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What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

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Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#521

Post by Reedx »

dsr_ wrote: post #477
swiley wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree you absolutely have to watch what you're doing and count miles and whatnot, but having the option is a powerful thing (even when you're making negative money) and I wonder if regulating it too aggressively might take that away.

I am 100% ok with using regulation to take away the ability to earn negative money.

Obviously. But are you going to do that so neatly it doesn't trigger unintended consequences? Which have the potential to make things worse.

It's easy to say "let's do X to make Y better", but it's not that simple with any real world complex system.

Look at bill AB5 for an example currently in progress and ostensibly about helping gig workers. Here's a sobering sample of second order effects:

https://twitter.com/ms_andiloveall/status/120670581104242278...

https://twitter.com/delightedbite/status/1216834042881949697

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#523

Post by fulldecent2 »

Regarding IRS Standard Mileage Rates.

There are different costs to insure a vehicle based on whether it is "personal" use or "business" use. The IRS rate does not distinguish these. Is there any documentation on which scenario IRS is assuming this applies to?

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#524

Post by beatgammit »

fulldecent2 wrote: post #523

Regarding IRS Standard Mileage Rates. There are different costs to insure a vehicle based on whether it is "personal" use or "business" use. The IRS rate does not distinguish these. Is there any documentation on which scenario IRS is assuming this applies to?

I don't know, but I ran my own numbers for my car and ended up with $0.25/mile. I counted:

- insurance cost of second car (liability only) - depreciation - gas - maintenance and estimated repairs

This was for my car, which was ~5 years old when I got it and is very fuel efficient. I found that depreciation makes up more than half of the total cost, so a newer car would likely have more depreciation than an older car. I got mine for $10k, and in 5 years, it's worth $5k. I think that's pretty common, regardless of the age of the car, so a ~$20k car would depreciate to ~$10k in 5 years. Also, newer cars are more expensive to insure, and taking a car to a shop is more expensive than doing it yourself.

So $0.50 sounds reasonable for the average, relatively new car that is taken to the shop for maintenance and repairs.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#525

Post by beatgammit »

fulldecent2 wrote: post #523

Regarding IRS Standard Mileage Rates. There are different costs to insure a vehicle based on whether it is "personal" use or "business" use. The IRS rate does not distinguish these. Is there any documentation on which scenario IRS is assuming this applies to?

I don't know, but I ran my own numbers for my car and ended up with $0.25/mile. I counted:

- insurance cost of second car (liability only) - depreciation - gas - maintenance and estimated repairs

This was for my car, which was ~5 years old when I got it and is very fuel efficient. I found that depreciation makes up more than half of the total cost, so a newer car would likely have more depreciation than an older car. I got mine for $10k, and in 5 years, it's worth $5k. I think that's pretty common, regardless of the age of the car, so a ~$20k car would depreciate to ~$10k in 5 years. Also, newer cars are more expensive to insure, and taking a car to a shop is more expensive than doing it yourself.

So $0.50/mile sounds reasonable for the average, relatively new car that is taken to the shop for maintenance and repairs. Insurance was a pretty small item in my calculations, so I doubt the difference between corporate and personal insurance would change the figure that much.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#526

Post by arcticbull »

PanosJee wrote: post #235
arcticbull wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the idea is that you operate at a loss until the economies of scale catch up and you begin being profitable. Starting with the low price let’s you maximize growth, and you make it up on the back end. That’s not a problematic system. What is problematic is if there are no economies of scale.

Economy of scale applies to production think chips & screens. What economy of scale can DoorDash achieve? Persuade everyone to be paid below fair wage? Push the margin of restaurants down?

I'm not saying DoorDash, I'm saying the business model, which is what the poster was rallying against. I've no particular opinion that DoorDash will achieve an economy of scale.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#527

Post by darawk »

jiofih wrote: post #217
darawk wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason to complain when you're the one picking up the unit loss, though. Might as well take it while you can.

Unless you care about not fucking over your fellow citizens to get free food deliveries?

If I offer you $2 to deliver a piece of food, have I fucked you over? Where exactly in the pipeline does the "fucking over" happen?

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#528

Post by darawk »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #485
darawk wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These businesses are already unprofitable. So you probably couldn't have another DoorDash that pays its workers more. I suppose you could argue that some restaurants might have their own delivery services, or something. But that'd be tiny in scale compared to what these services are doing.

A tiny delivery service based around a local group of restaurants could easily have a fairer distribution of income and time consumed. Since the delivery service operates from about five or ten shops there's no "drive 10 miles to the pickup". Since the service is basically local there's no "take money from the poor and give it to the richer" - even the profits that go to the capitalists is still going to local member…

Right, but as I said, the scale of these local delivery services is much smaller. Even if we accept your premise that each local job would be better (which i'm not sure is true, but i'll grant you it), there would be far fewer of them. It's not obvious to me which is better: A lot of bad jobs, or a few good ones?

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#529

Post by jiofih »

darawk wrote: post #527
jiofih wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you care about not fucking over your fellow citizens to get free food deliveries?

If I offer you $2 to deliver a piece of food, have I fucked you over? Where exactly in the pipeline does the "fucking over" happen?

In the part where I have to deliver it 10km away ($3 in gas round way), and if I reject your kind offer you’ll blacklist me from ever being offered a job again?

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#530

Post by nybble41 »

jdmichal wrote: post #436
boh wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber does not pay drivers. Passengers pay drivers who pay Uber to use their platform (otherwise they'd be employees which Uber is fighting to avoid).

That may be how Uber wants to phrase it, but I'm pretty sure the thing that shows up on my CC statement is Uber, not the driver's name... IE, if they're claiming that, it's a legal fiction. Whether that legal fiction would stand in court is up to the court.

> I'm pretty sure the thing that shows up on my CC statement is Uber, not the driver's name

That just means that Uber is acting as a payment processor for the driver. If you buy an app or make an in-app purchase in the Google Play Store then Google's name appears on your statement; that doesn't make the app publisher Google's employee. The same goes for non-app vendors using Google Pay or similar services such as PayPal. The point of Uber is to connect riders with drivers and provide standard systems for payment and review—the actual transportation is up to the users.

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