Interesting. So if you decide 'I’m gonna go on shift" and drive toward the airport or transit center etc., that doesn’t count.
I remember once hearing about drivers who finally realized “don’t just drive around, find some place central and park the damn car” - to save on gas, wear and tear etc. I didn’t even think about the tax issue.
I’ve seen it a few times. Early one, one driver had munchies available too. We’re not in Florida though; mid-Atlantic.
I view such gig jobs like MLMs. A few people make money, a lot more lose money.
It really requires basically an obsessive dedication. Not good for someone just trying it out to see if it maybe will work.
When I was starting my “shift” I would go to the nearest business class hotel at 5:30 in the morning and only accept rides from there. Most of the time they were heading for the airport.
You can also accept rides and they will then tell you where it is going. You could then cancel the ride if it was going where you didn’t want to go. But that is kind of a shitty thing to do and if you did it too often the ride share companies would ding your rating.
Seriously? You think a lot of Lyft/Uber drivers actually lose money?
mmm
As I mentioned in my first post, it’s not a moneymaking job. Your expenses largely use up the money you make. I could net maybe $400 in a week, which is pretty poor wages. Then, at tax time, I could deduct all those passenger-carrying miles at the Federal mileage rate, gaining in one go several thousand bucks, which was the one time of year when there was a substantial payout.
Losing money? Probably not, but not really gaining it either.
More than you would think are profitable on a cash flow basis - that is, they earn more than the cost of gas and insurance, but are NOT truly profitable - they are using up their car, in terms of $$, more than the money they make. This is especially true if you drive a poor vehicle choice where the cost per mile driven is high, ie New SUV, very very bad, Used toyota prius, much better. And it is even more true if you don’t very carefully select where and when you drive - to make real money you only drive when you have bonuses ($X for 100 rides or whatever), or when there is surge, and skip trips that take too long for you to pick up, since that is unpaid. Frankly most people would be better off from a financial pespective working at McDonalds for minimum wage. Thus Uber and Lyft in many cities depends on a “cycle of suckers” willing to sell them car miles too cheap, essentially. When they run out of suckers, they don’t have enough drivers - it’s like that where I live, people complain that they simply can’t get an Uber or Lyft at all from our local airport in Florida during much of the day, because it just doesn’t pay enough.
I can’t speak to absolute profitability for the drivers, although I agree that on a total-cost, after-tax basis I expect it’s not a great job.
But I did recently encounter a situation in a city where Uber simply had zero available drivers but Lyft had plenty. In talking with two different Lyft drivers, at least at that week in that city, Lyft simply paid significantly more than did Uber. So the entire driver corps pretty well abandoned Uber. All of them have both apps and are registered with both services. But they choose which to switch on at any given moment.
An interesting development if true and if more than an hours-long local blip in the reality of driving for these outfits.
Which one is better (Uber vs Lyft) varies greatly by city and can change week by week. Most drivers have both these days and I have asked a lot of them which they prefer. They all say that it depends on the perks at the time. One that I recall was a bonus from Uber if they took three consecutive rides one right after the other. This was in Las Vegas.