RIDEGURU
Doug Herrera (DougH)
Ride Apprentice
213 DriverActivity
Posts by DougH
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Course for delivery drivers - Maximum Delivery Profits by The Rideshare Guy
Just wanted to share a few details about a new online course by the Rideshare Guy. It's called Maximum Delivery … -
Taxis have apps now too: You can use RideYellow to request and pay for a yellow cab
Uber and Lyft have nearly pushed traditional taxi cabs out of business in many cities, but cab companies aren't going … -
Drivers: Two delivery apps to look into (Shipt & goPuff)
Things are moving fast in the app-based delivery industry, and there a lot of new options out there for drivers … -
Uber and Lyft aren't the only thing in town: Two other car services using tech to provide rides
On-demand dominates the news, but there are many companies that are catching up with Uber and Lyft tech to carve … -
Which scooter wins? Bird, Lime, Uber Scooter, or Lyft Scooter?
Have e scooters rentals come to your town yet? You might have seen a sudden wave of scooter riders in … -
What about peer-to-peer car rentals?
Uber and Lyft get most of the attention when it comes to new tech in the transportation space, but there's …
Check out gogograndparent. It allows you to use a regular phone to request a ride, and makes it easier to request a ride for someone else. Not exactly sure how it works with scheduling tho.
Can someone point to any other successful tech giant that had dramatically different features in every locality they operate, all the while facing legal battles city by city, airport by airport? Not sustainable!
Serge, do you have any insight on why rideshare wasn't moved to arrivals before they tried the new lot? To me the logical test would be to first move rideshare to arrivals, and if traffic was too bad there, move everything to the new lot.
Putting them all together in one area already undermines the cabs, so why not put them all together on the level of the airport designed for mass traffic?
I wasn't shocked to hear that Uber/Lyft were being moved off site, but I was shocked that Taxis got dragged into it. It's a giveaway to Uber/Lyft even if they say otherwise. Taxis would have experienced a huge resurgence had they been allowed to stay at arrivals, but now they're in the time-out lot with the interlopers.
One interesting development with Eats is that they're rolling out a new pay model where deliverers see the order delivery location and estimated payout on the order acceptance screen. Before, you only saw the restaurant location. More info is better, but so far deliverers are saying that the new model came with a pay cut.
Here's what the new order acceptance screen looks like.
The old Uber Eats pay model was: Pickup fee + Distance travelled from pickup to drop-off + time from pickup to delivery + drop-off fee – Uber’s 25% cut + tips
Uber Cash is a pretty interesting feature. You can purchase it, and it's also kind of a catch-all for several different types of ride credits. Claiming an Uber gift card will credit Uber cash to your account. And if Uber support gives you a ride credit due to a refund or other issue, it will appear in your Uber Cash balance (Source at Uber.com).
Uber Rewards can generate Uber cash: When you reach 500 Uber Rewards points, you are credited $5 in Uber Cash. Certain cash back rewards cards also offers Uber Cash as a benefit. Then there's Visa Local Offers, where you can get cash back in the form of Uber Cash when you use a Visa at participating restaurants.
So far Uber hasn't done a great job at explaining everything that Uber Cash can do. I had to dig around to figure this all out, and I'm a pretty heavy Uber user.
Here's more about Uber payment options. There are a lot more payment options than Lyft!
Very likely. But a lightning strike from strong regulation like AB5 could level the playing field.
Another interesting thing is that Jump scooters are charged, maintained, and placed on the street by hourly or salaried employees. Bird & Lime use independent contractors to charge and store scooters. It's a regular old job, available through Indeed.com. Kinda unusual these days! (More of my research about how to work for Jump scooters/bikes)
Seems like there's a new player every month in Los Angeles. Wheels (e-bikes) popped up recently. Not sure how each will distinguish itself from the other. Uber/Lyft might win in the end just by leveraging their existing customer base.
penny wise, pound foolish. save a couple cents on gas and lose ratings, possibility of tips, etc
My thoughts are that netquote should be ashamed of their lazy study. 3 cars in each category! One particularly bad fart in the backseat could skew the data.
I wouldn't really worry about it. It would take a lot of 4-star ratings to badly harm the driver's overall rating. If there was a pretty major issue, 4-stars or less is appropriate. I usually only downrate for safety problems, or extreme unprofessionalism.
Yep, Uber's scheduling feature is pretty much just an auto-request button. If you want to truly schedule a ride where a driver sees your fare and prepares for it ahead of time, older-school services like Blacklane and GroundLink offer that. But they're way more expensive.
Lyft's scheduling feature allows drivers to accept rides in advance but there aren't great guarantees in place to incentive drivers to actually show up.
Online I saw two pretty different reactions to this. A normal reddit thread was mostly sympathetic to the drivers and against the sting, while the drivers in /r/uberdrivers and /r/lyftdrivers were not very sympathetic to the drivers at all. Drivers mainly seemed to say that you should never, ever stop for someone flagging you down, and definitely never take a street hail.
Another possible benefit of UberEATS is that they hire drivers 19 and older, with vehicles 1998 or newer. It's a decent option for younger drivers or those with older cars who don't want to rent or buy a newer one. Souce: My blog on UberEATS, and Jobs for people too young for Uber
For me, help.uber.com says delivery pay is: pickup fee + drop-off fee + mileage + time. For time, it says, "Per-minute rate based on expected wait time at restaurant, expected travel time from restaurant to dropoff, and expected wait time at dropoff."
Based on that your 'time you make money' line might go a few lines higher. Although even based on Uber's description the time calculation is really vague.
Endless hours in the car are definitely hard on the body! Delivery definitely helps with that. If you have knee or back issues though, Shipt or Instacart might not be great for you. On-demand food delivery should be easier on the body because you typically only have to carry a few pounds.
You don't get tied to one store, but you can schedule to work in 'zones' that may only feature a store or two. Cities have dozens of cities, and a zone may only have a Target, or a Kroger, etc. Sign up for that zone and you'll only get orders from the store within that zone.
Two trips at once happens, but not too often from what I've read.
Great info! It's borderline false advertising that Uber calls their robe-request feature 'scheduling.' At least with Lyft's scheduling feature a driver sees your ride in advance, accepts it, and gets notified in-app of their upcoming scheduled rides. But even still, it's very easy for Lyft drivers to cancel scheduled rides.
There are alternatives that offer decent technology and more dependable scheduled. I've looked into Blacklane and GroundLink (articles from my site), and both would be good options if you NEED your ride to happen.
Yes, you need a livery license for GroundLink and Blacklane. The same goes for UberBlack. All 3 can be used by livery services to fill their books if they have any gaps. So you're right, it is a high bar for Uber or Lyft drivers and I try to emphasize that in the articles I linked. I have heard from some rideshare drivers who decided it was worth it to go full livery in their markets.