Vs. 0 dollars if these services did not exist.
Exactly. Friend wanted spending $ to europe. Became uber driver. Within one week had extra spending $.
Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
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Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#12“Of the five sources of cost estimated per mile (Insurance, Maintenance, Repairs, Fuel and Depreciation), approximately 40% of costs are attributable to Insurance, Maintenance and Repairs, 40% to fuel expenses, and 20% to depreciation.” I don’t understand how insurance is a relevant cost. Insurance is required to legally operate a vehicle - this is something that they must have for their personal vehicle regardless o…
Insurance for driving an Uber/Lyft is much more expensive than regular insurance, because it's considered commercial. In previous years, people could get away with not having it, but today every insurance company asks specifically if this vehicle was ever used in a driving service and will deny claims if it was found to be.
Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#13Vs. 0 dollars if these services did not exist.
Are you implying that if they were not earning $3/hr, they would use those hours to sit around and mope? The point is that $3/hr is a very small reward for your time when compared to pretty much any other use of that hour(i.e. flipping burgers, bagging groceries, making coffee is 3x as lucrative)
Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#14“Of the five sources of cost estimated per mile (Insurance, Maintenance, Repairs, Fuel and Depreciation), approximately 40% of costs are attributable to Insurance, Maintenance and Repairs, 40% to fuel expenses, and 20% to depreciation.” I don’t understand how insurance is a relevant cost. Insurance is required to legally operate a vehicle - this is something that they must have for their personal vehicle regardless o…
I think the economics of driving marginally for Uber/Lyft (when you already own a car and pay insurance) are much better than driving exclusively for Uber/Lyft (when you have the bear the full cost of the auto purchase and insurance against your Uber/Lyft earnings).
Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#15It does seem that there are glaring flaws in the methodology: 1) They use average numbers for vehicle expenses which are going to be much higher than what professional drivers with strong profit incentives are going to pay 2) They report on a sampled average of all Uber drivers while acknowledging that the vast majority of these are part time and temporary employees who are not really optimizing their profits. If the…
The results also seem to defy common sense.
While it's relatively easy to believe that the income from driving for Uber and Lyft is lower than most people imagine and it is relatively easy to believe that a small fraction of drivers are actually losing money by driving, it is difficult to believe that that fully 1/3 of drivers are continuing to impoverish themselves.
I'm not saying it's not true, but without supporting details it seems clickbaity.
Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#16Discussed 12hrs ago:
Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#17“Of the five sources of cost estimated per mile (Insurance, Maintenance, Repairs, Fuel and Depreciation), approximately 40% of costs are attributable to Insurance, Maintenance and Repairs, 40% to fuel expenses, and 20% to depreciation.” I don’t understand how insurance is a relevant cost. Insurance is required to legally operate a vehicle - this is something that they must have for their personal vehicle regardless o…
Depending on where you’re from, the insurance premium will change depending on mileage, commercial use of the car, etc
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Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#18What is the incentive to drive for one of these services at that price point? Couldn't these people make more money (and not have to replace their car in five years) flipping burgers or the like?
Are drivers misled into believing they will make more? Is the cost per mile intentionally hidden from them?
Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#19It does seem that there are glaring flaws in the methodology: 1) They use average numbers for vehicle expenses which are going to be much higher than what professional drivers with strong profit incentives are going to pay 2) They report on a sampled average of all Uber drivers while acknowledging that the vast majority of these are part time and temporary employees who are not really optimizing their profits. If the…
I’m not sure what I would do differently - what would you have done to address those two problems? Using averages and talking to a representative sample of all drivers seems like a standard approach.
Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says
#20'If drivers are fully able to capitalize on these losses for tax purposes, 73.5% of an estimated U.S. market $4.8B in annual ride-hailing driver profit is untaxed," they add.' So they might be making money, but only by avoiding taxes. Great. /s
Deducting business expenses from revenue is not 'avoiding taxes', it's what all businesses do. Businesses are taxed on net profit, not on revenue. This is a feature, not a bug.
They sound confused about profit vs revenue, that $4.8B figure is not really 'profit' if it doesn't account for operating costs and depreciation of the car.
Very few businesses would be profitable if they were taxed on revenue rather than net profit.