The Tortoise’s Guide to Uber Eats Driving Strategy
In the old Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, we learn that slow and steady can win the race. The Hare is fast but overconfident. He makes mistakes and ends up spending a lot of energy aimlessly, only to lose the race. I will argue that every bit of advice out there about making money driving for Uber Eats comes from Hares and is, frankly, wrong. You can work like a tortoise, have less stress, be safer, and make more money. Let’s compare.
The Hare
The typical advice seen in YouTube videos, blogs, and even articles here on Medium is wrong. Working during busy times in busy areas, doubling up on orders, juggling multiple apps, and staying in the same area puts you and your vehicle at significantly greater risk for LESS money. Every single piece of advice given out here on the web is mathematically and logistically wrong. It is wrong in general for everyone and it is particularly wrong (more wronger?) if you drive in California.
The Hare’s premise is wrong. The Hare believe that courier money is primarily earned from base fare, promotions, and tips. It is not. Sure, there are rare trips where you get a huge tip, but 99% of the time the pay structure looks like this: IRS mileage exemption > active time spent > active mileage > base fare > tip > busy time bonus (boost). Those are ‘greater than’ symbols. The dark truth is most of the pay comes from just putting miles on your car. The IRS mileage exemption is currently $0.625 per mile.
The hare runs around the downtown city streets at dinner hour fighting for parking, waiting in traffic, waiting in restaurants, fiddling with their apps, searching for addresses, climbing stairs, and calling customers. The hare does not put many miles on their car and does not spend a particularly large percent of their time ‘actively’ en route to customers. The hare collects a lot of points and a ton of $1–5 tips. The hare pulls off like 8 deliveries an hour and makes about $30 / hour having spent about a gallon in gas. The hare has about 30 miles worth of mileage tax exemptions which total $18.75 in post-tax cash or around $30 in pre-tax terms. Not bad for a hare. He’s up about $60 for his hour of hustle in the city running those 8 orders.
The Tortoise
By contrast, the tortoise spends an hour just driving around on Sunday afternoon with the app on (between naps of course). It turns out in that hour that the tortoise drove 30 miles. He never even accepted an order, though he did see a Walmart grocery pickup that just seemed like too much work. Still, that’s the same 30 miles mileage exemption as the hare and tortoise is up about $30 in pre-tax terms for just driving around.
Now the tortoise lives in California where Prop 22 is ensuring that he makes 20% above the $15 minimum wage and $0.30 per mile when actively driving. The tortoise saw a bean and cheese burrito delivery and accepted it. The delivery pickup was nearby, but the customer was 20 miles away. The customer only planned to tip $2, so the estimate delivery was $11 total. The roads were windy and the delivery took 30 minutes. With the Prop 22 guarantee and the $2 tip, the tortoise made $9 for the 30 minutes, $6 in mileage, and the $2 tip. So the total earnings from Uber Eats was $17. This was tiring work and it was time for another nap. The tortoise drove back home and now had a total of 45 miles traveled that he could deduct in IRS mileage. This is $28.13 in tax deductions. That’s about $43 in pre-tax money. So after one long delivery in California, the tortoise has made the equivalent of $60 in pre-tax money. That’s the same as the hare on Friday night! But the Tortoise only ran one single burrito for a $2 tip!?!?
Compare
Online advice tells you that you should have a nice profile photo and be friendly to customers, but the reality is that the vast majority of customers want no contact and just drop the delivery off and leave. They don’t want a conversation and they couldn’t care less about your photo. Further, their tips are a drop in the bucket 99% of the time. Drivers are paid to burn fuel and stay ‘active’ on the clock. The boost rates are a joke and the tips are usually $5 or less and they get taxed.
From these examples, you can see why it makes no sense to turn down low paying offers or long drives. The pay you see has almost nothing to do with the pay you get and mileage is where all the money comes from. In the end, a tortoise that just casually drives and puts in more miles will out-earn a stopping and starting hare every time. We are not paid to serve people, we are paid to burn gas. Online advice will tell you that high gas prices are making these deliveries not worth it, but simple math will tell you gas will have to go up a whole lot higher to overcome the $0.625 per mile credit plus the $0.30 pay per active mile. It would have to be somewhere north of $20 per gallon to make it unprofitable to drive deliveries just based on mileage pay. Like I wrote, every bit of advice online for driving is wrong.