother with them. They also try to squeeze 6 people in your back seat to avoid being charged to take two cars, or calling an XL. Just a-holes, mostly.

Colleges are awesome though. These kids are used to this method of transportation and they tip as much as they can. Something to understand about most of the kids is that they are starving themselves to get by. But they do tip, they provide friendly interactions and are appreciative of what you do. Here is something that may surprise you: I have gotten to know Millenials. These are some of the brightest, hardest working kids I've ever had the chance to meet. Seriously ! Yes, they don't understand our world, they are afraid of old people (They were told we literally ate their planet) but these kids work several jobs, study real hard and retain a lot of what they learned. These kids are more promising than my generation, by far. They live eat and breathe skills - Like Indians or Chinese people. When I was their age I knew stuff but it pretty much took a back seat to "Getting tail" and "Building hotrods". For these kids their professions are at the top of their attention. I meet a few of them who are supporting families too and they are working harder, commuting further and taking more sh!t at work than I imagined they ever would. I give Millenial kids a lot of props these days. They have it hard and they are adapting.

Commutes and events are a great way to get into it. Wake up and take people to work from 6ish to 9ish. Take them home from 3 to 6ish. Go home for lunch and take a nap. Do something else. You'll make about $60 per day. They don't tip.

Events are a great way to go. If you have a few convention centers near you, stadiums or concert halls. You get the schedule and you know whats going on. You can plan your day pretty well. People will even pay for a kind of shuttle service from the outskirt parking lots to the few blocks closer to the venue. Hotels will house thousands of convention attendees. Get creative and research all the time to see what's going on.

I decided to make my goal everyday $100. And that's EVERY day. I need to pay bills. I can make that goal with 8 hours of work. I can even work a little more to cover gas for the day (I calculate that cost as I'm rolling). You may make more, you may make less but you should also be given more effort if you're making more, and less effort if you're making less. If you live in rural Missouri you may not make a ton of money, but you may also have the option to just sit at home. You won't roll as much. If you live in NYC you'll roll literally all day long until you decide to stop but you will work your ass off (And your car's ass off) to get there. It all boils down to that magic number: $13 per hour. That's about what you'll make. And that's not horrible. That could be the difference between eating and not, living in a house or in your actual car.

* There is little stress here. * You have to drive like a little old lady. As a pro driver you're doing about 5 times the amount of driving as normal people do. That means you're 5 times more likely to get in a collision or get a ticket. Drive every street like you just got your licence. Full stops. Careful as she goes. * Be good to your tranmission. Every single thing you do gets pushed through the transmission. Bumps, stopping, accelerating, even turning and of course engaging gears. Treat your tranmission like gold. It's the first and worst to break. Your vehicle will last about 3 months. I'm sorry to say that, but there you have it. About 3 months you will run into a major repair. So get prepared immediately. Get another 2 runs everyday before you log off. Run all the apps simultaneously. Uber and Lyft allow you to work for both at the same time. They allow you to work with all of the food deliveries too. When you get a call on one, you immediately switch to the others to disable them to avoid overbooking. You can turn down calls. * In my experience, do not EVER operate outside of the app. There is a good chance the app is listening to you too. It makes sense that they investigate if a call that rode in your car is now calling you on your phone (You gave it access to your contact list, remember? They can do that.) Either way, people who want to work outside of the app are there to swindle you. DO NOT DO IT. I will never, ever work outside of the app again.

If you have an older car you can work for all of the major food delivery services, at once. You can again make good money this way but I haven't calculated the actual data. Delivering food so far isn't great because you need to drive far distances to get the food. Not many people are doing the food delivery versus the people delivery.

