Is it still worth to drive uber now that the petrol price is high, also taking other costs into consideration?
The only reason I am considering driving uber is because of the flexibility. I can't commit to fixed hours. I have a fulltime job but still struggling to meet families need. So, I am thinking of doing something to get some extra money.
Do I need to drive lot of hours to make it worthwhile? How much per hour is the earning after deducting all the expenses roughly?
ok
Unless you're driving an extremely economical hybrid or EV you'd likely be making maybe $20 an hour after taxes, fuel, fees/additional wear on the car? You only really make big bucks during midnight friday/sat and maybe if you do the airport runs at 4-5am in the morning.
There's a lot of drivers out there.
$20 hour
This is best case scenario
I use Uber parcel delivery a lot lately for super urgent deliveries (customer pays and accepts risk), and had the same dude 3 times in a row, got talking to him and yeah, he worked it out to be sub $20/hr average even some days
His English was terrible, and his driver side door was missing a handle… so I assume he was only doing it as not much other option.
his driver side door was missing a handle
Is that the new anti-carjacking feature on cars?
I have to wonder how he got in/out
@Jimothy Wongingtons: Having had a broken driver door handle I expect it’s one of a few ways.
Use passenger door and climb over. Reach in and open from passenger side then walk around.
Leave the window open and use inner handle
Use bush mechanic skills to remove the broken handle and leave the end of the actuation cable sticking out the hole. Then ‘pull the string’ to open the door.
If he drives a BMW then you won't be able to afford Uber parcel.
Are you asking for a friend?
commit to fixed hours
Consider looking at data entry jobs , usually quite flexible and based on piece work. Need to be accurate and quick though
Teach them all to live with less and you won't have to sacrifice valuable family time to make more money.
This is well worth considering.
We’re a small family managing to survive on one (~100k) income and one car (living walking distance to a train station). But it helps being a bit of a homebody and having bought a small house 7 or 8 years ago.
And dont forget didi and ola… so many drivers
.. sometimes i called one and they drive to my place for like 15 mins.. must be desperate
I often have a pretty lousy experience finding someone to take my fare in Melbourne though, that would suggest there aren't too many
Might be your 2 star rating.
Sorry, I wrote that poorly… I meant I often have drivers cancelling after already accepting the fare. Could still be for the same reason I guess (app says I'm 5.0 but maybe it lies to you), I always assumed they're taking a better trip on a different app. Annoys me though
How about doing amazon deliveries? Also around $20/h average nett?
Someone was saying here if packages were undeliverable you had to take it all the way back to depot…
Yeah, I've had some Amazon deliveries recently where they called me and just told me they'd chuck it with a nearby random store :/
i recently looked at expanding one of my side gigs and marketing on amazon as another sales channel - and man, the rates they provide to pick/pack/ship is actually crazy cheap imo. I literally have no idea how they can make money anywhere outside of immediate metro areas. australia is a BIGGGG place and some areas quite sparsely populated. 100% they gotta be losing money unless they just define piece work and its up to the driver/contractors to make profit out of it .
Lol yeah well I guess you be allowed to just keep them.
$20/h is pretty ordinary rate of pay for all the effort and wear and tear on your car etc.
If you're lucky. Some can be longer than the stated time.
Also returns will eat into your earnings. Returns are pretty common.
So a 4hr block can actually take you 6hrs or more. Waiting at the depot, driving to the depot, returning parcels.
And add in the petrol, wear and tear, traffic, rain, school hours, and yeah it's a nightmare. You'll be earning less than min wage for the most part.
And if you get a really unlucky suburb, say for example Eltham or some place far away like Wallan, you need to factor in the time it takes to drive there as well. And if you need to do returns, lol RIP.
Sydney perspective, the unlucky suburbs are high density unit block suburbs, which normally means hard to park and navigate to drop off. Also means more packages and hard to leave unattended.
Yes if you're also unlucky, you'll be delivering into inner city suburbs which most of the time, there is no parking such as in the CBD. So you either have to park a long way away and walk in, or do an illegal park and hope you don't get caught.
I've seen Amazon Flex drivers parking on the pathway and in weird spots just so they can deliver something. But another thing about CBD is sometimes if you get that on a weekend it always somehow has a delivery to a closed business. So it's always almost 100% chance of you returning items back to the depot, hence costing you even more.
Is It Still Worth in 2023?
Was it ever worth it?
Maybe at the very beginning when drivers at risk of being fined got extra cover money.
Now sham contracting has made school. Apply as a Honda salesperson and if you get to upsell overpriced finance you can afford an uber home.
Agreed, it was never worth it at least for my brother in 2022, he lost a couple of thousands to it.
Lost money? How?
Just at my weakest point I did a few thousand drives, shit money but the ups overwhelmed the downs at least till about 9 months before covid.
