acarney
Active Member
Here's how your ride would be priced and paid in my market - a typical large suburban-mix city (ie, not NY, Chicago, or LA. Think Denver, Houston, or Phoenix)
Opening the rider app and picking a point 20 miles from the local airport, Lyft would charge $32 to get you there.
Assuming the ride took 40 minutes (about right) here's how the driver gets paid:
Base Fare: $0.75
Time ($0.12/min): $4.80
Mileage ($0.60/mile): $12
Tolls: $2
Bonuses: (Not very common in this market) $0
Tip: (~1 out of 4 riders tip)
Total: $19.55 (So the rule of thumb is - whatever the fare is, the driver gets a little more than half. Remember that if you tip.)
Driver cost @ $0.58/mile: $11.60 + $2 Tolls
Driver profit after costs: $5.95
Driver hourly rate: $8.93/hr
Ok, so in this isolated example we actually got pretty close to minimum wage. But there are some factors that push it lower. You always have to drive TO the pickup - typically a couple miles, but sometimes up to 7 or 8. That's time and mileage you're not being paid for. And this ride example actually is a pretty "good" fare. Most rides are well under 10 miles. My average pay for a ride is closer to $6. That means that the unpaid mileage getting TO the fare increases proportionately. It's not uncommon to have only 3 rides in an hour (which is pretty close to the max possible here) and make less that $10 gross. And I know you don't want to include time or distance while waiting for the fare, but those do factor into the equation.
Maybe I'm just bad luck when I check for Uber prices. From my home to the airport in an area of approx 200k population it's $34.39 for an UberX right now (so who knows if it goes up late at night or if there is surge prices on Friday, etc). The route is 13.5 miles and takes about 20 minutes, and that's fairly accurate from when I've driven it. That means a round trip to the airport and back could be almost $70 (or more depending on demand) before any thought of a tip or anything. Parking at the airport is $10/day, so 7 day trip just to break even on that cost...
If the driver is getting 60% (which appears to be what your numbers show) they make ~$20.60 for that trip. By your numbers the cost to the driver to do that route would be ~$7.80. There is NO WAY that less than 14 miles costs almost $8. A 25mpg car that has to get fuel at $3.25/gal would cost approx $0.13/mile. Yes you need to factor in oil changes and mileage on the car, but that can't be more then a couple bucks, especially with all the $29.99 oil change places around and most cars not having any major issues before 100k miles. So fuel and maintenance on the car probably costs more like $3.50 or $4 at the most. You also get some tax benefit to that...
That means the driver could make about $16.50 off a 20 to 25 minute ride. Yes they might not be able to line up another ride right after that, but if you could get two of those an hour, you would be making at least $25/hr.
Maybe short rides aren't worth it and you should just be doing airport transfers?
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