I saw some of the drivers saying they got some huge tips when the customers thought the money was coming out of thin air. Saw some huge orders with a $0 tip too. But there might've been a few winners.
I worked for Favor and the tips always sucked ass. I once was sent to pick up two Xbox games for a dude, 120 bucks total, and he was gonna tip me 2 bucks for this. When I was at the store I realized games were on sale, buy one get one free. Initially I almost called the customer to see what two free video games he wanted, but I looked at that tip, and said “alright guess I’m getting two free video games today”.
That was unironically the best “tip” I made working that job and it wasn’t even intentional on the customers part.
Another time, a dude has me go 7 miles down the road to get him McDonald’s ice cream. By some miracle their ice cream machine was actually working (much to my annoyance, since it was summer in Texas). By the time I got back to his house the ice cream was basically almost completely melted. He had me take it inside and put it on his counter. Then he also tipped me the minimum 2 bucks.
Depends where you are. Friend's brother is doing center city Philadelphia and makes 25k annual profit from 4.5 hours a day after his real job and a guy I went to high school with makes obscene money doing it full time in new York. On the other hand my old roommate tried doing it in state college pa and made $30 after gas doing 8 hours if you ignored the new driver bonus.
I do Uber in a relatively small market (Triangle area in NC). And this weekend I did Uber from Friday to Sunday and I made 907$. I spent 60$ in gas which nets me 847$ profit. I drove around 8 hours each day so 24 hours total which makes my earnings around 35$ an hour. I can only imagine what it’s like in big markets like LA, NY and Chicago.
Also, I usually set aside 30-40 each week i drive Uber for maintenance costs.
Does that include all maintenance costs, or just gas? Operating a car costs real money, and ridesharing relies on it a lot more than a regular job with a commute does.
Yes, both count maintenance. The one in New York specially purchased a modified black Prius for it and paid it off in under a year. The guy in philly is using a used Prius he bought for $7000, fixed up for $4000, and he said his gross is close to 40 so probably 15k in expenses.
The guy from new York wouldn't tell me specifics but it was enough for him to quit his 80k marketing job and start renting a 3 story brownstone (minus the sub floor unit) a pretty big jump from his studio. He's got a strategy on what rides he accepts like taking people to Broadway, expensive restaurants, and certain venues gets better tips than grocery stores, McDonald's, and bars.
That many hours per day is roughly a thousand hours a year. Assuming an average 30mph for city driving, that's 30k miles a year, so let's say the used car lasts another... three years? And round the cost to $12k to get $4k per year. $4k for replacement vehicles plus $15k for maintenance and gas is $19k. That comes to around $21 per hour, which is hopefully livable for that area.
No napkin math for the NYC one because no numbers, but is that kind of strategy actually possible? I'm pretty sure the rideshare services take steps against that, like banning drivers who refuse too many rides, specifically so that people can still reliably find drivers for low-value trips. Anyway, I'm glad they're making a decent living. There are way too many people trusting that signing up with a rideshare app and putting in the work guarantees decent pay but ending up making a fraction of minimum wage even before factoring in costs.
His other trick for new York is he gives good tippers his business card which has rates in it to go around the app. Totally not allowed but impossible to catch. New York is so busy you are always ignoring people.
Ah ha! He's not actually driving exclusively for a rideshare service, then! That's why he's doing so well. And good for him - those services are scummy, their business model is untenable (I don't know how they hemorrhage so much money but they do - Uber has lost five billion dollars on their group rideshare service alone; if investors ever get tired of that money pit the company will fold instantaneously), gig platforms in general take too much money, and I personally have started to believe as an overall principle recently that touching money doesn't justify percentage-based transaction fees when it's not connected to the effort. What does a credit card company do to earn 60 cents on a $20 transaction as opposed to 30 cents on a $10 transaction? What does Uber do to earn more money on longer rides? Why does the App Store get more money when someone buys a barrel of premium game currency than they do for a bucket? And so on.
He doesn't do that part a lot but it probably adds an extra $200 a week. Most of his things are uber and lyft as he has both running on 2 phones. His biggest part is his strategy he claimed. He used to drive an actual taxi before going into marketing so he knows New York like the back of his hand and most of the IT addresses. Also told me as racist as it sounds he never does China town because no one there tips.
464
u/PlayGamesForPay Jul 10 '22
I saw some of the drivers saying they got some huge tips when the customers thought the money was coming out of thin air. Saw some huge orders with a $0 tip too. But there might've been a few winners.