I work in management for a trucking company, that's my day job. We have truck owners that driver for us, as well as company drivers that drive a company owned truck. I had one of my owner ops come to me last year and say "I can't work for you anymore". My obvious question to him was why? He said his accountant told him that he was losing money driving his truck. That he should just sell the truck and drive someone else's. So, I sat down with him and we put pencil to paper to see if what his accountant was telling him was true. It wasn't. The accountant, like the analysis here took things into account that should never have been considered. The accountant had assumed too much, instead of an apple's to apple's comparison. My big question to the Owner op was at the end of the year did you have to come out of savings to pay your bills or did the truck supply that and did you save any. The driver on paper only netted $45,000 a year, on $175,000 in income. However, after you took out all the smoke and mirrors you see that the driver actually pocketed $125,000 in cash. There were tax loopholes and some other things that went into the #'s that weren't straight forward. It's the difference between making money on paper and actually making money. At the end of the day, the accountant surmised that the driver would make more than $45,000 driving someone else's truck, with benefits,etc and not have the risk of operating his own equipment, getting benefits, etc. At the end of the day, the owner op saw the difference between paper and reality and he's still driving a truck he owns and reaping all of the benefits of that.
This analysis is similar to the accountants. It's taking information that it thinks is relevant, but isn't. It assumes that the driver wants or needs benefits...and then assumes what those benefits would cost. They are also considering unemployment insurance cost, reimbursement of driving expenses (in your car), paid leave, health insurance, vacation pay, workers comp, etc. It's a rigged study, they got the outcome they intended to get.
First, a taxi driver in today's world driving someone else's car is going to make $15/hr + tips at best and is not going to have any benefits or if they do, they'll have to pay for most of the cost themselves. The average Uber driver should make about $25 to $30/hr after fuel cost. If you're not, then you're in a bad market or doing something wrong. I clear over $30/hr after operation cost. Most people use a car they would have anyway. Most car insurances don't charge anything extra for a gig job, or if they do it's just a few dollars more. The fact of the matter is, we are WAY better off being IC's than we would being an employee for someone else. There are tradeoff's everywhere and anyone that didn't research before they got into this, did themselves a serious disservice.
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