Driving for Uber

[ME_Andy]

Finally hit paydirt... Picked up a 40 mi airport rider during 1.5X "surge" pricing. $55/50 minutes... Wow! And it was in the direction of home anyway. 2 more rides till I get the bonus, but I'm still leaning towards quitting after that. No unpleasant experiences recently.

Perhaps I'll switch to Lyft. They give a $1500 bonus after 40 rides.

The best of all: using my uber earnings to buy LED bulbs a for home. I love earning money to save more money.

[mcrews]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

The two points are mutually exclusive:
-If it's sharing, it's sharing, and money is simply to defray costs.
-Since Uber dodges all responsibilities while pointing out that it's a job and the drivers are independent contractors, you are now the mcrews transportation service. If you want to deduct anything, you first need to declare it as income. Then income tax, SS deductions and workers' comp come in to play. And have commercial insurance. And submit to local regulations.

welcome to the world of self employment.

[mcrews]

Originally Posted by ME_Andy

Finally hit paydirt... Picked up a 40 mi airport rider during 1.5X "surge" pricing. $55/50 minutes... Wow! And it was in the direction of home anyway. 2 more rides till I get the bonus, but I'm still leaning towards quitting after that. No unpleasant experiences recently.

Perhaps I'll switch to Lyft. They give a $1500 bonus after 40 rides.

The best of all: using my uber earnings to buy LED bulbs a for home. I love earning money to save more money.

Andy, how many miles do you drive a week for uber?

[Fingie]

Über is outlawed here in finland. There was a legal case, that was lost by the drivers. You will always need a taxi license in order to lawfully charge for a ride.

[ME_Andy]

Originally Posted by mcrews

Andy, how many miles do you drive a week for uber?

Maybe 60

[vskid3]

I've been considering driving for Uber to bring in some cash on the side. I would probably only do it Friday and Saturday nights. Time is the only thing it would really cost me. Gas is a few cents a mile and at 11 years old and 119k miles, the Prius doesn't have much value left to depreciate.

[ME_Andy]

Well, if you want to use my referral link, I'll split the bonus with you fairly. Check your inbox. The same goes for any other ecomodder, but I don't want the whole internet to see it.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Fingie

Über is outlawed here in finland. There was a legal case, that was lost by the drivers. You will always need a taxi license in order to lawfully charge for a ride.

In California in the 1970s all you had to do was put a sticker on the passenger side of the dash that said "@ss, g@s or gr@ss, nobody rides for free". Anarchism loses to commodification.

Edit:
Weirder yet, people would summon a ride with their thumbs!

[ME_Andy]

New update from my blog

During the past few months, I became one of the highest-rated Uber drivers in the city at 4.92 stars. For me, it was not very difficult to maintain a good rating. I enjoy talking to people, but I keep it professional and let them steer the conversation. I also keep the car clean and just try to be efficient for my riders, in general.

Occassionally I made decent money, and occassionally it was amazing- like when a got a surge ride to the airport, making $56 in 50 minutes. But there have also been many frustrating periods, times when I would make $10/hour. The only viable path I see to really be successful with Uber is to drive during peak hours only, which happens to be around 2am. No thanks for me!

The picture below is from one of those frustrating periods when I turned my app on during a high surge period... and sat there for 10 minutes without any pings. That shouldn't happen.

I wish I could provide the reader with a long-term average of my earnings per hour, but Uber doesn't make that easy, as far as I can tell. I would guess I'm averaging about $16/hour. I will now be switching to Lyft to take advantage of their $500 bonus after 40 rides.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Fingie

Über is outlawed here in finland. There was a legal case, that was lost by the drivers. You will always need a taxi license in order to lawfully charge for a ride.

Uber is technically illegal in Brazil too, but it's using some loopholes on the law to keep operating. And the violence perpetrated by taxi drivers against Uber drivers actually gives Uber more support from users.