[ashelmire]

I'm with you, this study isn't worth a damn. I have friends that make $200-300 per night (in maybe 8 hours) driving for Uber (after Uber's cut). They'll use, what, $20-30 worth of gas in that time? And the rest of the costs (insurance and vehicle cost/wear namely) are negligible (tax deduction does not indicate real cost). Driving revenue in cities is way off the right of their chart. Seems like just another contribution to bunk "science".

[pwinnski]

That people think vehicle wear costs are negligible is how Uber manages to convince people to drive for such low wages. People are bad at math.

[ashelmire]

If someone is making $20/hr net income driving at night (pretty average for big cities according to this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s08BdVqCgrZWZkV0ZfZnhGUGc...), do you really think the wear costs are more than a few bucks per hour?

[wgerard]

Usage costs for cars are usually tagged at around $0.50-$0.60 per mile [1]. Looking around, seems like the average 8 hour uber driver is putting on about 100-200 miles per shift [2].

So assuming 150 miles per 8 hours, the average uber driver is paying about $11/hr in fuel and depreciation costs.

So the net income after that would probably be more like $9/hr.

1: http://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/

2: https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-full-time-driver...

[ashelmire]

The analysis I linked above calculated the net earnings after all expenses as being ~$13/hr on average (and included all registration and insurance costs as well as the AAA figure in expenses). That would mean higher hourly earnings for part-time drivers in big cities (who often only work Friday/Saturday nights).

[wgerard]

Hm interesting, the report suggests that 8-hour drivers are doing more like 60 miles per shift (($4.79 * 8) / 0.6).

Curious what the huge discrepancy is there (between self-reported and gathered data), though without being able to see the underlying data I guess we can't tell.