Understanding The Uber Long Pickup Fee, “Pickup Premium Likely”

Say you get a ride request that’s 20 minutes and 10 miles away, is it worth it to you to accept that request? Joe with The Rideshare Guy is going to discuss how you can earn a little bit extra on those trips with the Uber long pickup fee.

Take a look at Joe’s video explaining the long pickup fee, and scroll to the video transcript below to see the points he covers.

What is Uber’s long pickup fee?

Uber is now incentivizing driving to accept those long trip requests by including a long trip fee. The long trip fee was rolled out in the latter part of 2017 as a part of Uber’s 180 days of change. And basically what it is, is you get paid a long pickup fee after a certain threshold time has been hit en route to your passenger’s pickup location. And each market has its own long pickup threshold, so here in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, it’s 11 minutes.

For example, I get a ride request that’s 20 minutes away. When I am en route to the passenger, once 11 minutes hit, then the long pickup fee will engage, and if, say, after that 11 minutes, I travel five miles, and obviously an additional nine minutes, I’ll get paid for the nine minutes and I’ll get paid for the five miles that I travel.

Details and caveats about the Long Pickup fee

And as far as the specifics, long pickup fees will only apply to completed Uber X and Uber Pool trips. The fees are not eligible for surge or boost, and will not apply on driver destination trips. The maximum payment for long pickup fees in all cities is $20. Long pickup fees are calculated as part of the minimum fare, and we’ll explain that in a little bit more depth here in a bit. And long pickup fees may be reduced if it is determined that you have not made progress towards the pickup point at a reasonable pace or route.

If you receive a long trip request, and you decide that you want to try and maybe game the system a little bit by lollygagging or taking a longer route, you may not receive a long pickup fee for that ride.

How to find out the payout of your local Long Pickup fee

You can find your market’s specific long pickup threshold and rates in your Uber driver dashboard. You’ll go to your dashboard, you’ll select fares, then you’ll scroll down, and the long pickup fee may not actually be available in your market, but if it is, you will see the long pickup fee details here. And as I said, for me here in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the threshold is 11 minutes and the per mile per minute rates are the same per mile per minute rates for rides. It’s $0.80 per mile and $0.12 per minute.

An example showing the Loong Pickup fee in action

We’ll take a look at an example of the long pickup fee in action. This ride was given by Will, another rideshare guy contributor, and Will drives in San Diego. You’ll see the normal time and distance being charged, and then at the bottom you’ll see there’s the long pickup fee. Distance was 1.38 miles and the time was four and a half minutes. And in San Diego, Will’s long pickup threshold is 10 minutes. So, once he hit that 10 minute mark when he was en route to his passenger, he traveled an additional 1.38 miles and four and a half minutes. So, that added an additional $1.71 to the original fare of $15.19, which was about an 11% increase.

 

How the long pickup fee is calculated as a part of the minimum fare

Here’s an example of a ride where the long pickup fee is calculated as a part of the minimum fare. This driver drove 1.15 miles and 2.4 minutes beyond his market’s threshold to reach his passenger, who then actually only needed to go about one mile, and this passenger was really awesome. I think this passenger understood that the driver drove quite a distance to pick them up, and left them a $10 tip. And that $0.92 was included in the $3.75 minimum fare calculation. So, instead of receiving $0.92 cents on top of the $3.75 minimum fare, that $0.92 cents was included in the calculation to get the minimum fare to $3.75.

In that example, the driver accepted a long trip, got to the passenger’s location, they had a minimum fare, and didn’t get paid that long trip incentive. In my opinion, that’s not a great experience. Why would you accept those rides if you’re not going to get paid additionally, if you’re not going to get paid more for doing them? Why not just stay where you are and get a minimum far there that’s nearby, as opposed to driving a long distance for a minimum fare. There’s no incentive there.

In my opinion it’s not a great incentive, but let me know what you guys think. Go ahead and comment in the comments, and if you haven’t subscribed, go ahead subscribe to The Rideshare Guy channel. And until next time, please drive safe. Thanks.