Yesterday, I started doing rideshare for Lyft for the first time. For a long time, I was dead set against doing Rideshare because I didn't want weirdos in my new car, to have to wear a mask and to put the added mileage on my vehicle. But things change. The more I thought about it, I decided to at least give it a try. Because I'm on a money saving binge right now, in order to save money you have to make money, so adding Rideshare to my repertoire would only provide me with more choices to do just that. At the very least if I felt it wasn't for me, I'd stick to food delivery and keep Lyft as a backup. I'm waiting on UberX to give their final blessing as well (Which to me makes no sense considering that I already drive for their behalf using Uber Eats. I don't know-maybe their oversaturated in my area?).
I've been waiting on UberX for a few weeks now. It took my only a few days get the approval from Lyft.
First of all, Rideshare for me was a great change of pace from food delivery. As much as I enjoy doing food delivery (And I do), not having to wait on restaurants, strain myself to locate address locations and in some cases, go out of my way to drop off an order at someone's doorstep was a bit of a relief. With Rideshare, I never left my drivers seat.
My first Lyft pickup was actually something I pre-scheduled. My first passenger was waiting for me not even 2 miles away from my house and his drop off spot was even closer than that! An easy $3.50 for barely 10 minutes worth of work. During the ride to drop him off, I received another ping. Now, one thing I noticed is that, while I appreciate the steady flow of pings that Lyft sent me yesterday, I do not appreciate that you can't automatically accept or decline them. They just automatically add it to your queue. What I find annoying about that is that not only can you not automatically decline it, but even if you could, there isn't enough information given to you upfront itself on the ride or the passenger. I personally feel this can be a safety issue for any driver. But before I started taking rides, I equipped my car with a top of the line dash cam that records every activity within it's sight (Audio too) and I purposely didn't start taking rides until I installed it.
So as a Lyft driver, you can't decline an order that's been automatically added to your queue when in the middle of a transport, but you can't unassign yourself after the fact. However, for me personally, I enjoyed staying busy the 2 1/2 hours I worked. I received one ride after the other, all but one was in the same general vicinity of the other and the longer drive compensated me adequately. Overall I made $60 in 2 1/2 hours which comes out to $24 an hour. But when it comes to food delivery, I would have made half that amount in my area. So that's a plus right off the bat.
Sure, I put on significantly more mileage on my vehicle yesterday then I would compared to working food delivery, but crunching the numbers over and over again, I discovered that the compensation for the mileage is indeed profitable. So, having that in mind, I decided it's better to gauge earnings by the hour than by the miles.
In other words, I made more money working less. At least that's what it felt like when I compare it to my food delivery experiences. I make it a personal goal to make a minimum of $30 (Net) each time I'm out, and I doubled that yesterday effortlessly. Even though I complain about how difficult Ridesharing makes it to cherry pick, I think that it's really not necessary if you are concerned about earnings. The only issue I really see with not being able to cherry pick is the issue of driver safety.
Speaking of safety, all of the people I picked up yesterday were great passengers. I had no issues with any of them. They were polite and respectful. I'm not sure yet if I'm ready to (Or even want to) work the bar crowd on the weekends, though I'm probably sure I'll give it a go at some point. I'm thinking I probably should throw down some type of covering on my seats and have some 'Puke Bags' handy just in case. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, I just want to work Rideshare a little bit more to get my feet a little wetter (While putting food delivery on the backburner for now) then I'll venture into the late night scene.
In conclusion then, is rideshare worth it? Yes, IF you have an economical vehicle. I can't imagine doing rideshare in a gas guzzler or older car (Which is probably why Lyft and Uber have high standards with regards to that). In my opinion if your vehicle get's 25 City-32 Highway, then it's a good minimum standard to gauge whether or not it'll be worth your time. It's definitely a different set up than food delivery and there's a slight adjustment to the app platform and a slight learning curve, but it's not at all rocket science to get through. You just have to learn to roll with the punches. In some regards, I like it more than food delivery (I've always had jobs my entire adult life that involved driving-one of the reasons why I love ridesharing and food delivery). Sure, I'll probably sooner or later pick up unpleasant and unruly passengers, but to me the pluses outweigh the minuses with Rideshare and I intend to continue utilizing it as yet another source of income.
Oh! And UberX! What the hell is taking you so long? I already do food delivery for you!
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