[gingerbread-man]

Out of curiousity, what do you think could have caused the driver to go bankrupt? It sounds like he bought an expensive, UberBlack-eligible car, intending to pay for it with his fares, but the fares were reduced and now he can't make the payments. How common is that scenario amongst Uber drivers?

If Uber drivers are, in fact, independent contractors, then they have some responsibility to determine whether the business they're engaged in is a profitable one, and to judge the risk involved. It seems like it would be very easy to underestimate both the costs and the risk.

[dnautics]

it's not just the fare reduction, it's also the loss in business as customers stopped using UberBlack in favor of UberX.

Having driven for Uber and Lyft for a year and a half (even during the "good years") - the rate of new hires was most definitely a major concern and there were definitely rocky times. I was lucky to be able to mitigate this by moving to San Francisco from San Diego. While in San Diego I saw my take go down from ~$1200/wk to something like $800/wk, then back up to $1200-1600/wk when I moved to SF, and then back down to about $800 by the time I finished.

Personally I approached it as an exercise in entrepreneurship, a deep study in the dynamics of real-time economics, and an opportunity to vastly improve my "people skills" in addition to making more money than a PhD postdoc in biochemistry... So a success in all fronts, personally, but also I knew when to quit.

[gingerbread-man]

Recognizing that you may not have been the prototypical Uber driver, I'm curious what kind of research/ evaluation (if any) you did before/ while driving for them re: the financial prospect. How much did you "take home" after gas, repairs, taxes, etc...? Did you have an estimate of that beforehand?

My suspicion is that many people who begin driving for Uber overestimate their net earnings and underestimate their deferred expenses e.g. vehicle depreciation and maintenance. If Uber knows this and is taking advantage (with new-driver bonuses, etc...), they're essentially a multi-level marketing company.

[dnautics]

I didn't do a formal estimate beforehand. by feeling, I underestimated my net earnings. Take home was probably somewhere in the 50/yr range. Keep in mind that I didn't "buy a new car" - I drove with my own car that I'd had since 2010. The whole thing put on about 100k miles; but the car is still running more or less fine, a year and a half later.