You've taken the bait. I can barely wait to read your first rant after the Uber switch.

 

Beginners luck. Next day will be horrible and you'll hate your life.

 

Why do this only 2-3 days a week? Quit your daytime job and do Uber fulltime, you'll be making $5k a month.

 

Funny how they all gloating over this shit at first thinking they've stepped into gold mine and then some time later start crying fault having realized, tasted and smelled that shit all over themselves.

Same vicious Uber cycle. It just never changes.

 

Are you an Uber driver?

 

Wow so many unhappy and cynical people? Why not just quit if its so bad? Two friends of mine drive here too and make a ton of money. One of them has been doing it for 4 months and the other for about 6 months. They love it. Find something you enjoy and do it. If you hate your job - move on.

I love my regular job. This is just extra money for trips and savings.

 

Wow so many unhappy and cynical people? Why not just quit if its so bad? Two friends of mine drive here too and make a ton of money. One of them has been doing it for 4 months and the other for about 6 months. They love it. Find something you enjoy and do it. If you hate your job - move on.

I love my regular job. This is just extra money for trips and savings.

Amen!

 

Careful there, tiger. You're not making near as much money as you think you are. Wait 'til you've been at this a month or two. You'll soon start encountering Uberdouches who will piss you off. You'll also soon start calculating and understanding what the true cost is of operating your automobile.

 

Good luck and keep up the good attitude. Don't listen to the cry babies and pax haters on here because the drivers that make money are too busy to hang out and *****.

 

Cry babies...euphemism for experienced, knowledgeable drivers.

 

Is that before or after Uber takes their 20%? Did you deduct your expenses such as fuel, maintenance and depreciation? These expenses run a MINIMUM of $0.40 to $0.50 per mile for every mile driven, even those with no passenger on board. Do you have commercial insurance? If not, do not expect your insurance to pay if you have an accident and they will probably drop you if they discover you are driving for Uber.

 

Don't forget to set aside a piece for the tax man too.

 

That only applies if a driver is actually earning a profit.

 

LOL every time someone comes in and is enthusiastic about driving for Uber everyone always has to come in and beat them down. Let him enjoy the moment - if the expenses are that bad he'll learn over time. BTW I am not an Uber driver but I've been considering it on some nights and weekends. I have to say almost everyone seems to be negative about it in here.

 

It's really not negativity so much as it is a measure of experience and seasoning. Most of us enjoy driving for U/L, but we're also very aware of pitfalls and the fact that the only way to make money is to understand when, where, and how to game the system.

Anything else I can clarify for you, cd029?

 

Yeah, I was excited after my first shift in a cab 12 years ago. It felt like free money.

That feeling wears off pretty quickly.

 

Facts are neither negative or positive. I just think you should consider everything before making the decision to do this. If you still wish to pursue this, at least you'll be informed.

 

Are you an Uber driver?

You wanna bet 500 that I've done way more rides than you?

 

Don't forget to set aside a piece for the tax man too.

Proly don't record his miles either. These noobs crack me up all the time.

 

Are you keeping a log of miles driven? Remember, not just miles with pax in car, but also miles getting to pax and miles driving to your wait spots. Each mile you record reduces your taxable income by 57.5 cents. I drove a little over 20K miles last year, so I lowered my taxable income by a little over $12K just from my miles driven. And the truly beautiful part is that it costs me only 26.2 cents per mile to operate my car. Score!

 

Everyone is always happy in the beginning until they figure out Uber doesn't give a rats ass about you. Here today, gone tomorrow is their motto. The pax will always get the upper hand even if you report them, they have a low score, if you get screwed over on a ride, etc.

..god forbid you get into an accident, Uber will definitely back you up.....

 

Well, he seems to be doing well WITHOUT gaming the system. He probably isn't aware of that strategy. So it's doubly encouraging then.

 

On the other hand, he claims to be earning $27.50 per hour, and we all know that's not true. But that does make one curious about how Edantes is calculating profit, doesn't it?

 

Good luck and keep up the good attitude. Don't listen to the cry babies and pax haters on here because the drivers that make money are too busy to hang out and *****.

Refreshing

 

Wow so many unhappy and cynical people? Why not just quit if its so bad? Two friends of mine drive here too and make a ton of money. One of them has been doing it for 4 months and the other for about 6 months. They love it. Find something you enjoy and do it. If you hate your job - move on.

I love my regular job. This is just extra money for trips and savings.

Refreshing

 

Give these guys a chance
Maybe they have "mojo & flow"
Seriously

 

Give these guys a chance
Maybe they have "mojo & flow"
Seriously

I like Flo. That's who I purchase my insurance from.

 

Cry babies...euphemism for experienced, knowledgeable drivers.

No, he got it right, crybabies. The new guy is having fun - let him. I'm looking at you Desert Driver. Just say, have fun and come back in two weeks.

