If Uber And Lyft Are So Bad, Why Do We Keep Driving?

Have you read the news? Being a rideshare driver really sucks, they say. If you look on the internet, you watch TV news, everyone’s talking about how these drivers are sleeping in their cars. They’re making less than minimum wage, AB5 passed, but no one thinks Uber and Lyft are going to do anything about it.

So, the question is why are drivers still driving? That’s what I’m going to answer in this video and stick around because, at the end of the video, I’m going to share with you how much my pay has dropped as a percentage from when I first started to now, and I’m still driving.

Take a look at the video below, then scroll to see the video transcript.

Why Do Drivers Stick Around?

Well, the fact of the matter is two-thirds of the drivers don’t stick around after six months. Two out of every three drivers who start driving are gone.

But there’s still a bunch of us that are out there that have been driving for a long time and rates have been cut, destination filters have been taken away. We used to get paid a percentage of the passenger’s fare. Now we’re paid a minute per minute and per mile and there are all kinds of games being played so that we could get paid less.

Habits Are Hard To Break

So, why do we keep driving? First of all, habits are hard to break. We are creatures of comfort and better the devil you know. Have you heard that expression? I know that if I go out, I can work five hours and make $125. I can do that, right? It’s easy to do. And for a lot of us, that’s a good reason to keep driving because we know it, it’s reliable. We can count on it. Habits are hard to break.

Some Of Us Enjoy Driving Passengers

We can get these amazing people in our car and have these great conversations every day. I just went out and drove this morning. I had 10 passengers. I had this really cool guy. We had this nice talk. Another person, we talked about taking care of your parents as they get older.

I took a woman to the airport, she’s going to Las Vegas for her 29th birthday with her girlfriends. You have these nice chats, and you learn stuff, so it’s stimulating because you learn new things. Sometimes you have a heart-to-heart connection that makes you feel good, so the sense of connection that you can have every single day that you go out. That’s another reason why we still drive.

Many Of Us Enjoy Driving

I drove in San Francisco for three, almost four years. It’s a beautiful city. I’m showing you now this beautiful sunset that I captured one morning recently. Now I’m in Sacramento. Here’s another image of the Capitol with the sun rising. We see great stuff. There’s something about being behind the wheel. Being behind the wheel and driving, it’s stimulating. You get to go fast, you get to go slow. You can open the window, you can listen to music. It’s just kind of a wonderful thing that we get to do, and we can pick up a passenger and make some money.

We Hope That Things Will Get Better

We have an irrational hope that things are going to get better. I certainly do. Things have been going like this, like this, like this. I’m going to, at the end of the video, show you how far we’ve fallen, but we have this hope. AB5 passed. That could mean something, right?

That could give us some leverage. That could get us increased fares, it could increase the fares, it could increase how much we get paid out of those fares. We could get healthcare. A lot of things could happen. We have this hope that things are going to get better, so if we stick in there, stick with it, it might turn out to be better than it is right now.

It’s Easy Work With Quick Pay

It’s easy to just go out, drive for a little bit, make some money. Then with Express Pay instant deposit, you can put the money in your bank account, go take it out of your ATM machine, go to your bank and take it out and you got money like that.

We Have Freedom And Flexibility

No matter what you say, you can go drive whenever you want. Now Uber has these bonuses, and these consecutive trip things that are trying to lure you into certain times, but you can drive whenever you want. If you want to stop driving and head off for a month and go to Thailand, which I recently did, great, you can do that, too. That’s very attractive.

See How Far My Earnings Have Fallen Over The Years

I want to show you now is how far we’ve fallen. There is freedom and there is flexibility, but we also, in many ways, don’t have a lot of freedom and flexibility because Uber and Lyft control our pay.

What you see here in this spreadsheet is a typical 50-hour week and this compares this year to 2016 when I started. I could easily make $2,200 a week when I started and that would be 50 hours. I’d make $30 an hour or $1,500. I could reasonably expect about $200 in Primetime or Surge, $500 bonus, boom, $2,200.

Now due to the rate cuts, I can only make $1,350, not $1,500. Due to the difference in Surge and Primetime, now it’s called Personal Power Zones, about half of that. The bonus rather than being $500 is now $300 . That is $450 less per week. That’s an 80% of what I was making before. It’s a 20% cut.

But even with that, that’s still not bad. I can still work 50 hours and make $1,750 and have the freedom and flexibility.

Driving Used To Be Better, But…

So what are the key takeaways here? Driving used to be better. I started four years ago. If I started six years ago and did a comparison like that, it would be even worse. So we experienced death by a thousand cuts. Every little thing pulls a little bit of money out of our pocket as drivers. However, the key takeaway is there’s still some value here. There’s still the freedom, the flexibility, the stimulation of the open road, the stimulation of our passengers, the ability to cash out quickly. These are all valuable things.

And it gives you the opportunity to pursue your Plan B, so you can get to work on doing something else. For example, for me, I used to be full time, now I’m part-time. Now I’m writing articles, I’m making videos, I’m doing a coaching program, I’m making a podcast. So you can taper off the driving and feather in other things. Within a few months here, I’ll be doing very little driving, probably one or two days a week, and just doing all this other stuff.

I hope to be a catalyst here to have you realize that there’s other things you can be doing besides the driving. I understand how you love the driving, but you got to start looking towards the future and planning your exit plan, your Plan B, your exit plan.

Thanks for watching the video. Y’all go out and have a great day. Be safe.