What Is The Maximum Distance Of a Trip On Uber or Lyft?

To answer this question, I recorded a video called “What is the Maximum Distance of a Trip on Uber and Lyft?” that I’d like to share with you. As drivers, we all like to show off our longest trips. We like to post things like, “Hey, I got this huge surge trip. I got this huge, long trip from LA to San Diego.” Everyone likes to post their screenshots on Facebook groups, on my Facebook page, and everything. It is kind of a badge of honor.

But there are couple of things you need to watch out for. I started to think about this a while back with Uber, what is the limit? Is there any limit? Can you do a trip from LA to New York? What if your passenger wants to go that far? Should you do it? Should you accept it? Because obviously you don’t want to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere and have your trip end.

Uber has a maximum time limit, but no maximum price

According to Uber’s official policy, there is no monetary limit. The trip could be up to, $1,000, $10,000, $100,000 — but there is a four-hour time limit, and the trip may automatically end after four hours. I don’t know why exactly they have this policy that the trip may end after hours. Because as you guys will see, I have screenshots on my side of Uber rides that are much longer than four hours; they’re in  the six, seven, eight-hour range. I guess their policy says that it may end after four hours, but I haven’t heard of any situations where the trip ended after four hours.

So, if your trip has ended due to a time limit, definitely let me know in the comments below, and I can shoot out a quick update. Uber does have this policy, but apparently it doesn’t apply in the real world, which isn’t the first time you will see policies like that with Uber. So, on Uber, there really isn’t a ton to worry about. You can actually basically do any trip and you should be pretty confident that you are going to get paid. If you are worried about this four-hour limit, you can always tell the passenger, “As a backup, this trip could end after four hours, so you need to be ready to either to re-request or give me a tip,” whatever it is to make up for it.

Uber’s stated time limit doesn’t always apply in the real world

Since technically you are not really allowed to accept cash for the ride, I am sure you can accept a large tip in place and go that way. I know that couple of my riders, Joe wrote an article for me where he actually drove from LA to Santa Barbara. I think the total was $600 and definitely more than four hours, or LA to Santa Barbara, to San Francisco. I know the total time was over four hours, and that was one of the longest trips I have ever seen and most money too. I think he came out over $600. So, I’ve seen $600 Uber X fares.

If you have seen something that can beat that, definitely let me know. I also saw a $900 Uber Black fare, too. And I am pretty sure the time was over four hours on that. So obviously these long rides are pretty lucrative. But think about what’s going on on the way back. Are you getting it paid for that ride back when you are considering these long rides? Most of the time, the biggest fares that I see in the $300, $400, $500, $600 range tend to be no surge. People just need to go from LA to San Francisco or LA to Santa Barbara and back, from one city to the other, and they can’t fly or they don’t want to drive themselves for whatever reason.

Generally the biggest surge fares that you see aren’t the biggest fares. Biggest surge fares that you see are kind of in like the $50 to $200 range. Because most of the time when it is high surge, on New Year’s Eve or Halloween, or July Fourth, people aren’t going super far distances. They’re maybe just going 5, 10 miles, but they have to pay those absurd surge rates of 5X, 6X. That is why the trips end up being in the $50 to $200 range. That is the price range you typically see.

Lyft has time and distance limits too – watch out for coverage areas!

As far as Lyft, they have a few different limits. In New York City Lyft has a $500 limit. New York City and New Jersey is $500, LA is $240, and in all other cities it’s $200, which is significantly lower than Uber. It is definitely something you guys want to watch out for. Now, I am pretty sure that their policy is that if the trip does end because it hits $200 or if it hits $240, and it automatically ends, you can have the passenger re-request a ride. Now, the only problem on Lyft is that since a lot of their coverage areas are a lot smaller than Uber, you could very potentially be outside of their coverage area when the trip ends.

And at that point, if the trip is ended, and you are outside the coverage area, you could be stuck with this passenger out in the middle of nowhere and you can’t have them re-request a ride.

Long trip notifications let you know if a ride will be long

Sadly there still isn’t a way to see exactly where your passenger’s destination is before you arrive at their location. But both Uber and Lyft now offer long-trip notifications that at least give us a heads up when a trip will be way longer than normal. Both apps now notify drivers if a ride is estimated to take longer than 45 minutes. So if you’re not looking to do a long ride, you’ll be able to decline the request before accepting it.

• Should you accept long rides?

If you think you are going to go further that, just be careful with where you end the ride. Is it still in a coverage area? Lyft obviously has a smaller coverage area than Uber. If you have any other questions, definitely let me know. And if you have any other questions, I am here. Take care, guys.