It is only because the maintenance costs of private cars are not taken into consideration that "Uber drivers are profitable"

I will retire the IT industry engineer who is in the dot com bubble early in mid thirties and enjoy the rest of my life as a bloggerMr. Money Mustache(MMM)According to Mr. Uber's actual experience of the driver of the dispatch service Uber, the feeling that the Uber driver feels "to earn" is an illusion that it is only an illusion that does not take into consideration the "maintenance and management costs" such as gasoline fee and maintenance cost of automobiles It is announced in.

Mr. Money Mustache, UBER Driver
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/11/22/mr-money-mustache-uber-driver/

Mr. MMM who used Uber from the airport two years ago was impressed by the fact that the Uber price is much cheaper than the cost of parking private cars at the airport and paying for parking fee. From then on, Mr. MMM, who used to use Uber and Lyft dispatch service in the 90% case that he would have hired a rental car in the past, the driver said "I'm really profitable" It seems that he often heard the story.

The following is an example of that conversation.

Uber Driver:
"Good earnings, you can earn 100 dollars (about 11,000 yen) on a good day, and even earn 200 dollars (about 22,000 yen) if you work hard earnest"

MMM:
"Is that a profit after subtracting the driving cost of the car?"

Uber Driver:
"No, I do not include gasoline, but even if it's full, it's about $ 30 (about 3400 yen)"

"If this driver pays a gasoline fee of 30 dollars, it would have run 250 miles (about 400 kilometers), if you run 250 miles, car maintenance costs and other costs will be $ 125 (about 10,000 4000 yen), so I finally got a profit of only about 50 dollars (about 5600 yen) per day at the most, and it is about 5 dollars (about 560 yen) on hourly wages? .

In retrospect, Uber frequently used from the airport also said that there were lots of bad fuel-efficient cars such as Dodge pickups with V8 engines and Hummer H3. It seems that Mr. MMM felt that they are completely ignorant about "expenses" necessary for driving their own cars. Mr. MMM, who is curious, decided to apply for Uber driver job seekers, if they try if they can really earn with Uber.


Mr. MMM who registered a new ID in Uber system using a friend's introduction code performs troublesome work such as background check, health checkup, safety inspection of private car according to job recruitment, and "Greenlight Centers" and I headed to a facility called by Nissan Reef of a private car. When arriving at Greenlight Centers, applicants who wanted to become Uber drivers are waiting and it was a bit uncomfortable to look at themselves trying to become Uber drivers for experiments. MMM who ordered coffee with a small cafe near the waiting room paid a price of 3.85 dollars (about 430 yen), and it seems that none of the coffee and light snacks were free in the IT company that used to work.


After completing the procedure, Mr. MMM who was blessed with the Uber concierge "This is over, I got out and I can earn money as soon as I got on the car!", But leaving the IT industry "only delicious" work For Mr. MMM who lives living in a snack, he said that he had wasted 3 hours of valuable Tuesday morning fuel cost (exactly electricity charge) for the round-trip 80 mile (about 130 kilometers) spent coming to the office I felt that I felt.

Mr. MMM who finally became a Uber driver immediately washed, pasted a Uber sticker on the windshield, launched smartphone application installed on the dashboard, and started providing the dispatch service. It seems that there was a request from "John" in just 5 minutes. In addition, the Uber application is said to have been surprised at the condition of the notification volume of passenger's request being MAX in the default state.


Sliding the "accept button", headed and succeeded in picking up John. However, John got off in front of the marijuana shop, which was only 1.9 miles (about 3 kilometers) away.

Ride 1: Net revenue (actual profit) is 3.37 dollars (about 370 yen) at standby for 5 minutes, driving for 5 minutes, movement at 1.2 mile (unpaid), 1.9 mile (with Uber income)

Mr. MMM who was disappointed in a short traveling distance, he decided to wait in the vicinity. Sure enough, after 15 minutes, the Uber application again notifies the alert, John's request. Besides, it is unknown whether I felt better this time, but it costs 5 dollars (about 560 yen) for a fare of $ 3.37 (about 370 yen).