Some celebrities shifted, professors, working girls, folks from all sort of life.
Eventually the reality bell caught up with me. Post covid is totally out!
I used to earn so much trust even hugs but things have now changed with society here gone nuts. Our oldest driver mate was an 82 year old lady, she had big business's in her life and needed the action.
If your car broke on a trip easy to lose thousands
These companies rely on people not recognising the true cost of running their vehicle. The pay is too low when you do ALL the sums.
Yeah. Must be difficult to incl depreciation of the car as cost (ie to calculate the real rate/hr.
People may think oh not bad 25/hr but they underestimate the car service cost etc
plus higher insurance….
If you have a banger plus time then why not.
Isn't there a maximum vehicle age of about 9 years? That's what stopped me signing up and driving. (That was about 4 years ago, and Uber is still nagging me a couple of times a month to complete my signup. Brain-dead! I don't unsubscribe because I now have a morbid curiousity as to how long they'll continue to nag, without bothering to find out why I didn't complete sign-up)
@jrvb42: yeah i imagine uber etc must want the car to be decent and clean.
a friend told me in some asian country they register the good car but then do the work with different car/plate number.
of course good till they got caught
@CyberMurning: Had that experience in the Ukraine.
It makes it really difficult to know what car you're actually being picked up in.
@jrvb42: In WA and some other places it's a maximum of 15 years.
Though driving a car approaching that age and doing that many kms the extra cost might come from maintenance rather than depreciation.
@Gdsamp: I thought it depended upon the model/make of the car.
So long as it doesn't have those cluster bomb airbags, personally I don't mind.
@smalltime0: Correct, there is also the 5-star ANCAP safety requirement. There are plenty of 2008-2014 cars that meet that req
Agree, 1 single accident and it's all gone.
Plus traffic infringements, since you're on the road 10x more than you normally would be, even the best drivers get screwed.
Traffic infringements?
If you don't break the law, you don't get fined.
It's very simple. I wouldn't be pushing the speed limit on Uber pay.
Reply to self…
It is amazing that 4 people used a down vote on the truth.
@the wiz: If I had 10x the fines from 10x the driving I’ve had in the last 10 years it’d still be zero fines. In my youth however….
In the last 23 years I've done almost 500k km. One speeding fine (23 years ago), one parking fine (12 years ago).
It's really not that difficult to avoid fines. Really.
is that 500k carrying passengers for commercial purpose?
I used to drive Uber 7-8 years ago, and it was a good experience. I only did it for around 3-4 months and completed, on average, up to ten weekly jobs. I lived in the CBD and would only drive when there was a surge. Let's say I am at home watching TV, and there's a surge; I'd get ready, jump into my car, and have a fare within a minute or two of opening the driver app. I never like to drive in traffic, so I usually " drive " at 10pm-midnight. Sometimes I would pick up a longish ride with a >70% surge where I might do 30-40kms on an empty motorway, and the fare is over $100. I'd be spending, say, 1hr 30minutes round trip, I may not pick up a ride on the way home, but since my app is on (have my preferred destination set as home) and I am willing to pick up a ride, that return trip was now deductible. I liked how Uber allowed drivers to set a preferred destination 2x per day so they aligned rides with your direction of travel (usually to home).
How much per hour is the earning after deducting all the expenses roughly?
It depends on when you are driving. There are 'busy' times that you'll get back to back jobs, and then there are not so busy times you might be sitting around for 20 mins waiting.
There are lots of cherry picked profitable hours for sure, but if you are working full time, you might not be able to work them. So logging in at 8pm on a Tuesday night, might not equal many jobs, compared to say 8pm on a Friday night.
According to this site "As a rule of thumb, it’s safe to say that you can expect to make between $30 and $48 per hour as an Uber Eats driver in Australia"
https://australianstreet.com/self-employed-money/how-much-ub…
That article says "Uber Eats drivers are paid an average of $9 AUD for delivery made within the same suburb." Is that even correct? "Within the same suburb", I would assume means within a couple of kms max? I've never done it before, but that rate seems too high from the real life stories I've heard.
Maybe if it was based on like… collecting 10 deliveries at once, none being late to dispatch , awesome traffic, all green lights, full moon, nice autumn breeze, no deliveries marked as wrong / late / missing…
$9 per delivery? Screw that.
I get 4-5 deliveries done an hour.
Average around $9 a delivery
@Darude Sandstorm: Doesn’t sound like enough to me. Should be more like $50/hr to run a vehicle and make a wage.
The maths on this site don't make any sense at all. In the section above it mentions that drivers get paid an average of $9 per delivery, but 25% is subtracted from this which would leave only $6.75 per delivery. It also mentions that 3-4 deliveries per hour would be a reasonable expectation, so that's around $20.25 - $27 per hour not including fuel and other vehicle expenses.
