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by astrosi 3108 days ago
> In the early days I knew Uber drivers who use to be cab drivers who claimed they made a ton more money than with their cab company. I doubt that's as true anymore

As (one piece of anecdotal) evidence, I was talking with a guy that drives for both Uber and a local cab company. The cab company pays more, but he still prefers driving for Uber as he is put in far fewer sketchy situations by them.
2 comments
yomly 3108 days ago
From my Uber conversations I was able to piece together that one of the sweetest benefits was that you could be paid instantly for your work, equivalent to cash in hand rather than waiting up to a month for a payslip.

The other was that 2-3 years ago one Uber driver claimed he was grossing up to £7000 a month working 16 hours a day 7 days a week.

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fstuff 3108 days ago
Yea I had uber driver tell me he cleared 100k maybe 3 or 4 years ago. Back then uber only took a 15% i think. They also paid crazy incentives to lure drives. Like earn 1-2k for x amount of rides in a certain period. Now that they have a sufficient amount of drivers they drastically cut the incentives. Google the protests in India by their drivers after incentive pay was cut. I think most drivers were making more from incentives than fares.
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ghaff 3108 days ago
I had a Lyft driver tell me exactly the same thing a few weeks ago. They drove for both Lyft and Uber as well as a more conventional taxi job of some sort. And they specifically called out the paid instantly as a big advantage for Uber/Lyft.
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majewsky 3108 days ago
Define "sketchy situations", please.
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BrandonM 3108 days ago
Cab driving is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US.
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majewsky 3108 days ago
That's not helping. I live in Germany, and I have a friend who worked as a cab driver on the side for a year. May only be a small sample, but I didn't hear any dangerous or sketchy stories from them. But then again, that's Germany, which has (among other things) gun laws that are not a joke.
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ecnahc515 3108 days ago
Cab drivers are frequented targets of robbery and also typically pick up people late at night and when there’s less people around to witness.
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