I had not heard of the concept of rideshare before I moved to Georgia at the end of 2016. Uber (originally called UberCab) officially launched in San Francisco in June 2010, while Lyft came a couple years later launching their purple-mustached cars in June 2012. The idea came from the way college students often tried to arrange rides home during the holidays and other events, usually paying some of the gas costs along the way. Ordinary people signed up to drive using their own vehicle through the use of the rideshare mobile app. Riders could search for a ride on the app after adding their pickup and dropoff location, while drivers would be able to accept rides shown on the app and be directed to the location of the rider. The rider would be shown the full price of the ride at that time and the driver would be shown a lower price for picking them up and driving them to their desired location. The difference between those amount would be the profit to the company.
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| Lyft's purple mustache |
Most drivers who would sign up for either Uber of Lyft saw this as a side hustle for extra money, and therefore drove nights after work or on the weekends getting people to their destinations. That was my original need upon moving to Georgia as I had been unsuccessful in finding a job in the Atlanta area during my search all through 2016. As that year wound down and I was looking for what to do after 2017 began, I figured it was worth a shot for a few months as I was still looking for a job in my new home. "Just a few months" is what I figured as the new year began. But then life happened.
The first family event was in April 2017 as our son and his fiance were going to get married in Tennessee. My other two sons and us spent several days in a large rented cabin and had a great time altogether. Then in May my wife and I drove to Missouri for my mom's 80th birthday celebration and had a great time with so many family and friends together. Then in June we headed up the Northern Michigan for the funeral of my wife's mother and our whole family group was there to say goodbye. That was a sadder events but it was nice to see extended family. I began to realize that I was not likely to have the time off from a regular full-time job to attend these family events and was thankful for the chance to go to each of them. But I still continued to look for a job. Then came the end of August and my appendix burst, and I was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. Because of the poison in my body and the swollen appendix the doctor had to remove the poison first and wait for the appendix swelling to go down. I was relegated to rest while dealing with the suction tube for two months, September and October. Then there was family Thanksgiving in November, a fourteen inch "blizzard" (for Georgia anyways) in December, and then Christmas and New Years celebrations. I discovered that people in Atlanta who normally used rideshare throught most of the year took time off from Halloween to after New Years and therefore I had very few rides. In spite of that I was happy to have money coming in.
In the beginning people always asked me why I drove for Lyft instead of Uber and I said that I had spoken to an associate at my bank who drove for both and suggested I start with Lyft. As Uber was about ten times larger than Lyft at that time he though that it would be easier for me to get the hang of all the things you had to do with Lyft, then move on to Uber. Except I didn't feel like moving to Uber because of all the bad publicity they were getting at that time. But one former driver made me promise to try Uber and so I did that first August. I spent one full week's worth of time and discovered that Uber was no longer what that driver remembered. It had changed drastically from his time five years before. All I was given was short five dollar rides and I had to drive a third more rides than Lyft to make up for that. In addition it cost me more money in gas because of more miles driven. So I decided Uber wasn't for me and never drove for them again.
This tanker went airborne and somersaulted right in front of me while driving for Lyft
An interesting development happened at the end of 2017 that changed the dynamic of rideshare for me. I had been driving my minivan during that year since it was my vehicle and I figured that I might make more money hauling people around who wanted a larger ride. But it didn't work out that way as Lyft never signed me up to be in the "Plus" category of ride vehicles. So when the transmission quit working I was without it for over a week as they replaced the transmission under warranty. During that time my wife said I had better use "her" car since we still needed the money. So it took her little Hyundai Elantra out for six days and I thought I would hate it, but the small car drove admirably in the city. The only difference was that other drivers had no fear of the little Hyundai as they did of my much larger minivan. One thing eventually occurred to me, which I should have thought of earlier, was that the little car used half the gas as the minivan. Duh. But I had never really thought about gas mileage, just that I liked driving "my" vehicle. When I got the minivan back I had a discussion with my wife about this piece of information and she grudgingly switched vehicles. Turns out she hated the minivan so I had to get her a small SUV instead. And she was finally happy again.
What would this article be without a requisite spreadsheet?