Send him to UberHammer Blog and give him a wink. flyingdingo was just like this guy and still driving and gave us a lot of very funny "oh shit" kinda posts.

So Edantes i say to you - Go get em tiger!

Please post your first weeks' bank deposit, subtract $0.57 per mile and make us eat our words! (Well explain later where that number comes from)

 

I love driving U/L. I just wish I didn't understand the numbers as well as I do. I'm on the streets right now, in fact.
But because I have the grasp of the numbers that I do, my constant harangue of local Uber helped get us a bump in fares. New rates go into effect in less than three hours. We'll start another fare increase campaign come fall.

 

The problem is not just that in some markets it's pretty much impossible to make money, it's that even those of us that do can see the writing on the wall.

I live in Sugar Land just SW of Houston. I only drive the high guarantees and surges. The rate here is $1.10/mile.

I have seen coverage in Sugar Land (a wealthy town with crappy yellow cab service) become more and more spotty. Often at 4am there is no uber available. Occasionally even in the afternoon. Or the wait times are 20 mins or more. These folks would gladly pay cab rates to go to the airport or into town but all the drivers are heading to Houston to work guarantees that don't apply here or surges that only happen in certain areas of Houston.

Uber is LOSING Sugar Land and the other wealthy towns/ suburbs (Katy, The Woodlands, Kingwood) and so on. As drivers start they eventually realise there's no money there and drive into Houston as I do.

Areas just outside the surges in Houston proper can't get a driver quickly because everyone like me who is in a surge but is their closest driver either ignores their call or cancels. I talked to one the other day to ask him to cancel and he said I was the 4th driver who did that or canceled themselves. He was outside the 3.6 surge I was sitting in and although only half a mile from the surge edge he was 3 miles from me. Until some newbie went to get him he wasn't getting an uber.

The point is I can and do make money doing this but only if I deliver crappy customer service by cherry picking and ignoring a large swath of the outlying areas of Houston. Eventually this business will be lost forever and Uber will be regarded as unreliable in many areas just like yellow cab.

Meanwhile of course Uber is resisting all attempts of the city to regulate them. We do have regs in place in Houston but it's a constant battle. And if we weren't such a large and profitable market I doubt they would have agreed to them. It took a rape allegation on a convicted felon who passed their background check to get them to finally start deactivating non-compliant drivers.

I just don't see this path as sustainable. The new drivers are catching on and eventually they will run out of newbies to take the non profitable trips and then what? They continue the guarantees and surges forever?

The only solution I see is to raise the rates. So I *****. And whine.

I'd go on about ratings, insurance, and driver treatment but that's a whole 'nother problem. The above as I see it is how they're hurting UBER.

And you can say that they'll raise rates once this becomes unsustainable but by then they'll have lost drivers AND riders. It needs to be now.

Well reasoned.

 

Wow so many unhappy and cynical people? Why not just quit if its so bad? Two friends of mine drive here too and make a ton of money. One of them has been doing it for 4 months and the other for about 6 months. They love it. Find something you enjoy and do it. If you hate your job - move on.

I love my regular job. This is just extra money for trips and savings.

Before you dismiss every person who issues a wake up call as unhappy and cynical, bare in mind, many people came into Uber with the idea that it was something they would be able to do full time in order to make a good living from it. You also have people on here who already have made a living driving livery full time. I personally fall into that category.

Speaking for myself, the fear or anger is not so much an us against them kind of relationship that Travis K would like us all to believe. For myself it is the fear that this kind of work is only going to be viable as a very casual, part time work. Uber Metrics as far as I can tell would like to reduce the workforce to a condition where drivers are only as viable as long as their current schnazzy car is new. They will be disposable.

It is a bummer in a way that newbies get hit in the face with a truck load of energy when they post excitedly about their first weekend of driving. I think the fear is that the format favors amateurism, where being a pro simply means you do it to make your living. Uber's model favors amateurs and hobbyist, because they are far more likely to accept status quo and Travis bucks against change or anything that goes against his grain.

There is a hell of a good chance a typical Uber driver isn't going to last much more than six months. In that time, they bet against disclosure with their personal insurance carrier and they ignore the wear and tear to their car. The work turns out not to pay so good, it's so long Uber!

I believe Travis would rather keep replacing drivers constantly rather than really concern himself with their well being. For those reasons, I'll hazard a guess that over enthusiastic newby posts touch a particular nerve. There is no provision for elbow room on the streets.

 

Well said!!!

 

LOL every time someone comes in and is enthusiastic about driving for Uber everyone always has to come in and beat them down. Let him enjoy the moment - if the expenses are that bad he'll learn over time. BTW I am not an Uber driver but I've been considering it on some nights and weekends. I have to say almost everyone seems to be negative about it in here.

I agree. At this point, they should hear crickets when they post this.

 

That is what all the newbies said about "Day Trading" too.