"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
05/10/2019 at 12:06 • Filed to: None
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"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
05/10/2019 at 12:06 • Filed to: None | 0
| 11 |
One Amazon Flex driver in Cleveland, Chris Miller, 63, told me that
though he makes $18 an hour, he spends about 40 cents per mile he drives
on expenses like gas and car repairs. He bought his car, used, with
40,000 miles on it. It now has 140,000, after driving for Flex for seven
months, and Uber and Lyft before that. That means he’s incurred about
$40,000 in expenses—things he didn’t think about initially, like
changing the oil more frequently and replacing headlights and
taillights. He made slightly less than $10 an hour driving for Uber, he
told me, once he factored in these expenses; Flex pays a bit better.
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Ash78, voting early and often
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/10/2019 at 12:17 |
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he spends about 40 cents per mile he drives on expenses like gas and car repairs
Car ownership FAIL.
All-in, including depreciation , you should be looking at under 50 cents/mile. Direct operating costs should be under 25 cents/mile (repairs, maintenance, fuel, insurance). This is fishy.
(
EDIT: Capital expense — ie, purchase — is not typically
considered an operating cost of a vehicle
. Only the
interest piece
if you finance.)
ttyymmnn
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/10/2019 at 12:23 |
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Welcome to the gig economy. Great for Amazon, Uber, Bird, Instacart, etc, but horrible for the people who actually do the work. The electric scooter company Bird pays giggers $5 for each scooter they collect and charge. You might thing, “Wow, I can make $100 in just a few minutes.” But it’s not that easy. Lots of miles on your car, you use your electricity to charge the things, scooters may be inaccessible so you have wasted your drive, etc. I suppose if you really hustle, you might make a few bucks. And with Uber, you are a contractor, not an employee, so there are no benefits paid, while the execs rake in high salaries. It will be interesting to see just how long this gig economy model lasts.
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Ash78, voting early and often
> ttyymmnn
05/10/2019 at 12:36 |
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Reminds me of all the people who jumped on Cryptocurrency mining before realizing how much electricity it required...and by the time people got up and running, there were millions of people in China and India doing the same.
At least with Amazon, Lyft, Uber, Bird, etc, there’s a physical product and a locational advantage to being in person. That’s at least some small defense against offshoring (like with crypto). But it’s far from perfect because of the greedy companies who have no real desire to keep the peace with their workers. Very shortsighted.
DipodomysDeserti
> Ash78, voting early and often
05/10/2019 at 12:40 |
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Where are you getting your figures from? AAA estimates the average cost per mile at around $0.60 per mile for 2018, and that’s for people using their cars just to commute, not as commercial vehicles. Also, that guy is in SF which is going to have a higher cost per mile than most other places in the US. If anything, $0.40 per mile seems low for a guy delivering packages by vehicle in SF.
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Ash78, voting early and often
> DipodomysDeserti
05/10/2019 at 12:42 |
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I used to help manage car fleets for a company, but also using my own 10+ years of data collection for our past 4 cars.
Those numbers in the link are likely “Year 1" figures, not lifetime. A new car is going to kill you with depreciation for a couple years, so I’m working off the assumption that most gig drivers aren’t in a brand new vehicle, then moaning about their operating costs
. Or I hope not...
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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Ash78, voting early and often
05/10/2019 at 12:51 |
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The point is, on a good shift, Dude earns maybe $18/hr. I’ve been driving and maintaining cars for 30+ years and I am in
no
way some kind of big expert, though I consider myself to be quite proficient and even my ‘91 Corolla Base with 235k miles on it still has an annoying propensity to wear out brakes and leak oil, but it’s about as low a per-mile operating cost as you could want and I can’t see squandering the wear and tear on something like Amazon Flex. And all of this talk we’re having about cost to operate and maintain doesn’t take into account wear and tear on doors and latches and seats... So maybe my Corolla costs $0.20/mile to operate. I really have no idea.
A net income of $10/hr seems completely reasonable to me.
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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> DipodomysDeserti
05/10/2019 at 12:53 |
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And the guy with the new Corolla with the CVT who’s driving Uber? Cha-ching! Granted, I am much more knowledgeable than the average bear, though there’re folks who know much more than I do, but when I ride in one of those Uber cars, I’m knowing the numbers can’t be good for the owner.
So if I ever did drive Uber, I’d use one of their cars.
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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Ash78, voting early and often
05/10/2019 at 12:56 |
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I installed Dish Network dishes 20 years ago when they first came on the scene. They paid around $100 per dish set up and the setup took several hours and I had to provide coax cable and connectors and once the thing got rolling, Dish started ratcheting back what they were paying. It was an interesting experience, but I’m done with that.
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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> ttyymmnn
05/10/2019 at 12:58 |
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The Byrd thing sounds interesting. If you have an old van, like I do, take out the seats, and it might be interesting. But using my own electrons to charge them? That’s a sketchy twist.
When we were in San Diego last time, we saw a guy driving around in a convertible Beemer, top down, throwing scooters into the back of his car. Ew.
TaskRabbit might be something to look into as well, but I’ve got plenty to keep me busy and some of that brings in gas money.
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DipodomysDeserti
> Ash78, voting early and often
05/10/2019 at 13:25 |
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AAA is going to have better data than either of us, and they don’t have any incentive to make car ownership seem more expensive than it is.
T he guy in the story bought his car used and his costs were 30% lower than AAA’s year one estimates. Doesn’t seem fishy at all.
I managed a mailhouse, print shop and envelope company for close to a decade with three delivery vehicles and $0.40/mile seems pretty reasonable, especially considering SF fuel prices and traffic. We paid our employee s around $0.30/mile if they had to use their own vehicles for a delivery.
This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja:
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/10/2019 at 15:35 |
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I’d imagine you could write the electric bill off at the end o f the year, but I'm no CPA.