5 ms·

I like how Lyft is trying to make it easier for more people to drive for them. But, after Lyft's cut, tax and gas the hourly rate was very low. I drove for a co

by tswartz 11y ago

I like how Lyft is trying to make it easier for more people to drive for them. But, after Lyft's cut, tax and gas the hourly rate was very low. I drove for a couple months and they promised $25 - $35 during peak time, but I netted out to about $10/hr. Now to add on a Hertz rental fee, that is going to get very slim. Obviously this is still a better job for some people then there alternative. Lyft will market to new drivers with the higher rates and ease of renting a Hertz vehicle.

kuschku 11y ago
The issue is, this is how profitable it is effectively – any driver following the law will have to pay this much. And this is why uber can only currently provide their high margins because they provide no insurance between rides (only during rides), because they don’t follow laws, etc. It’s unfair competition, and sadly, people expect Lyft to offer the same.
- kazinator 11y ago
  Speaking of insurance, I was going over the terms of the car rental insurance coverage in one of my credit cards. It explicitly states that if you rent a car in order to provide a transportation service for hire, you are not covered. Oops!
  - tswartz 11y ago
    Yes, I saw a similar stipulation in regular car insurance. Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of drivers read the fine print.
- SilasX 11y ago
  IMHO, this is a misconception. Most of the benefit of Lyft/Uber comes from app convenience, being cashless, mutual rating to weed out the jerks, carpooling efficiency, transparency (easy to get estimates and know if you overpaid), good customer support, and reliability in getting a ride, all of which are legal and which cab companies could have done. They have a lot of room to raise prices before it outweighs those advantages. Remember, people were using UberBlack (as "UberCab" way back then), which simply took existing, fully-insured car service drivers, which had no regulatory advantage, long before UberX/Lyft.
  - ssmoot 11y ago
    Room to raise prices in very dense areas maybe. Uber is only viable in a lot of places (like DFW) because their rates are much much lower than the per-mile Yellow Cab rates that came before. Here you had to decide wether the (not all that convenient) convenience of a taxi to the movies on date-night was actually worth $40 each way and a half hour's wait to you. Where at maybe $15 each way and a 5 minute wait with Uber it's a no-brainer. At least that's my experience. Never been to San Francisco. But in Chicago or NYC I generally use Uber just because most taxi drivers seem to only drive at 99% of their limits and it's stressful. The Uber drivers are much more sedate generally. IME.
  - on_ 11y ago
    100% agree. That is why it has been successful. The magnitude would certainly be less if the cost was more because demand is elastic, but head to head with cabs they would dominate at the same price. It is an efficient way to manage resources and just a great thing. "Breaking Laws" is maybe a bit strong, as regulation is extremely bulky and a monolithic unequippted government isn't in the position to adapt. The laws vary on every level but what I think it comes down to, in a society that teies to be democratic, is whether people are comfortable with this existing. It seems they are.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      In my country, the laws for driving a taxi-like service (but without being allowed to use taxi spots, etc) are: * Have commercial insurance * Have a "people-driving drivers license", which allows you to drive commercially taxis, busses, trams, etc. Costs 55€. Uber is even refusing to follow the insurance part – they only insure during rides, but not when the person commercially drives with their car to the start of a ride.
  - lsc 11y ago
    >Most of the benefit of Lyft/Uber comes from app convenience, being cashless, mutual rating to weed out the jerks, carpooling efficiency, transparency (easy to get estimates and know if you overpaid), good customer support, and reliability in getting a ride, all of which are legal and which cab companies could have done. You are ignoring the speed of getting a ride. I mean, all those things would help a lot for cabs, but if I had to wait half an hour, even if I knew it would only be half an hour, while that would be better than my previous cab experience, it still wouldn't be very useful. If you want me to use the cab regularly, your average wait time needs to be 5 minutes or less. This means you need a lot of cabs on the road... a lot more than were in my area before this. I'll put up with a lot of other bullshit, but if you make me wait, I'm not going to use your service, full stop. I'm not sure that would be possible under the previous regulations. Improving dispatch only takes you so far; at some point you need more cabs on the road. >They have a lot of room to raise prices before it outweighs those advantages. Remember, people were using UberBlack (as "UberCab" way back then), which simply took