
My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford - caymanjim
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-lyft-ride-from-chicago-to-bradford
======
envy2
This is a fun story—but he should've just booked a round-trip rental car, and
dropped it off in Dayton anyway. I've done this a bunch of times, and all
they'll do is charge you the one-way rate and grumble a bit...

Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

~~~
learnfromstory
Once I rented a car in Seattle one way to Vancouver. Apparently there is some
shitburg nobody has ever heard of called Vancouver, WA but I was going to the
more famous Canadian city. The flunkie at the counter booked the domestic trip
and I drove to the proper Vancouver. When I got there they tried to charge me
over $8000 in fees. I think there is no practical upper bound to what they'll
try to charge you for such things.

~~~
jjeaff
..."nobody has ever heard of".

You shouldn't project your obliviousness on everyone else.

Vancouver, WA is a suburb of and part of the greater Portland area. Also
referred to as the Portland / Vancouver metropolitan area.

It's completely understandable that the "flunkie" at the counter assumed
someone leaving from the largest city in Washington would be be referring to
the 4th largest city in Washington (Vancouver).

Sounds like the big fee was well deserved.

~~~
Terretta
So this is why so many shows supposedly set in Portland are filmed in
Vancouver!

// Except it's not, they're filmed in the Canadian Vancouver anyway.

------
khrbrt
This is why we need a train system with funding parity to the highway and
airport systems. There should be trains leaving constantly, at most every 10
minutes, from Chicago to the east, and frequent, semihourly, trains between
neighboring cities along the way.

Even if the author could rent a car, having to drive 300 miles is astounding
waste of time and mental energy.

~~~
refurb
I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective.
There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when
you could do it in 2 hours by plane.

~~~
p2t2p
It is not two hours. The flight time from my home town to Moscow is 50
minutes. Whole trip is about 6 hours.

Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t
have a car - even longer.

You arrive in advance, security, luggage check in then boarding, then runway.

It’s been around 3 hours so far.

Now you fly for 50 to 70 minutes and it doesn’t include the plane driving
through airport after landing.

Get off, grab you luggage - another 40 minutes easily. 15 if you’re lucky.

Now you need to get to the city, so it is 2 hours by car through Moscow
traffic or 1 hour using “aero express” train.

The thing is, once you get off this “aero express” train, chances are it is
still about one hour trip on subway to the office/apartment.

I used to fly like that, I was leaving my parents apartment at about 4-30am to
arrive by 10/11am.

Compare it to train - it takes 13 hours but it leaves from the city centre, no
security check in’s no nothing, you take 30 minutes to arrive there. It leaves
at 6-30pm, you have supper and sleep. 7-30am BOOM you’re in the center of
Moscow right next to subway station. Brush you’re teeth during approach, have
your breakfast and off you pop.

It feels muuuuch better on the train. Air travel overhead is just too big - 5
hours or something for hour of the flight time. With train you have about two
hours of overhead.

The only thing it is almost twice as expensive compared to air travel

~~~
ses1984
>Get to the airport, takes about 1 hour (drive 60k or 40 miles). If you don’t
have a car - even longer.

Well you also have to commute to train stations.

~~~
bobthepanda
In general trains stop in more central locations than airports, which usually
get sited far away from people who might complain about the noise. And if you
set up the system to do so, trains can stop multiple times within a
metropolitan area for easier access. Tokaido Shinkansen trains call at Tokyo,
Shingawa, and Shin-Yokohama; the ICE stops at Berlin Ostkreuz, Hbf and Spandau
going west, or Gesundbrunnen, Hbf and Sudkreuz going south.

------
kevin_b_er
The utter inability to get a one-way rental is quite obnoxious. Also the bit
about how he was able to reserve a car, but he wasn't a charter flight.
Hertz's utter incompetence on the phone was striking as well from some sort of
bizarro catch-22 world.

~~~
lancesells
The entire rental car experience is ridiculously complicated and inefficient.
Look at the difference in renting a Zipcar (owned by Avis) and a regular
rental car company. With Zipcar I can reserve a car in minutes, pick up the
car I actually reserved without waiting in line or even going into an office,
get charged the amount I was quoted and not find out it's twice the cost from
some hidden fees and taxes.

~~~
ChickeNES
Zipcars are great, but their coverage has shrunk over time. There's maybe a
10th of the number of vehicles, and back then Enterprise (formerly car2go) had
an almost equal number of vehicles (Enterprise shut it down a while back.

------
ilamont
I followed this as it unfolded on his Twitter account
([https://twitter.com/scalzi](https://twitter.com/scalzi)). He has a way of
taking some small experience or observation and turning it into a great little
story or one-liner. He's written some good sci-fi, too.

Worth following.

