Depends on your area and market, no point sitting and waiting in a dead zone either.

I’ve found sometimes Il get bored of waiting and move to next location to wait, I allow 15mins and move on,

Sometimes to reduce dead miles all you need to do is accept less trips,example why drive 10mins away, burning money in fuel. Your better off to ignore that 10min request and take the next trip, hoping it wil be anything less than 10mins, if next request is 7mins away, but you have sat for 3mins waiting, you have just saved 3mins of fuel,

 

In my area, around 50% is doing good. Think I am usually around high 30's. But thats tooling around between pings and avoiding turning Lyft on and using Uber alone.

I think your doing well paid/dead head ratio wise.

I agree Classified. Depends greatly on local.

 

Today I had a typical day and drove 145 miles, of which 64 were dead. Seems like it's high?

You drive in San Diego. That is definitely a lot of dead head miles compared to pay miles for that market. But you are still a newb, so let's just chalk it up that you are still honing in on the where the sweet spots are, and because you seem dedicated, I'm sure that improvement is on your horizon.

 

Today I had a typical day and drove 145 miles, of which 64 were dead.

How much did you gross?

 

Oil down 30% in just over a month. Gasoline pricing only down 5%. SOB's

 

Always.
Prices raise like a rocket.
Drop like a feather

Too bad nothing but Price Cuts with Ubers
Regressive Wage.

 

I drive in San Diego and typically about one third of my total mileage is dead miles. Certain areas I vacate immediately after drop off.

 

Pax Collector - I grossed $104, 6.5 hours with those miles.

 

Ouch. You netted about $44. Hourly of about $6.77.

At this rate.....finer things will take a life time.

What time and day did you drive?

 

UberPro - How did you figure what I netted?

I did better today I think. 124 total miles, 49 dead miles, or 40% dead miles, yesterday was 44%. Grossed $115.81 for 6.5 hours total hours.

I drive usually 6:30 am- 1:30ish pm, Mon-Fri ideally.

 

How are you keeping track of dead miles? I only keep track of my total miles. I look at $/mile. If it is low I have too many dead miles. Both paid and dead. Are you keeping track of travel to pick up pax and travel in-between pax? Seems kind of tedious to keep track of all that. I guess it might be interesting for academic reasons.

 

Pax Collector - I grossed $104, 6.5 hours with those miles.

Ok, here's my take on this. That seems too be A LOT of dead miles. Maybe it's your market, maybe it's your driving habits. If I'm driving 145 miles, I'm usually grossing close to $200 and utilizing my destination filter as much as I can stretch it.

Unless you're driving a hybrid car, multiply your miles for the day by .54 and that should give you how much your daily cost is including gas, wear and tear and depreciation. Now I know some cars cost a lot more to maintain and operate, and others less, but let's use that standard for simplicity.

You grossed $104 after driving 145 miles, which gives us an operating expense of $78.30. That nets us a profit of $25.70. Making a profit of $25.70 in six and a half hours gives us an approximate hourly pay of $3.95. It sounds bizarre, I know, but that's the reality of rideshare if we were to go by the book and count our losses.

How can we mitigate this? Obviously in your case, it would be by considerably lowering your dead miles. A few miles a day won't seem much, but in the long run they do add up and eat into whatever profit you think you've gained.

Other way is making trips more profitable. That depends on what strategies you apply to your driving instead of taking every ping that comes in.

I hope you find this analysis helpful.

 

Samuel B - it's pretty easy to track dead miles. I really just track my total miles, Lyft and Uber track my paid miles and I just subtract what they count from my total miles. I just started looking at dead miles a couple of days ago. I doubt I'll track it every day. I'm guessing it's probably about the same. But looking at it for a couple of days has made me more aware of it, which is good.

 

I forget the dead miles. In fact I want them for my taxes.
I live in an area with a beach island and usually good surges, and a downtown 8 miles on a highway away where you get screwed picking up. (No surge, 7 minutes in traffic to get to the passenger, 5 minutes till they come out and then a 7 minute in traffic 1 mile and 2.75 ride (total 19 minutes)

I drive the 8 miles at 55 and get another at surge. Make 22 and hour and deduct 16 bucks on my tax . The key here is I bought my 2004 GM car with 90k for 2700. NADA BOOK was 4900 or something. Next year I will sell it for 2700 with 110,000.