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The Drivers Cooperative

drivers.coop

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#121

Post by [deleted] »

vmateixeira wrote: post #108
aaxa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same with Just-Eat. In Denmark, I know they have a markup up to 15%, even though they have a lot of competition. So honestly, I am a bit sceptical if we will see a much lower markup. One might hope though.

In the UK, JustEat takes 30% of the order, same as UberEats, with 0 liability - if something goes wrong with the order, including problems with delivery time, driver taking a nibble, the restaurant just doesn't get paid. Deliveroo is a bit greedier and takes 35%. It's definitely not the lack of competition... it's just that the competition doesn't behave much better compared to them.

[deleted]

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#122

Post by yunohn »

vmateixeira wrote: post #108
aaxa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same with Just-Eat. In Denmark, I know they have a markup up to 15%, even though they have a lot of competition. So honestly, I am a bit sceptical if we will see a much lower markup. One might hope though.

In the UK, JustEat takes 30% of the order, same as UberEats, with 0 liability - if something goes wrong with the order, including problems with delivery time, driver taking a nibble, the restaurant just doesn't get paid. Deliveroo is a bit greedier and takes 35%. It's definitely not the lack of competition... it's just that the competition doesn't behave much better compared to them.

Interesting to hear that Just-Eat acts this way; Takeaway (Thuisbezorgd) has similar practices in NL.

They take no liability on anything (delivery delays, food problems, missing items, etc). They have no customer care number, and take days to respond to emails. If anything goes wrong, they make you call the restaurant, and of course they redirect you back to Tkwy. In the end, you will receive no refund, none of the missing food, and have waited 1-3hrs for an order that should've taken It's a horrible experience, but they get away with it because they have a near-monopoly. Uber Eats & Deliveroo have <25% of the restaurants on Tkwy.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#123

Post by agloeregrets »

nabla9 wrote: post #92
jwr wrote: post #79

This is doubly ironic and amusing if you think about how Uber/Lyft were "disrupting" the existing markets. Well, market forces are at work: if Uber/Lyft provide no additional value over drivers' work (and treat drivers as disposable assets), they themselves will get "disrupted" and the drivers will get rid of them :-) Happy to see this happening, and I wonder how this will develop.

App provides value, global brand has some value. There is absolutely no reason for ride hailing app to get 10-20% markup per ride. I suspect that after the competition really kicks in, Uber/Lyft must settle for 1-3% per ride or less.

This. I never got how Uber was still unprofitable for so long. Sure you have a bunch of Silicon Valley salaries to pay but realistically speaking, one could build an Uber/Lyft for under $1M and basically can operate with two or so devs fixing issues. Yet, they are blowing hundreds of millions of dollars yearly all over the place while shorting drivers who can’t make a living wage and are basically trading vehicle expenses down the road for payment today.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#124

Post by agloeregrets »

tomjen3 wrote: post #90
jwr wrote: post #79

This is doubly ironic and amusing if you think about how Uber/Lyft were "disrupting" the existing markets. Well, market forces are at work: if Uber/Lyft provide no additional value over drivers' work (and treat drivers as disposable assets), they themselves will get "disrupted" and the drivers will get rid of them :-) Happy to see this happening, and I wonder how this will develop.

Uber provides discoverbility, ratings and a feeling of safety.

Ratings is an easy to use and game feature (fun fact often harmful to drivers of color) that costs almost nothing to build. The feeling of safety was flatter Uber had a bunch of rapes that forced them to pretend that they cared, spend is very small on it.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#125

Post by maxerickson »

jasode wrote: post #118
tzs wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overwhelming vast majority of reasons I've heard people give for preferring Uber/Lyft over regular taxis are (1) regular taxis could not be summoned via an app or web page, instead requiring a phone call or curbside hailing, and (2) their credit card terminals were often broken so that you had to pay cash. Both of those specific problem are solvable for most rides without going anywhere near the level of complexi…

>For most US cities you could cover the payment needs of most riders with something from Square installed in the car. That's a good example of driver-centric thinking instead of holistic thinking that considers the paying passengers . Consider: what if the customers/passengers actually prefer the convenience of not having to mess with an extra payment transaction step before exiting the car?!? With service like Uber,…

I mean, I take your point, but I'd choose a higher friction payment every single time I thought it favored the driver vs Uber or Lyft or whatever. It's the driver providing the valuable part of the the service, not the wholistic user experience in the app.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#126

Post by input_sh »

aaxa wrote: post #95
nabla9 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App provides value, global brand has some value. There is absolutely no reason for ride hailing app to get 10-20% markup per ride. I suspect that after the competition really kicks in, Uber/Lyft must settle for 1-3% per ride or less.