existing, fully-insured car service drivers, which had no regulatory advantage, long before UberX/Lyft. Now, here's where we need to stop and remember that the average HN user makes a lot more money than the average person. Yes, for you and me? it's about convenience. That's the thing, I'd be fine paying uber black rates; but waiting is not a luxury experience. At the same price, I'd much rather ride in a ratty honda that shows up in four minutes than take a limo that takes twenty minutes. But there are a lot of people for whom the price matters a whole lot. There are more of them than there are of us, by a lot. If Uber only wants to keep me as a customer, yes, they can double prices for me. but their customer base is massively larger if they are cheaper than cabs, and the larger their customer base, the more cars they will have wandering around, and the less time I need to wait for a car. I suspect that if uber doubled their prices, their ridership (and thus drivers on the road) would fall to the point where my wait times would increase to the point where I would no longer find the service interesting.
- shostack 11y ago
  Another reason Uber can do this is because they have large amounts of money riding on doing away with human-driven vehicles entirely. Once they get there, they will fire their entire driver-base so quickly it will make heads spin. They just need to make it that far.
bduerst 11y ago
That's probably why Hertz does longer leases instead of rentals for this program. It would probably be worth it if you got it from locations outside of urban centers, but drove in the urban centers.
- tswartz 11y ago
  One "savings" I see is that you wouldn't have to wash your car (which in the city for me meant an extra $35 a week). You also save on general car maintenance. The city streets are tough on the suspension and brakes. You can drive that rental into the ground :)
Mz 11y ago
Already live in Las Vegas, Hertz cars are available to Lyft drivers at special affordable daily, weekly, and monthly rates. Approved drivers can quickly rent cars on-demand and earn money as a Lyft driver with no long-term lease commitment. Most people with cars are already making a car payment or lease agreement payment, taxes, insurance, etc. Having a car is typically not cheap. Hard to say if this will really be a good deal for anyone. That always depends on a lot of details. But I am wondering if you were perhaps not counting your car payment and other expenses because you had to make those anyway, whether you drove for Lyft or not. Perhaps there is only a big difference if you compare it to someone whose car is paid off, not to typical car owning costs.
- tswartz 11y ago
  My car is paid off so I didn't factor that in. But you make a good point. Probably the majority of drivers have some sort of payment, whether that's a car loan or a lease.
  - Mz 11y ago
    From my perspective, this is the chance for someone to get access to a car that they might not otherwise have and also create a job for themselves. Someone who is a college student or relatively poor for some reason might view this as a chance to get access to a car for themselves and also make enough money to cover it and perhaps a bit more than that. It might not be a paradigm that would occur to you because your situation is different from that. But I think we need to not turn our noses up at giving people the chance to make what looks to you like a poor wage. A quick google suggests Nevada's minimum wage is either $7.25/hour or $8.25/hour, depending upon what benefits they have. If you are only making $7.25/hour, then $10/hour is more than a 33% increase in income. That extra $2-$3/hour may seem piddling to you, but for people who have very little, it can be huge and make a big difference in their quality of life. Furthermore, if it also gets them access to a car that they wouldn't otherwise have, this may be hugely life changing. Living without a car in America can be quite challenging.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Yeah, I tend to agree. Driving for Lyft/UberX seems like it only makes sense if your car was worth buying and having for reasons other than to give rides through a TNC. This -- along with Uber's car financing plan -- really raises my "ick" factor in that they seem to be taking advantage of those who don't see the full expense or risk that they're taking on, and it may end up similar to the GM situation: "we're a finance company that happens to give rides too".
ac29 11y ago
Curious about your $10/hr figure. What city were you in? How much of the time were you actively driving fare paying rides? In a city like SF, $10/hour is actually less than minimum wage, yet there is no shortage of Uber/Lyft/Etc drivers.
- tswartz 11y ago
  I was driving in SF for two month a couple years ago. Lyft took a 15 or 20% cut right off the top, then I covered taxes, gas, weekly car wash. I also included the time when I ended a shift, but had to get back to my apartment, or had to take a break to fill gas or grab some food in between rides. After that stretch I drove periodically when I wanted some extra money. It's very flexible on hours.