~~~
Zanni
Also worth checking out: the comment from "toyko uber story" on an insane
Black Car Uber ride in Japan (scroll down, it's currently 6th from the
bottom).

~~~
uxamanda
Agreed! That story was an unexpectedly hilarious find in the comments. Direct
link to that comment: [https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-
lyft-ride...](https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/07/23/my-300-mile-lyft-ride-
from-chicago-to-bradford/#comment-865720)

------
payne92
The other hack is to “pony express” in stages: use Lyft/Uber to get part way
or to a mid point, where you are confident you CAN get a rental, a train/bus,
or another Lyft/Uber to keep going.

This is especially useful if you can’t find a driver that will take you all
the way.

~~~
koolba
I got in short but _very_ loud argument with an airport taxi driver when I did
this to get dropped off just outside the airport taxi zone. The “real” ride
was 5x the price at the airport taxi rate vs taking an Uber. The louder the
driver got, the more I realized how good of decision it was to get the hell
out of his car.

~~~
em-bee
in my experience airport taxi drivers all hate short trips. we used to live
near an airport, and taking a taxi home was always a nerve-racking moment in
how the driver would take it. usually they were grumpy which made for a
frustrating experience.

~~~
alexhutcheson
Often the taxi driver has waited for a long time (sometimes hours) in the
airport queue for it to be their turn to get a fare. If you take a $5 ride
they’re upset because they invested all that time for no payoff. I don’t think
it’s wrong for the passenger to do this, but I understand why it’s frustrating
for the driver.

------
logfromblammo
An interesting solution, but I probably would have tried a Penske box truck
first. I wouldn't _entirely_ trust a U-Haul to make it the full 300 miles
without some kind of a mechanical problem, even when the box is empty except
for my suitcase and carry-on.

Moving truck rentals are better set-up to do one-way trips than the airport
car rentals. Also, you won't get the airport surcharge. Might be a little more
expensive than a car rental or the Lyft, but I guess you could always fill up
the truck with Chicagoland-specific goods, if you wanted.

~~~
jedberg
I see someone else has watched "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles".

~~~
logfromblammo
Or "Home Alone".

Kenosha Kickers? _Pol_ -ka, _pol_ -ka...

------
0xfaded
My experience is that jet centers like Signature Flight Services (from the
article) employ concierge people with superpowers.

Once as a private pilot of a 4-seater derping above Colorado I needed to
divert to Colorado Springs due to a developing thunderstorm and decided to
hanger the airplane to not risk hail damage.

Basically you ring an FBO like Signature (in this case Cutter Aviation), book
some hangar space, and show up. Same problem though, flights were being
cancelled out of Colorado Springs and every hotel and rental car was booked.
It took an hour, but concierge arranged for TWO hertz employees to deliver a
car from out of town. My rate was $25 with unlimited miles plus a bit extra
for the hail damage waiver. I think the hangar was $50 for the night.

------
sharadov
What a great story? I always ask Lyft/Uber drivers about interesting stories.
One told me how he picked up 3 girls outside of a fancy condo in LA and drove
them to Vegas which is about 300 miles and a 5 hr ride. Turns out the girls
were drunk and the condo guy had called for a ride to take them home, And they
decided they rather go to Vegas to continue the party ;-)

~~~
umeshunni
Wouldn't the person who called the Lyft be the one entering the destination?

~~~
ryanmercer
I would imagine he handed his phone over and said "put in your address".

~~~
jandrese
Yeah, this is exactly how I imagined it. They punch in "Caesar's Palace" then
hit "yes", "Accept", and "Charge my stored card" before handing the phone back
to the guy.

Then the guy is wondering how in the hell he got a $500 charge from Lyft on
his credit card statement at the end of the month.

------
bryanlarsen
Since the driver would have had to dead head back to Chicago, if his expenses
were a not unreasonable 0.50 cents per mile, the only profit the driver made
was the tip.

~~~
sokoloff
Variable expenses on a car you already own are nowhere near $0.50/mile. (The
GSA/IRS figure includes apportioned fixed costs, which do not fully apply
here, IMO.)

~~~
ska
$.50 is already lower than the IRS rate ($.58 this year).

It may be a little conservative, but it's not crazy. You absolutely should be
computing TCO of the vehicle and amortizing that if you are driving for a
service like Lyft. What fixed costs do you think don't fully apply?

~~~
sokoloff
Time based depreciation and registration, insurance, and property/excise tax
are all fixed costs that apply whether or not the Lyft driver takes that 300
mile round trip or parks the car that day.

~~~
ska
That argument applies to any similar business though, so while I think I get
where you are coming from I don't know why you would treat Lyft specially,
here.