I've included a spreadsheet of my nearly six years with Lyft, and you can click on it to see it larger and more clearly. You may be surprised at some of the numbers you see. When I signed up there were ads touting $30-$50 dollars an hour when you drove with them. As with many ads the truth is not quite that simple and there tend to be many asterisks around them. The asterisk would have been that they counted the gross income paid to the driver for only the time driving the rider to their destination. If by magic you could drive a passenger (who showed up on time) to their destination, and then be magically beamed over to your next right, you might make $30-$50 over the space of an hour. But they never included the drive to find the rider, or the riding around waiting for the next ride. The most I ever made was $15 an hour after all expenses, during 2020 and 2021, which happened to be during the pandemic. That's when everyone was getting $15 an hour so I felt like we were not getting a fair shake considering our vehicles got destroyed in the process. Take that $15 I made an hour in my best year, then double it since Lyft took half of what I made, brings you to $30 an hour. Take some of the best rides a driver makes when all the planets align and you could easily make $50 or more per hour by their reasoning. But their fantasy world was never our reality. And a further reality was that when you take out the depreciation of the vehicles, which is not included in the spreadsheet, I made zero money and even less than zero a couple years.
My saving grace was that Hyundai Elantra. We had purchased it brand new in 2013 and my wife got to drive it four-and-a-half years putting 38,000 miles on it. We had paid it off by the time we moved to Georgia so there was no car payment and I was getting nearly 30 miles a gallon during the time I drove it. When it reached 235,000 miles it was starting to complain and we sold it off. For anyone contemplating driving rideshare that is the key. You need a small car with good mileage and it really helps if you already have one paid for. I heard many stories along the way of drivers who bought a more expensive car and then wondered why they never had any money. It turned out they forgot to consider all the costs of the vehicle in their rideshare business. If you think the household is paying the car payment and the gas is on the credit card when you buy the gas then you'll think all the money paid out every week is for you to spend. But you would be wrong since so much of the money is actually needed to just pay for the car. I can't tell you how many former Lyft drivers I ended picking up at the car rental place or the car dealer because they had to turn the car back in. I had everything in my favor during my six years and still made only $10-$15 an hour during the best of times. Had I been able to get a full day's driving in every day it could have been better, but a rideshare driver is at the mercy of the market. Some days you can't find a rider for hours and the day is wasted.
In the long run I was glad to have the flexibility to deal with the vagaries of life that we faced. In 2018 we got back on our schedule of taking vacations, one that had started back in 2009 as we became empty-nesters. It helped back then to have a job that offered three weeks paid vacation, but that would not be the case now. As I often said to anyone who would listen, I can take the time off but I won't get paid for it. Sick days, family events, and doing favors now all came out of my pocket. Thankfully 2018 was a good year and I was able to work most all that year. In 2019 we decided to pool our resources with my son and family and buy a house together. You can read about that elsewhere on the blog. This meant getting our house ready to sell, getting it sold, and moving all our stuff back to our son's home and in storage until the house was built. Then I took the last four months of that year starting to work on the basement apartment project.
For 2020 that project continued into May, which means there were eight months spanning two separate years that we had no income. We had to go into our retirement fund to pay the bills. My other big year was in 2021 where Lyft said I made over $82,000! Unfortunately my share of that ended up being just under $33,300 but that was the most I ever made in a year driving with Lyft. Then 2022 became my final year as I was on my third car that only made it to August. Because of Atlanta's emissions testing it needed to be be able to pass emissions, but failed. My auto mechanic could not repair it and I decided to end my time with Lyft. Those last few months were the worst of all my time there, with income much lower than normal, and my son said it wasn't worth driving for that little money. I decided to retire and that was it.
So, was it worth it? You know, much of life happens organically and I have been following the bread crumbs God has placed for me. At least that's the way I look at it. In the grand scheme of things I was able to bring in an income to the family, help our son with his family, visit family around the country more than we ever have, buy a home, sell a home, buy another home with our son, build up our apartment in the home, help on new projects around the home, all the while enjoying our granddaughters every day. While I would not have imagined Lyft to be the vehicle to make that happen, it worked for us. You just never know what will make the difference in your life.
Until next time,
Arktander
(aka David Andreasen)