by tswartz 11y ago

kuschku 11y ago

The issue is, this is how profitable it is effectively – any driver following the law will have to pay this much. And this is why uber can only currently provide their high margins because they provide no insurance between rides (only during rides), because they don’t follow laws, etc. It’s unfair competition, and sadly, people expect Lyft to offer the same.

kazinator 11y ago
Speaking of insurance, I was going over the terms of the car rental insurance coverage in one of my credit cards. It explicitly states that if you rent a car in order to provide a transportation service for hire, you are not covered. Oops!
- tswartz 11y ago
  Yes, I saw a similar stipulation in regular car insurance. Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of drivers read the fine print.
SilasX 11y ago
IMHO, this is a misconception. Most of the benefit of Lyft/Uber comes from app convenience, being cashless, mutual rating to weed out the jerks, carpooling efficiency, transparency (easy to get estimates and know if you overpaid), good customer support, and reliability in getting a ride, all of which are legal and which cab companies could have done. They have a lot of room to raise prices before it outweighs those advantages. Remember, people were using UberBlack (as "UberCab" way back then), which simply took existing, fully-insured car service drivers, which had no regulatory advantage, long before UberX/Lyft.
- ssmoot 11y ago
  Room to raise prices in very dense areas maybe. Uber is only viable in a lot of places (like DFW) because their rates are much much lower than the per-mile Yellow Cab rates that came before. Here you had to decide wether the (not all that convenient) convenience of a taxi to the movies on date-night was actually worth $40 each way and a half hour's wait to you. Where at maybe $15 each way and a 5 minute wait with Uber it's a no-brainer. At least that's my experience. Never been to San Francisco. But in Chicago or NYC I generally use Uber just because most taxi drivers seem to only drive at 99% of their limits and it's stressful. The Uber drivers are much more sedate generally. IME.
- on_ 11y ago
  100% agree. That is why it has been successful. The magnitude would certainly be less if the cost was more because demand is elastic, but head to head with cabs they would dominate at the same price. It is an efficient way to manage resources and just a great thing. "Breaking Laws" is maybe a bit strong, as regulation is extremely bulky and a monolithic unequippted government isn't in the position to adapt. The laws vary on every level but what I think it comes down to, in a society that teies to be democratic, is whether people are comfortable with this existing. It seems they are.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    In my country, the laws for driving a taxi-like service (but without being allowed to use taxi spots, etc) are: * Have commercial insurance * Have a "people-driving drivers license", which allows you to drive commercially taxis, busses, trams, etc. Costs 55€. Uber is even refusing to follow the insurance part – they only insure during rides, but not when the person commercially drives with their car to the start of a ride.
- lsc 11y ago
  >Most of the benefit of Lyft/Uber comes from app convenience, being cashless, mutual rating to weed out the jerks, carpooling efficiency, transparency (easy to get estimates and know if you overpaid), good customer support, and reliability in getting a ride, all of which are legal and which cab companies could have done. You are ignoring the speed of getting a ride. I mean, all those things would help a lot for cabs, but if I had to wait half an hour, even if I knew it would only be half an hour, while that would be better than my previous cab experience, it still wouldn't be very useful. If you want me to use the cab regularly, your average wait time needs to be 5 minutes or less. This means you need a lot of cabs on the road... a lot more than were in my area before this. I'll put up with a lot of other bullshit, but if you make me wait, I'm not going to use your service, full stop. I'm not sure that would be possible under the previous regulations. Improving dispatch only takes you so far; at some point you need more cabs on the road. >They have a lot of room to raise prices before it outweighs those advantages. Remember, people were using UberBlack (as "UberCab" way back then), which simply took existing, fully-insured car service drivers, which had no regulatory advantage, long before UberX/Lyft. Now, here's where we need to stop and remember that the average HN user makes a lot more money than the average person. Yes, for you and me? it's about convenience. That's the thing, I'd be fine paying uber black rates; but waiting is not a luxury experience. At the same price, I'd much rather ride in a ratty honda that shows up in four minutes than take a limo that takes twenty minutes. But there are a lot of people for whom the price matters a whole lot. There are more of them than there are of us, by a lot. If Uber only wants to keep me as a customer, yes, they can double prices for me. but their customer base is massively larger if they are cheaper than cabs, and the larger their customer base, the more cars they will have wandering around, and the less time I need to wait for a car. I suspect that if uber doubled their prices, their ridership (and thus drivers on the road) would fall to the point where my wait times would increase to the point where I would no longer find the service interesting.
shostack 11y ago
Another reason Uber can do this is because they have large amounts of money riding on doing away with human-driven vehicles entirely. Once they get there, they will fire their entire driver-base so quickly it will make heads spin. They just need to make it that far.