In 2014, Uber had a cashless transaction policy with no tipping the driver. The pay was 15% off the top. In 2015 that was increased to 25% off of the top. Recently, Uber pretty much did away with their surge pricing multiple and went to a dollar figure to which the most I have seen is $13 for a one way trip. At the same time, they cut our per mile fee by 25% but increased our per minute fee by 16%. When we did have a Surge multiplier, Uber took 59% of my largest fare, not including their booking fee. After maintenance, miscellaneous expenses most Uber drivers which is the regular Uber fare, the lowest tier, barely pull out 5 dollars an hour. If you are making 13 an hour, I call BS because you are not figuring in all of your expenses. I follow the regular Uber boards and they would agree that doing Uber you very rarely pull in 13 an hour anywhere, especially since Uber decided to cut our surge pricing. This cut alone was a cut in thousands of dollars. One good surge ride and I could be done for the night. No need to pull a 12-hour shift to make 150 to 200 a night. With all the driver pay decreases, the per minute increase for drivers is the first in five years of driving Uber. Uber, on the other hand, has steadily increased its side of the coin. They have increased their booking fee countless times. They take far greater than 25% of the fare. It is usually between 30 to 55 percent. They implemented the take rides on your way to a destination. This is great but now, they dock your next ride 30% but the passenger pays the same amount.

Recently they tout that they offer drivers a reward system, which is done in tiers. The lowest tier starts off at 4.85 stars. This is based on your customer feedback. I know riders give Uber drivers 1 star just because they are a-holes. I also know drivers after contacting Customer no-support see their ratings drop over a period of time when they have received five stars from passengers. Drivers that do both, Uber and Lyft and Juno, usually have one phone per service so there is an expense for that. To receive Lyft bonuses, it is tightly controlled and usually most drivers don’t reach them. However, you need to know your town, is it a Lyft or an Uber town because the town I drive for is an Uber town. I have gone nghts where I have a constant one-in-the-queue with Uber. Normally, there is about 9 Uber rides for every 1 Lyft ride here. This is not the same everywhere. I no longer pull up my Lyft app because I have no need.

Airport is good but you failed to mention how many drivers wait at the airport. XL far outnumbers the Lux vehicles. Which is why you drive XL too because you get more rides with XL. I have told passengers that they have to call another Uber because there just wasn’t room in my vehicle with luggage and passengers. If you get caught overloaded, meaning more passengers than seatbelts, you stand a good chance to get ticketed and when ticketed with Uber on the clock, you lose your opportunity with Uber.

When doing events, I always talk to my passengers about safety. Especially since the woman in Vegas was robbed and kidnapped and the girl was killed. I tell my passengers about the safety protocols. Even still, passengers will get into nefarious fake Uber cars. Or they will be in a group and the first Uber/Lyft that arrives they take that one and they don’t cancel the other.

Oh sure Uber might have saved your life, but you are being blind or this is simply a recruiting ploy put out by Uber which seems most likely. I know 15 drivers who quit Uber and Lyft after surge pricing was cut. Approximately 40 to 60 percent of Uber drivers don’t last a year because the model isn’t profitable.

I have had people in my car from famous professional football players to singers to famous celebrities to corporate Uber. I don’t drop names. They all ask questions and I always answer them truthfully. I don’t sugar coat. Most are unaware of Surge pricing being cut. If I had a dollar for every time a person tells me they will tip me on the app, I would be in the money. The new rate the passenger thing is a joke too because even though you can rate them, they can see what you rate them then they have 24 hours to rate you or change their rating. Give someone a 1 star and they see this, you get a one star back even if your service was top notch.

Most ride sharing drivers are retired individuals and for a good reason too. Who wants to spend 12 hours in a car day in and day out making less than minimum wage. I don’t always drive at night but its a hard schedule when you switch t midweek. To go from early morning wake up to deliver Airport riders to bar riders and event riders. Surge was the best thing there was for an Uber driver. I tell my passengers don’t worry about it anymore because it rarely gets over 5 dollars except during high pop events such as the Indy 500 but even then it only went as high as 13 dollars for surge pricing at the end of the 500. Think about that, 300 thousand potential riders and a surge bonus of only as high of 13 dollars. A year ago the same ride would have been double, triple of the fare. Uber does not take money from tips. I have never seen them do so. Most riders still give cash tips though. My last tip was 20 dollars on a 7 dollar ride. I always tell people it is their choice to tip and how they do it is at their convenience. When Uber had a policy against tips, I always refused the tip. I have heard passengers say they were required to tip. (To those not Uber drivers, Uber is a service and as a service provider, you should tip accordingly, just like you would a waiter or a person helping you with your bags at an airport.)