~~~
sokoloff
When considering “I’m being offered $300 for a 600 mile drive; is that more
profitable (and by how much) than parking the car and watching TV instead?”,
you should consider only those costs that vary with usage rather than those
that you’d incur anyway.

When considering “Should I buy a car to drive Lyft?”, you should consider all
costs, of course.

~~~
ska
Ok, I see where you are coming from, but as far as I can tell for the majority
of cases it seems that uber/lyft drivers are effectively running small
businesses (notwithstanding the PR efforts to convince people it is "on the
side"). So the realistic comparison is what other earning can I do in that
time, not "sit on the couch", so the TCO comes in.

------
Causality1
>(which hadn’t, in fact, told him the destination, just that it was more than
30 minutes away)

That's disappointing. There are arguments for both sides of whether it should
give the exact location but it ought to at least give the rough number of
miles and rough travel time.

------
simonebrunozzi
I would have not paid Lyft directly, but instead I would have negotiated with
the driver (edit: yes, after having paid the initial few dollars to summon
one).

~~~
lanewinfield
And with that you most likely lose any sort of protection/insurance Lyft gives
you.

~~~
jwr
What protection/insurance?

~~~
alasdair_
> What protection/insurance?

The protection/insurance that kicks in when you get in an accident or the
driver decides after fifty miles that fuck it, they don't want to drive any
more.

------
ryanmercer
I:

\- Wish I drove for Lyft

\- Lived in Chicago

\- Had gotten him as a passenger

After 10-15 miles I would have said "So Mr. Scalzi, I'm going to need you to
tell me what the Perry family is up to. Go ahead, I'll give you a few minutes
to contemplate, but then you'd better get to telling me" then I'd have also
inquired about the next in the Collapsing Empire series.

Joking aside, I'm curious to see more from the driver. What did you think when
you accepted the fare curbside aside from "I like long trips"? Did you stay at
the destination for a night or immediately drive back? If you have a partner
were they a bit upset? What's it like driving a stranger for 5 hours?

~~~
jandrese
Does Lyft compensate you for the drive back to your home? I'm guessing not? Or
do they seriously jack up the price if you go beyond a certain distance to
compensate the drive for his almost certainly empty drive back?

~~~
lnanek2
You can tell the app where you want to end up after doing a bunch of trips, so
the driver could just set his overall endpoint back to O'Hare and Lyft would
try to give him rides going that way.

------
dhd415
I did the same thing recently when a flight home from a weekend trip was
diverted due to weather to an airport 150 miles away. All the rental cars were
taken, of course. The next flight out was 8-10 hours away, I was dead tired
and had important work obligations coming up. I made sure the Lyft driver knew
what I was asking. He phoned his wife to tell her he'd be late getting off his
usual shift and off we went. It's certainly not something I'd do often, but
I'm glad it was an option then.

As a related aside, I have a friend who frequently takes Uber/Lyft for trips
from the CT suburbs to Boston since it often beats flying and the Acela train
on both cost and time, especially if he's traveling with family members.

------
bb101
_" But since I flew into O’Hare on a commercial flight, like a common schmuck,
Hertz wouldn’t give me the car, even though they clearly had it to give.
Basically, I wasn’t rich enough to rent the car Hertz had allowed me to
reserve, so they weren’t going to let me have it. Which, I don’t know. Seems
like a real dick move on Hertz’s part, and doesn’t incline me to use them ever
again for anything."_

The author's experience with Hertz mirrors my own experiences with them. Much
like using UPS, they are an absolute last choice for us. We have a saying in
our house: _" It's called Hertz because it hurts."_

~~~
jeron
Every time I think of Hertz I think of how Accenture royally fucked them in
their website redesign:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_law...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_lawsuit/)

~~~
PhantomGremlin
The salty language of these last few comments reminds me of the old
FuckedCompany.com website. A guy named "Pud" ran it, and it was great. But I
guess he got bored with it.

He'd write about Accenture back in the days. And when he did he'd always say:
Accenture (pronounced ass-enter).

Sigh. Apologies in advance if this is drifting too much into Reddit territory.

As for that website redesign, I bet that USA Accenture shipped the actual work
off to some third world country, probably India. It seems like standard modus
operandi to get stuff back from India that only attempts to meet the bare
minimum. E.g. as the article notes, just hardwire Hertz specific stuff, so
can't easily deal with sister companies like Dollar and Thrifty.