I wouldn't be surprised if the fuel costs per delivery are at least $3-4, so there is very little money to be made at all. The whole thing is a scam for people too dumb to do basic maths.
it was never FINANCIALLY worth it
(when someone was actually honest with themselves and factored in all the BS)
In what other way would it be worth it?
Absolute fringe case… but i Got picked up once by a dude in a top spec'd X5.
He worked FIFO, said his wife gets sick of him by week two of the off swing. Whatever he made on this was beer and toys money.
Said he also met his current FIFO job manager doing an airport run.
I like the idea of buying a Tesla and using it for Uber. Should be able to count the car as a business expense for that part of its usage?
@WhyAmICommenting: EV is probably the only reasonable way to beat the high operational cost. But you might limit yourself for few hundreds kms per day. You really don't want to rapid charge, it is quite expensive
@WhyAmICommenting: 'I like the idea of buying a Tesla and using it for Uber'
sure - why not ?
spend $60,000 on a new car, and then earn less than $20 per hour - lemme see 60000/20 = 3000 hours - last I looked that's like 1.5 years full-time work - BEFORE you've broken even on your capital expenditure, let alone started to earn a decent income after expenses.
last Uber we took to the airport the driver told me he was looking for another job - and said that his non-hybrid diesel engine was uncomfortable to sit in all day as when stopped at lights you can feel the vibration through your body - oops !
but yeah - next time I'm willing to spend $35 to take us to the airport, I'll hope you turn up in a new Tesla ! ;-)
I had a doughnut delivered by two guys in a brand new Range Rover Vogue once.
If the alternative is sitting on your couch watching Netflix then yes it is worth it.
If you have young kids, then I suggest you should spend the time with them enjoying free or low cost activities. There are lots of resources available on-line to guide you in budgeting & economising your lifestyle. I suspect that none of them will suggest Uber as an option. Good luck
Apologies in advance if I've got my facts wrong, but wasn't there a legal case where Uber drivers were found to be employees and not independent contractors? If that's true, wouldn't it be illegal for drivers to be earning less than the minimum wage? So if they're making less than $20, shouldn't Uber top that up? Just curious.
They’ll have some get out of jail free card for the wages. Pretty sure the case was about workers comp and other similar entitlements not pay.
I don't drive Uber, but I drive Didi, as it pays better and there are less drivers than Uber.
My full time job is 2/2 FIFO so I do ride share driving on my time off. Usually work Thursday Friday Saturday nights and make decent coin. I bought my new car a few months ago, so with the car loan and my mortgage I'm doing quite well. I'm in Perth.
i found many driver are on multiple platforms, mostly didi and ola - yes they have 2 mobile phones one for each
maybe uber doesnt allow ?
doesnt allow what ?
Driver using multiple platforms
@capslock janitor: I know it when watching a delivery on Uber eats, pretty obvious they've made another pickup and delivery on the way when you see their indirect route. Usually results in your food being cold, I report the driver. I don't care if you're driving for multiple apps but when delivering food don't run multiple jobs at once.
Probably less obvious if you're only talking taxi like services but they've probably got some metrics which would give them a good indication you're driving for multiple apps. Worth remembering these apps are constantly communicating their GPS location while you drive. No idea if they care when you're shuffling people around via more than one app, unless you're somehow managing to carpool.
Less drivers and also less passengers.
I used to do it before but only driving on friday and saturday night (5 hours each approx). I was making about $40 per hour after Uber fee, before any fuel, depreciation etc.
On the weekdays, I only try to find trip when I commute home from work.
I used to do similar and made similar on Fri/Saturday nights. Stopped when COVID started getting bad and haven't gone back.
Recently had to do a pink slip safety inspection for Rego as car is over 5 years old now, and considered starting again as had the safety check (had to do one initially even for new car) - but checked insurance - and Youi would have jumped from $980 to nearly $2,800!! NRMA was next cheapest at $2,100!! That's a lot of driving just to make that back!! I think previously it was only a couple of hundred more.
Do u have to tell your insurance that u are using ur car for uber?
Only if you crash.
There’s a reason the premium goes up if you claim business use.
@Jaduqimon: From my POV, I am trying to understand how being an uber increases car insurance premium significantly.
Is it because then as a driver you would drive significantly more hours? When I do online quote, travelling 10k km or 20k km doesn't change my premium. So driving more doesn't make it more risky in the insurer's eyes?
The only extra risk from uber is from the passenger's. Still I don't see how having stranger in my car increases my risk of accident, unless they try to hinder me while I am driving.
@rave75: There are some.significant differences.
Insurance company care about statistics.