bduerst 11y ago

That's probably why Hertz does longer leases instead of rentals for this program. It would probably be worth it if you got it from locations outside of urban centers, but drove in the urban centers.

tswartz 11y ago
One "savings" I see is that you wouldn't have to wash your car (which in the city for me meant an extra $35 a week). You also save on general car maintenance. The city streets are tough on the suspension and brakes. You can drive that rental into the ground :)

Mz 11y ago

Already live in Las Vegas, Hertz cars are available to Lyft drivers at special affordable daily, weekly, and monthly rates. Approved drivers can quickly rent cars on-demand and earn money as a Lyft driver with no long-term lease commitment. Most people with cars are already making a car payment or lease agreement payment, taxes, insurance, etc. Having a car is typically not cheap. Hard to say if this will really be a good deal for anyone. That always depends on a lot of details. But I am wondering if you were perhaps not counting your car payment and other expenses because you had to make those anyway, whether you drove for Lyft or not. Perhaps there is only a big difference if you compare it to someone whose car is paid off, not to typical car owning costs.

tswartz 11y ago
My car is paid off so I didn't factor that in. But you make a good point. Probably the majority of drivers have some sort of payment, whether that's a car loan or a lease.
- Mz 11y ago
  From my perspective, this is the chance for someone to get access to a car that they might not otherwise have and also create a job for themselves. Someone who is a college student or relatively poor for some reason might view this as a chance to get access to a car for themselves and also make enough money to cover it and perhaps a bit more than that. It might not be a paradigm that would occur to you because your situation is different from that. But I think we need to not turn our noses up at giving people the chance to make what looks to you like a poor wage. A quick google suggests Nevada's minimum wage is either $7.25/hour or $8.25/hour, depending upon what benefits they have. If you are only making $7.25/hour, then $10/hour is more than a 33% increase in income. That extra $2-$3/hour may seem piddling to you, but for people who have very little, it can be huge and make a big difference in their quality of life. Furthermore, if it also gets them access to a car that they wouldn't otherwise have, this may be hugely life changing. Living without a car in America can be quite challenging.
SilasX 11y ago
Yeah, I tend to agree. Driving for Lyft/UberX seems like it only makes sense if your car was worth buying and having for reasons other than to give rides through a TNC. This -- along with Uber's car financing plan -- really raises my "ick" factor in that they seem to be taking advantage of those who don't see the full expense or risk that they're taking on, and it may end up similar to the GM situation: "we're a finance company that happens to give rides too".

ac29 11y ago

Curious about your $10/hr figure. What city were you in? How much of the time were you actively driving fare paying rides? In a city like SF, $10/hour is actually less than minimum wage, yet there is no shortage of Uber/Lyft/Etc drivers.

tswartz 11y ago
I was driving in SF for two month a couple years ago. Lyft took a 15 or 20% cut right off the top, then I covered taxes, gas, weekly car wash. I also included the time when I ended a shift, but had to get back to my apartment, or had to take a break to fill gas or grab some food in between rides. After that stretch I drove periodically when I wanted some extra money. It's very flexible on hours.