My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford • Hacker News Board

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#31

Post by dawnerd » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

gregkerzhner wrote: post #25

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19

Since the driver would have had to dead head back to Chicago, if his expenses were a not unreasonable 0.50 cents per mile, the only profit the driver made was the tip.

If the driver drove 600 miles and his car got 25 miles to the gallon, at $3 a gallon his gas expenses would have only been $72. Of course there are other costs (maintenance, depreciation), but those also exists if you are just driving your car around town, and I think Uber / Lift's whole business model is based on the driver not really taking them into account. If the tip was $100, the driver would have walked away w…

Plus it ends up making it really easy on the driver. Only one passenger to worry about vs driving around the city all day. All the longer Lyfts I've taken, the drivers seem to like them the most. I always feel bad too knowing they'd have to potentially drive back without a fare but I've never had one complain about it.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#32

Post by refurb » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #21

An interesting solution, but I probably would have tried a Penske box truck first. I wouldn't entirely trust a U-Haul to make it the full 300 miles without some kind of a mechanical problem, even when the box is empty except for my suitcase and carry-on. Moving truck rentals are better set-up to do one-way trips than the airport car rentals. Also, you won't get the airport surcharge. Might be a little more expensive…

I never would have thought of this, but it would likely work!

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#33

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

kevin_b_er wrote: post #6

The utter inability to get a one-way rental is quite obnoxious. Also the bit about how he was able to reserve a car, but he wasn't a charter flight. Hertz's utter incompetence on the phone was striking as well from some sort of bizarro catch-22 world.

This doesn't make any sense. When I reserve a rental car at Signature or any other FBO, I may or may not give my tail number, but I'm pretty sure that no one has ever checked. I could have arrived in the front door and rented the car. (No one does this, because the cars are more expensive rented this way than from a typical rental desk as the FBO takes a cut and sometimes the airport adds a cut as well.)

This sounds like Hertz just blew it or Signature didn't want to rent a car one-way to this guy and fobbed it off on Hertz.

[0] - FBO -> Fixed Base Operator, basically a service station for private aircraft (whether charters or not; most are not).

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#34

Post by rococode » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #31

gregkerzhner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the driver drove 600 miles and his car got 25 miles to the gallon, at $3 a gallon his gas expenses would have only been $72. Of course there are other costs (maintenance, depreciation), but those also exists if you are just driving your car around town, and I think Uber / Lift's whole business model is based on the driver not really taking them into account. If the tip was $100, the driver would have walked away w…

Plus it ends up making it really easy on the driver. Only one passenger to worry about vs driving around the city all day. All the longer Lyfts I've taken, the drivers seem to like them the most. I always feel bad too knowing they'd have to potentially drive back without a fare but I've never had one complain about it.

Also, as the author quotes the driver saying, "I like long trips. This could be fun.".

It's a fun story to tell, probably refreshingly different from a usual day, and it seems like he at least made a decent wage, if not as much as usual. So at worst it's a small one-day paycut for a nice memorable day.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#35

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #29

khrbrt wrote: post #24

This is why we need a train system with funding parity to the highway and airport systems. There should be trains leaving constantly, at most every 10 minutes, from Chicago to the east, and frequent, semihourly, trains between neighboring cities along the way. Even if the author could rent a car, having to drive 300 miles is astounding waste of time and mental energy.

I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective. There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when you could do it in 2 hours by plane.

[deleted]

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#36

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #28

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19

Since the driver would have had to dead head back to Chicago, if his expenses were a not unreasonable 0.50 cents per mile, the only profit the driver made was the tip.

Variable expenses on a car you already own are nowhere near $0.50/mile. (The GSA/IRS figure includes apportioned fixed costs, which do not fully apply here, IMO.)

Why not? A Lyft vehicle will depreciate a lot faster than a normal car, and Lyft won't let you drive a junker.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#37

Post by Causality1 » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

>(which hadn’t, in fact, told him the destination, just that it was more than 30 minutes away)

That's disappointing. There are arguments for both sides of whether it should give the exact location but it ought to at least give the rough number of miles and rough travel time.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#38

Post by bobthepanda » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #29

khrbrt wrote: post #24

This is why we need a train system with funding parity to the highway and airport systems. There should be trains leaving constantly, at most every 10 minutes, from Chicago to the east, and frequent, semihourly, trains between neighboring cities along the way. Even if the author could rent a car, having to drive 300 miles is astounding waste of time and mental energy.

I can’t imagine a train leaving every 10 minutes could ever be cost effective. There just aren’t that many people who want to do that trip (8 hours?) when you could do it in 2 hours by plane.

As the crow flies, Chicago to New York is similar to Beijing to Shanghai, which is a long-ish high-speed-rail journey of 4.5 hours. If you have to fight lots of traffic to get to the airport that's not too bad. Probably not enough to drive demand for every ten minutes. The real value of such a network would be an intermediate trip. If Cleveland or Pittsburgh are both two hours away from New York and Chicago and the trip is downtown to downtown, demand for air travel from these mid-size cities to the larger ones would pretty much dry up save for connecting flights. And the strength of rail is that you could have some trains stop multiple times within a metropolitan area, so that you don't have to drive to a centrally located transportation hub the way you have to do with an airport. And if you add rail stops to the airport you don't even need the connecting flights anymore.

You probably wouldn't get the high-speed rail to Bradford OH directly though. The closest you'd get is Dayton OH, but thankfully that's a more doable 30+ mile Lyft ride.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#39

Post by PopeDotNinja » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

gregkerzhner wrote: post #25

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19

Since the driver would have had to dead head back to Chicago, if his expenses were a not unreasonable 0.50 cents per mile, the only profit the driver made was the tip.

If the driver drove 600 miles and his car got 25 miles to the gallon, at $3 a gallon his gas expenses would have only been $72. Of course there are other costs (maintenance, depreciation), but those also exists if you are just driving your car around town, and I think Uber / Lift's whole business model is based on the driver not really taking them into account. If the tip was $100, the driver would have walked away w…

A Lyft specific thing to take into account is that Lyft drivers get a bonus if they hit a certain number of rides per week. One long ride makes it harder to hit that goal.

Re: My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford

#40

Post by kelnos » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #36

sokoloff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Variable expenses on a car you already own are nowhere near $0.50/mile. (The GSA/IRS figure includes apportioned fixed costs, which do not fully apply here, IMO.)

Why not? A Lyft vehicle will depreciate a lot faster than a normal car, and Lyft won't let you drive a junker.

A Lyft vehicle will depreciate, per mile, at nearly exactly the same rate any other car would.