Boarding 2: 15 minutes of waiting, 5 minutes of movement (unpaid), 1.9 miles of movement (with Uber income), $ 5 chips, net revenue is $ 8.37 (about 930 yen)

The next guest was a young couple who could not locate whereabouts due to GPS malfunction, and found out using the message function of the application. Travel distance to the restaurant is 12.4 miles (about 20 kilometers).

Ride 3: Waiting for 10 minutes, moving 4 miles (unpaid), 112.4 miles (with Uber income), net revenue is $ 13.96 (about 1600 yen)

After that, Mr. MMM who moved to the vicinity of the downtown area at night realized that it is a "surge mode" with overwhelmingly large number of customers using the dispatch service. With no time to spare, you can get customers right away and profitability is up by 20 to 30%. However, there are pitfalls here, and traffic volume in the downtown area is so many that it often gets stuck in signal waiting and traffic jams, it seems I could not earn it as I expected. Mr. MMM who got out of the congestion at a rate of one-third the speed of a bicycle got a fare of only 5 dollars (about 560 yen) and is resolutely determined to focus on the suburbs rather than the downtown area.

So, the results of the first day of the Uber driver are as follows. I picked up 4 pairs of customers and earned 32 dollars (including about 3600 yen) including chips, but the maintenance and management cost of the car is a maximum of 18 dollars (about 2000 yen), the real wage per hour is about 7 dollars ( It was 780 yen), which was a strange result.


After that, Mr. MMM who also registered to Lyft surveyed Uber and Lyft's earnings for several months. By the way, since Uber 's troublesome work prepared at the time of submission could all be diverted to Lyft, Uber registered driver seems to have little time to register with Lyft.

There is a lot of opportunity to carry a 13-year old girl in front of the junior high school and have an interesting experience of sending the younger sister on the way to the home safely on the way and exchanging business cards and e-mail addresses with customers over imagination Although Mr. MMM who was able to spend a very enjoyable time by discovering that it is worthwhile to make friends and discovering the value of a Uber driver by some friends was not able to make it at all from the conclusion is. For Mr. MMM, it was difficult to continue the experiment "Can Uber drivers earn?"

Uber's driver who can never earn money by calculating the cost of cars, Mr. MMM gives the following advice as a good way to maximize earnings.

· Utilization of Bonus System
The introduction fee obtained by introducing other drivers to Uber is high, so it is clever to take advantage of this because bonuses of 300 to 500 dollars (about 30,000 yen to 56,000 yen) are given via the application It means that it is a means. However, considering that you can make an identity guarantee, those who introduce need to be examined.

· Choose a fuel-efficient car
Because the fuel cost in the maintenance and management cost of the car is large, it is necessary to choose a car with better fuel economy. As Uber demands that it is a relatively new car less than 10 years from the manufacture, the 2009 Prius etc is recommended.

· Maximize use of surge pricing
Mr. MMM who took Uber and Lyft drivers over a couple of months seemed to be able to understand when and where the demand of dispatch service is high. Profitability will increase if you intensively target prospects that have many prospects, such as late at night and sports event holding dates.

· Excellent passengers using expressway
Most of the dispatch services such as Uber are payment according to the rental distance. In other words, if you run at 60 Mph (100 kilometers per hour) rather than 6 Mph (about 10 km / h), the profitability will be multiplied by 10 in a simple calculation. Therefore, it is better to aim for service on long distance route such as highway, so it is better to utilize filtering function such as destination setting for that.

· Effective utilization of downtime
Far from being waiting for customers, it is possible to incur costs that require fuel costs, in some cases rather than generating revenue. Therefore, Mr. MMM recommends that you use the waiting stop time for reading, work on laptop PCs, business related calls, etc. In addition, Mr. MMM advises himself that waiting time is a great opportunity to learn more efficient business than to Uber Driver.