Checklist For Drivers: What to Do Before Each Driving Shift

How do you prepare before a day or night of rideshare driving? We all have our different routines, and I think we can all get new ideas when we hear how other drivers prepare for a shift.

Dustin over at Rideshare Driver Dustin on Youtube made a good, brief video about his own routine, and I think it’s worth watching. Take a look at his video and scroll to the transcript below to see all of the points he covers.

What’s going on my new, current, and future Rideshare drivers out there. I’m Dustin with Uber Driving 101. In today’s video, I’m going to give you my driver’s checklist of what you should do before you get started for the day. Now, all this together should only take you about 10, 15 minutes tops, and then you can get headed out on the road.

Walk around your vehicle and do a basic inspection

First off, please walk around your vehicle. Make sure it still looks clean. No, you don’t have to wash it every day, but just make sure in case you had pukers or something the night before, that there’s not something you missed, or bird crap and stuff all over your vehicle. Look at your tires. Make sure there’s no nails in it. If you could, check your tire pressure, which is great because that means you run more efficient and save on fuel. Take a second to pop your hood. Just check your oil, check your radiator fluid, check your brake fluid, just simple things like that can make sure that your vehicle keeps running good because as we all know, its sensors can fail at any time, so you can’t always rely on that.

Inspect the interior, do a quick cleanup

After you do that, you get in the vehicle. Please make sure you vacuumed everything, everything looks clean. Wipe everything down, I use Lysol wipes. Now, people might ask why I do that. Germs are everywhere. You don’t know who’s getting in your vehicle, where they’ve been, if they’ve been sick, if they’re recovering from being sick, so this is a safety issue mainly for you and to protect other passengers.

Mount your phone and plug it into power

Please make sure you have a phone mount. If you don’t have a phone mount, odds are you’re going to get reported for some kind of safety issue because it’s hard to pay attention to the road, hold a cell phone in your hand to see where you’re going and everything. So, you’ll alleviate that issue if you just get a phone mount. You can get them cheap at Walmart or Target, Amazon, anything like that.

Make sure you have a phone charger for yourself. Running both apps or even one app at a time, your phone is going to die, so unless you want to have a short time on the road, make sure you have a phone charger for yourself.

Be prepared with bags for trash or vomit

Now, you don’t know what someone’s been doing all day long, so please make sure you have puke bags or a bucket. You can get them cheap, Family Dollar, anything like that. This will save you from someone puking in your vehicle, making you have a bad day.

Protect yourself with a dash cam and legal tools for protection

After you’ve done all that, please if you can, dash cams are very highly recommended. They help keep people in check. It’s a safety issue, you know. If anything happens in or outside of your vehicle, that could be used in the court of law or anything like that to help you out.

Now, I also recommend people protect themselves by any means necessary. I always recommend people have a Maglite flashlight, one of those big ones, but of course depending on your state and everything else, make sure you do what you feel necessary because that dash cam isn’t going to save your life.

Other than that, you do all of that, you’re all ready to go for the day or night, depending on when you want to drive. Well, I hope this video is helpful to everybody. As always, check the description for extra helpful information and tips. You keep doing your thing, you stay safe out there, you get your money. Don’t take crap from nobody, and as always, Uber and Lyft on. Peace out.