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5 Things Your Uber Driver Wishes You Knew
In 2016, I signed up to be an Uber driver in Tallahassee, Florida. After 5 years and many thousands of rides, these are the things I wish my riders knew.
1. What we earn is disconnected from what you pay
The price shown to you when you order a ride is just a guess, what Uber and Lyft call “up-front pricing.” They show you an amount that they think the ride should cost based on their internal algorithms, and you tap to order the ride. At that point, your part of the equation is done.
You might assume that drivers get paid a fixed percentage of the price of the ride, but rideshare drivers are actually paid by time and distance. While the distance rate is decent (it varies by market, but I get $0.83/mile), the per minute rate is abysmal (just $0.10/minute for me). What you are shown has only a fleeting relationship with how I get paid. We could run into traffic, take a detour, or decide that it’s quicker to hop on the interstate than try to take main roads.
The difference between what you are shown and what we earn is the company’s profit, known as a “take rate” (remember that term, because we’re going to talk about it later). This amount changes depending on how much the company ends up paying out to the driver. For now, just let it sink in that your driver on that $20 ride is probably only going to make $8–10.
