
Income of an uber driver - prostoalex
http://uberpeople.net/threads/income-of-an-uber-driver.26649/
======
HaloZero
To those of who you are against including the depreciation cost of the car.
Here's the math:

Income: He works 10-12 hours to make $150/day and works every day of hte year.
He will make $54,750

Expenses: He calculated 94,900 miles driven total assuming working 365 days a
year. That's about 260 miles a day of driving.

Gas cost $12,775 Oil changes $855 Tire replacement $960 Misc Repairs: $5000

So that adds up to $19,950 in expenses. You could reduce that by doing oil
changes yourself but whatever. Misc repairs at $5,000 depends on the car
itself.

So that comes out to be about $34,800 or $39,800 if you're really hating on
Misc repairs.

Let's also assume that he is in fact working 10 hours a day to get that
$150/day.

So his hourly wage is about $9.5/hour It's $10.9/hour if you don't include the
$5,000 toward repairs.

I've limited it to expenses that directly relate to the uber driving
specifically and not costs such as depreciation and insurance with come with
car ownership versus actually putting miles on your car driving it around.

~~~
Zarel
On the other hand, most minimum wage jobs don't reimburse you for the costs or
time spent commuting to and from work. I wonder if that significantly impacts
the comparison.

In the other direction, I think the US also has higher self-employment taxes,
and of course you don't get health insurance and other benefits. I wonder if
that impacts the comparison, too.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>On the other hand, most minimum wage jobs don't reimburse you for the costs
or time spent commuting to and from work

Uber definitely does not compensate your commute back to your home when you
turn the app off.

I'm also pretty sure that Uber does not compensate you during your drive to
pick up your first passenger, so unless your first passenger is waiting at
your parking location, you have an un-reimbursed commute to work as well.

~~~
Zarel
The $9.5/hour or $10.9/hour figure mentioned in the OP compensates for the
time/distance traveled to pickup point, including your drive to pick up your
first passenger. That was the figure I was referring to. You get misleading
results if you compare a gross income from a minimum wage job to a net income
from Uber.

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russell_h
My sense is that Uber's current rates aren't entirely sustainable for drivers.

They're able to recruit people who already own a car, and treat it mostly as a
sunk cost, when in reality being an Uber driver will significantly decrease
the vehicles lifespan and increase maintenance costs.

~~~
lenley
Mine too, but I'd say it is more that Über is exploiting driver behavior.

If you assume there's the $9.50 wage someone calculated above. \+ maybe some
premium for being able to schedule work hours yourself. \+ surge pricing,
which doesn't seem accounted for.

Transportation companies are making money on the inability of drivers to
calculate their expenses properly. People are likely "more satisfied" w/ Uber
b/c they don't calculate what the actual money they make.

It's interesting, b/c it makes you wonder about other questions around Uber's
model in the longer term as drivers have more information.

== This brings up an interesting issue -- will driverless cars actually
_reduce_ profits (of transportation companies) and _increase_ competition?

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sakopov
Correct me if i'm wrong, but Uber started out as a service that connected
people without a ride to those who happened to be on the road within a few
miles away and willing to give a lift for a few bucks. So what happened? Did
Uber pivot or did people start building their lives around Uber and became
dissatisfied with the their business model? I don't quite understand this
mainly because I don't live in a city where Uber is very popular.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" Correct me if i'm wrong, but Uber started out as a service that connected
> people without a ride to those who happened to be on the road within a few
> miles away and willing to give a lift for a few bucks"_

This never happened, as much as Uber would like to imagine themselves a
grassroots, populist movement.

Uber started out a service that connected black cars/limos to riders. The idea
was to provide competition to taxis, and the easiest existing source of
professional drivers was limo drivers, who had a great deal of down time
between bookings - and Uber helped fill in the gaps and provide extra income.

Uber was never a "connect riders to random people willing to give a lift" \-
other companies tried this model, most notably Sidecar, though even then I
think most of its driver-base were at least semi-profesisonal.

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gambiting
So...he uses his personal car to drive for Uber, then deducts the cost of the
car from the money he made and says he ended up with nothing? It's like
someone running AirBnB in their house and spending all money on mortgage and
then saying that they make no money on AirBnb. Unless, of course, he uses the
car for absolutely nothing else apart from driving for Uber, and wouldn't get
a car otherwise.

~~~
usaar333
With AirBnb, you rent out an item that is mainly fixed costs and incurs little
variable costs per utilization. With p2p car rental like Get-around, it's the
opposite. with Uber, it's even more so on variable costs, as it actively
requires your time.