My worst passengers are former Uber drivers. They never ever tip and they always think they know more than you do when it comes to Uber and Lyft. I had one former Uber driver pull up Waze because all left turns were blocked by police cars for a bicycle event going on. He thought by pulling up Waze we could get around the police cars or we could go up to the police officer and the officer would let us go through the bicyclists to get to his club. I have done the drug runs, but you usually don’t know they are until you arrive in some trailer park and they tell you to wait. I was once asked to turn off my app and they would pay me fifty dollars to take them where they want to go. When that didn’t work, they offered up their wife and to use my imagination. I have had women profess they want to get pregnant in my car. One was a mother of three and the man she wanted to have the baby with was not her husband.

SO yeah I got stories and I am not delusioned by the realities of the job. However, there is no way, after all, is said and done, you are pulling $13 an hour on XL, even with a luxury SUV.

Uber Eats is simply horrendous. Think about this. You get pinged to pick up some food for someone. You don’t start the meter until you pick up the food to deliver it. Most people don’t order food from outside of their neighborhood. So you get pinged, drive 17 to 30 minutes to a specific restaurant, the food is not ready when you arrive so you ave to wait another 5 minutes. Or if the food is ready, it’s cold by the time it gets to the customer. You drive maybe five minutes from the restaurant to the address. And you rarely get a tip. At night, this would entail a trip to McDonalds, where there is a line of cars and the slowest fast food workers in the city. You drive 17 minutes, wait 45 minutes in line to pickup the food, (all the while not getting paid) then you drive to the address all for a 3.50 payment and no tip.

Amazon flex is better for deliveries. You can work when you decide but there the blocks are between 1 to 4 hours and you know up front what you are making per hour. Except when you finish you may have to return the package to the station, You don’t get paid for this if your block finishes. They tell you to count on delivering 15 packages per hour. Sometimes they will go over that and sometimes you will go under. I have delivered one package in a 4-hour block and got paid for the full four hours. Unless it is a package delivery, where i pick up the packages then do my route, I don’t go the stores.

You can make 50K gross. However, that is reduced by expenses and is tax-deductible.

I just thought of a business use-case that Uber/Lyft should adopt.

Millions of people commute to work by automobile. During rush hour, the majority of the cars heading into the city are single driver vehicles. Now the whole "car-pooling" concept never took off, probably because it was pushed by clueless bureaucrats who thought all they needed to make it work was a slogan plastered on billboards.

Here's how it can actually work. Commuters can load the app and set themselves up as commuters (as opposed to regular drivers) who can simply load in their workplace address. The ride will only be available to commuters who work within a block or so of that workplace address.

So basically the driver leaves his home in the morning and turns on the app. The route to work (without giving up the home address) is projected and those who live along the way can "flag" this vehicle for a ride.

In this manner, a commuter might pickup 2-3 additional people on the way, earning money to defray the expenses of the commute for that driver (i.e. parking, tools, gas, wear and tear) and the passengers will also benefit as the ride should be considerably cheaper then either taking their own car or taking a metro train, etc.

Repeat for the trip home.

The more people that do this, the less cars on the road and the faster the commute for everybody.

What will really help this work is if Uber/Lyft could work out consistent and reasonable rates for commuting fares (as opposed to the "surge pricing" model they use for one-off trips). This would encourage commuters to use the service. Maybe Uber/Lyft takes in less money with this application but they are earning goodwill by reducing congestion on the roadways during rush hours (give them tax breaks as well).

Also, Uber/Lyft needs to have a fail-safe, so if a commuter dedicated to car-pooling cannot find a ride in that day with another commuter, he/she will be guaranteed the same fare in a regular Uber ride.

Obviously there will be some kinks to work out but I think this model is a good one that will work well.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.