You could say the same with Just-Eat. In Denmark, I know they have a markup up to 15%, even though they have a lot of competition. So honestly, I am a bit sceptical if we will see a much lower markup. One might hope though.

Huh, where I'm from delivery companies charge by the distance, approximately 0,8 euros per kilometer. But that's definitely due to competition, there's like 6-7 competitors in a city with about 400k people.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#127

Post by tacostakohashi »

psoots wrote: post #85
jasode wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ride-hailing apps always seemed like a model that was extremely conducive to a cooperative, worker-owned model. It's only the surface-level of an ride-hailing app that seems easy for worker-owned cooperatives to create. In reality, the extra expensive programming dollars required to tame the hidden complexity so that the app can present a seamless experience to the customers/passengers is a huge factor that works ag…

You're making some assumptions. Why can't programmers be workers in the coop and be part of the equation? Why can't forms of capital available to other startups be available to coops?

> Why can't forms of capital available to other startups be available to coops?

... because then it wouldn't be a co-op. The whole point of a co-op is that it is owned by the workers/producers/consumers instead of equity investors.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#128

Post by m_ke »

beaconstudios wrote: post #117
m_ke wrote: post #102

Here’s a recent interview with them https://youtu.be/VykTBPKwYnA I’ve been considering starting a software coop to build open source versions of these middleman gig work services for a while. Would anyone on here be interested in joining one? With so many well paid engineers I’m also surprised that there’s not more coop based tech startups in the states.

Developers are well paid in the US because of VC and monopoly backed business models. To go coop is to abandon those options, one explicitly and one implicitly.

What I meant by well paid was that most engineers who spent a few years at FAANGs have 6 figures in savings and can use some of that capital to kickstart a cooperative without needing venture funding.

A coop could absolutely become a monopoly in a market. The reason developers in the US make so much is because they live in a large wealthy English speaking country that’s the launching point for most ventures before global expansion.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#129

Post by clarkevans »

throwaway2a02 wrote: post #50

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anym…

> What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few worker

I've not seen this to be the common case. It depends upon the organizational structure. At one extreme, a cooperative can be seen as a limited partnership; but at the other, membership is open to those who meet reasonable criteria.

In cooperatives, there is often a difference between investor shares (if any) and voting shares. Early owners might have some investor shares (notes to cover capital investment) but, their voting shares are often on-par with new members.

In some states, cooperatives are kinds of non-profits; others, such as Colorado, have their own statutory basis that permit investor shares (rather than only allowing notes at a fixed, say, 5% interest rate). The new Illinois worker-cooperative statute permits up-to 50% investor shares, for example -- just short of controlling interest.

Also, it's a bit of semantics here: I'd call this a platform cooperative rather than a worker cooperative.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#130

Post by drrotmos »

nabla9 wrote: post #92
jwr wrote: post #79

This is doubly ironic and amusing if you think about how Uber/Lyft were "disrupting" the existing markets. Well, market forces are at work: if Uber/Lyft provide no additional value over drivers' work (and treat drivers as disposable assets), they themselves will get "disrupted" and the drivers will get rid of them :-) Happy to see this happening, and I wonder how this will develop.

App provides value, global brand has some value. There is absolutely no reason for ride hailing app to get 10-20% markup per ride. I suspect that after the competition really kicks in, Uber/Lyft must settle for 1-3% per ride or less.

Global brand definitely provides value. Whenever I'm traveling (or rather, back when travel was possible) I always use Uber because I know that I can pay buy credit card (rather than cash) and if the driver takes a huge detour or some other common taxi scam, I can just contact Uber's customer service, and they'll refund me.
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