If you are using your car for ride share. Then you are put into that category of drivers who may not own thier cars, i.e renting and thus will be more.careless..
Because your using your car for.income. as a driver you will be incentivise to take additional risks to perhaps get more fare.
When your using your car for private purposes. Only occasionally you will travel on a route you are not familiar with. As a uber driver, you will drive.unknown routes alot more despite travelling the same KMs a year.
These are just a few differences that insurance companies factor in.
When I first signed up ~5 years ago you had to lodge various documents, including insurance which listed you as a driver and ride-sharing.
You couldn't go online on the app to drive till you had completed everything, and each year it would come up with reminder that it's expiring and once expired you couldn't go online.
Not sure for Uber Eats
I already on insurance before I joined Uber, So I didn't change it, especially since I was only doing it for avg 10 hours a week. My insurance would jumped by $1500 (or $1050 if you count the GST deduction).
Also, in my experience, doing it in North Shores (Chatswood, Manly, etc) was the best in my experience, generally nicer passengers. A stark difference if I somehow ended up in the West.
I signed up to Uber earlier this year, at the time they have a $750 bonus once you completed 30 jobs. There's also a referral bonus another driver can get which is $1000 once you do 30 trips. If you know another driver get them to split it so $750 + $500 bonus after 30 jobs isn't too bad.
I have a 2.5L Mazda CX-5 and I'm in Sydney. Outside the initial bonus it's not really worth the effort unless you've got an EV or Hybrid as other have said.
The only exception here is when I need to drive across Sydney to visit friends. I use the destination feature in the app which only gives you trips nearby, heading in the direction of your destination. The other day I was driving home from Penrith to Chatswood, got a couple who wanted to go from St Marys to Circular Quay. So I made $80+tolls paid, normally would have cost me about $30 in tolls to get home.
$30 in tolls one way?
Yep that's Sydney for ya
I currently drive for UE & DD in SA, my best week since I started working both apps in Mar this year has been around $620. I drove over 550kms. That was a full 7 day week. I usually do 3 hours during lunch & 3 hours during the dinner rush. I'm "on" longer on the weekends. Sundays are usually my best day, until recently it was pretty rare to not pull in $100 min on a Sunday but it is a full day 8hrs min.
I've heard that you get more work etc in the other cap cities.
Out of that I need to deduct - payroll tax (approx 20% into the bank to pay at tax time) fuel, other car expenses (I drive a 4cyl hatch) & my own super.
It really does work out to be much much less than minimum wage.
And also as an FYI, us gig workers at Ubereats were sent an email in May this year telling us that Uber weren't accepting any new drivers & deactivating all new onboarded drivers, as there were too many drivers & not enough work for us all. I'm not sure if this still applies tho'.
If you already have a full time job maybe look at ways you can cut back more etc, that time spent will probably make you more $$ than working a delivery gig TBH. But that is really your call to make. Maybe try it for a month & see if it's worth it to you & your family.
Best of luck to you & everyone else trying to scrape by at the moment.
it was pretty rare to not pull in $100 min on a Sunday but it is a full day 8hrs min.
geesus that is what like 100/8 = $12.50 per hour? on sunday as well
I am aware of the email re not accepting new drivers in SA but not about deactivating all new onboard drivers. Are they deactivating onboard drivers that are inactive or low satisfaction ratings?
KITT888 I'm not sure what is happening now, that was what they said in the email & I haven't received any other emails about deactivating new drivers etc since the email in May. Unfortunately I deleted the email so I can't copy & paste exactly how it was worded.
damn, that is low. im with menulog and only do it 3 to 4 hours and still complains when i make 60 to 80.
too much time wasted on waiting too, instead of taking orders and delivering. most of the time the food is not ready and i waste time waiting in the restaurant.
I have a FT job and do uber/didi every now and then. I only work if its busy and if theres quests available otherwise I dont think its really worth it.
No
So many people has not done it yet they comments like they know the thing inside out.
I been doing both doordash and Ubereats. Let's put it this way, it all depends on how you value your spare time vs possible income rewards.
I made close to $30k last year and after tax and fuel and depreciation I made around $22k net working 820 hours between the platform. Works out to be around $36 an hour before tax, or $26 an hour after all expenses are taken out.
Is it worth it? To me it's a yes, as I drive an old 10 year car with low mileage and I don't have any subscription like Netflix or anything like that. Only thing I do is a bit of gaming and Lego rest no much interests. I estimate by the time I run this car to 250k in km I would have just over $90k in the bank. Which considering I paid $5000 for this car. It has already paid itself off.
So to have $22k in the bank vs sitting on my couch watching movies I rather go with the first choice.
It will be even better return for those with a hybrid as it will cut the fuel costs to less than 1/3.
it's almost as if it's dependent on many variables which you have provided none