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hkmix
The costs include TWO new cars and a ton of other miscellaneous fees. I'm sure
that the point being made is valid to some extent, but the calculations are
way out of proportion.

~~~
cgriswald
This entire thing shows just how terrible people are at figuring out the math.

1\. All told, he calculates $12,000 in depreciation costs him $30,500, because
he inexplicably adds a new car at the end of the year to his costs.

2\. If the manufacturer recommends an oil change every 5,000 miles, they also
recommend one every six months regardless of mileage. So two of those oil
changes are "free", but he still gets to deduct them from taxes I would guess.

3\. He figured out he forgot to include insurance, but then didn't take the
time to include it. He has to pay for insurance anyway, but will now get to
deduct from taxes. The only real cost here will be the increase in his
premiums when his insurance company figures out what he's doing.

4\. People chiming in that you should only drive for Uber part time. The
profit per mile is probably worse for part time driving, but it certainly
isn't _better_.

5\. One guy seems really upset that he used 94,900 miles to do the
calculations, since this is nearly an impossible number of miles to drive in a
year. It doesn't matter. If it takes him two or three years, the numbers work
out basically the same because he is really basing them all on mileage, not
time.

~~~
anon1385
>4\. People chiming in that you should only drive for Uber part time. The
profit per mile is probably worse for part time driving, but it certainly
isn't better.

Some times of day are much more profitable than others because there are a lot
more people taking rides, so there's less time spent waiting and shorter
distance between each ride.

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bayesianhorse
It seems like Uber drivers often don't understand the economics of driving for
Uber. Fulltime driving for Uber only seems to make sense for people who have
no other choice and are very frugal (or negligent) about their car. Part time
may make sense for some people with too much "car" and time on hand. Against
both of these groups, the desperate and the part-timers, it's hard to compete
and make a living...

~~~
Retric
Repairs are not linear with miles driven. If you average vary low mileage (aka
under 6k / year) you can bump that up to ~6k/year on the cheap as many
components like tires age even if there not being used.

[http://www.edmunds.com/car-care/how-old-and-dangerous-are-
yo...](http://www.edmunds.com/car-care/how-old-and-dangerous-are-your-
tires.html)

I suspect many city drivers could work for at peak times late Friday and on
the weakened without adding a lot of maintenance costs.

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frenchies
I always thought the concept of asset and time sharing was to convert what you
already had into extra cash, just to offset the full price and maintenance of
what you already had if you found yourself needing a few hours of income
during some spontaneous downtime.

I dont know the feasibility of, for example, keeping pace with a median income
earner, or even a minimum wage earner, because honestly I've never done a real
estimation of the business.

At first glance, with car payments, gasoline, oil changes, tire changes,
insurance, and deductible payments for the inevitable collisions (with court
litigation from a single accident without even physical injury lasting in
years of time-consuming litigation), driving for a rideshare is something I
quickly turned down as an employment consideration.

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kenrikm
A modern car from honda/toyota maintained properly is good for well over 250k
miles. I've seen plenty of these calculations and they always seem to use the
worse case as the example. Also.. Next time don't buy a chevy.

~~~
hoopd
Maintained properly but also driven softly. When you drive for money you drive
hard plus stop-and-go city driving is hard on a car by itself.

A used car with 100k Uber-miles on it will be worth considerably less than the
same car with 100k highway miles, and rightfully so.

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njloof
Think of the positives of an Uber job: (a) you can use your car for your _2nd_
job for free; (b) you meet your state's welfare-to-work requirements!

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naveen99
Uberpool will be nice. Then you only pick up customers if they are on your
route, like on the way to or back from work, or on a road trip.

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Litruv
So, fuel efficient cars would be good also yeah?

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xname
This is easy. If Uber driver does not make money, there will be less Uber
drivers, so the fee will come up. There's nothing need to be complainted
about.

~~~
jakejake
In my experience the result seems to be more crappy cars and less "hip"
drivers, if that's worth anything. I read the original plan the founder wanted
was an instant "classy" ride. When I choose uberx I don't really expect it to
be classy anymore, which is fine most of the time. But it has been something
I've noticed. I wouldn't expect a driver to make nothing just to have a new
car to drive for uber.

~~~
codeTheWorld
UberX wasn't in the original plan at all. The "classy" was UberBlack.

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johngalt
Miles are overrated as a unit of wear. I sincerely doubt a one year old car
with 100k miles will require replacement. I would double or triple the authors
expected vehicle lifespan.