It's a difficult problem to solve with outsourcing. You'll rarely get any
sense of ownership from them. And why would you expect any?

~~~
erik_seaberg
Pud used to post here. They started selling ads on fucked company and realized
there was money in adtech. Now he's over at distrokid.

------
GlenTheMachine
God, yes.

The last _three times_ I’ve had international flights, the puddle jumper
connecting flights have been so delayed that I missed the connection. It seems
like the big flights rarely get delayed, but God help you if you need to fly
from, say DC to Philly (145 miles) or Baltimore to New York (250 miles).

On my next-to-last trip, it took American 13 HOURS to get me from DC to
Montreal (450 miles). And they lost my luggage. Literally, I could have taken
the bus faster.

It’s gotten so bad that I no longer take the puddle jumper flights. I now book
to fly directly out of Dulles or Philly or New York and just drive there, or
take Amtrak. It’s both faster and cheaper.

------
nchuhoai
Here's a guy doing 2000+ miles on Uber, NC -> CA
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6Wh2Zy9jE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6Wh2Zy9jE)

------
YeahSureWhyNot
the driver probably made around $200 from this ride which is more than how
much he would have made working the whole day, except this time he mostly
drove on a highway at steady speeds instead of dealing with 30 short distance
rides and 30 different people. everybody wins

------
bsder
I have had far too many of these stories with Hertz. I simply will _not_ use
them anymore.

Avis still seems to do right by me, and Avis seems to give their minions
enough autonomy to actually fix the customer's problem.

My biggest problem with car rental lately is simply that the cars absolutely
suck. No backup cameras, no radars, no adaptive cruise, etc. unless you buy
the ultra, turbo premium ones. They are rotating their fleets so slowly now
that the cars are becoming way behind the curve.

I have a secondary problem in that they are always trying to fob off the SUV
onto me despite the fact that I didn't want anything bigger than mid-size.

------
lutoma
Reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine once. He was booked
on the last train from Cologne to Brussels for the day, but missed his
connection due to a delay on an earlier train.

Due to EU passenger rights regulations, train company was on the hook to get
him there _somehow_ , so they ended up paying a taxi to drive him across the
Netherlands into Belgium.

------
d_burfoot
Pro tip: when you request long rides in a ride-share app, give the driver a
heads-up about where you're actually going before s/he arrives, so they have
the option to cancel the request. They'll appreciate it, and generally won't
cancel anyway.

------
saxatrumpet
Transportation in north America is more difficult than transportation within
Europe for sure. I recently moved to Germany from Canada and have found it is
much easier to get between locations with many options and price points
available.

------
cozzyd
He probably should have tried flying to Cincinnati or Columbus... Or taken the
bus to Dayton (the blue line would have gotten him straight to the Greyhound
station from the airport).

------
exabrial
I was hoping I'd get to know the total in case this ever happens to me!

~~~
acemarke
> Turns out it would cost about $330. Which, as it happens, was only a little
> bit more than what it would have cost for that one-way rental that Hertz
> wasn’t going to give me even though they had the car.

> When I got home I tipped him hugely

So, figure maybe $375-400?

~~~
OrangeMango
Couple of years ago there was a professional football player that took an Uber
from O'Hare to Buffalo, NY for just under $1000 to make it practice on time.

Anyway, this guy could have taken a Megabus to from Chicago to Cincinnati for
$25 and then done a rideshare the rest of the way. It would have been far less
expensive.

~~~
skinnymuch
If making it on time to practice is really important, do you want to depend on
a bus?

Bus Being late to pick up or leave isn’t uncommon. I assume if something goes
wrong along the way you should be able to get off with your stuff without too
much trouble and order a ride.

But if there’s a big traffic jam. And you might be able to save some time
taking inside roads or what have you. A bus isn’t going to do that. You also
won’t be able to order a ride share if you’re on the highway with traffic
packed up.

I think the situation depends on how important making practice is. Sometimes
you’re already on thin ice.

~~~
credit_guy
> I think the situation depends on how important making practice is.

Just ask Jonas Gray of the Patriots [1].

“On November 16, 2014, Gray rushed for 201 yards, and a franchise-record four
touchdowns on 38 carries “

This was such a historic event that he promptly featured the cover of Sports
Illustrated [2].

A little bit later he was late for practice. He was essentially benched for
the rest of the season. It was also pretty much the end of his career in the
NFL.

[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Gray](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Gray)

[2][https://amp.si.com/nfl/2014/11/18/new-england-patriots-
jonas...](https://amp.si.com/nfl/2014/11/18/new-england-patriots-jonas-gray-
sports-illustrated-cover)

~~~
skinnymuch
Haha Jonas Gray is actually the example on the top of my mind! I was worried
my post was getting long enough so didn’t add him! It’s really unfortunate.
That one game was wild as hell. And ban it’s over because Belichick is such a
hard ass.

Did not know he graced the cover of SI though.

------
fieryskiff1
A Greyhound bus would have done a Chicago-Dayton in about 8 hours for about
$50.

I might prefer that bus to driving a rental car. 8 hours of nodding off rather
than 5 hours of driving.

