[hammock]

Uber has been maintaining fleets for a long time. Don't have a source off the top of my head but I know from talking to lots of drivers here in Chicago that they regularly take their top-rated drivers and offer them a (company-owned or leased) SUV or town car to drive as a part of Uber Black.

[dsl]

There are companies that get a contract rate with Uber to say, have X cars on the road 24/7. They in turn hire enough drivers to keep the cars moving all the time.

I'm fascinated by how logistics work, so I was asking my Uber driver a bunch of questions. He explained the above to me and said he was referred over to one of these companies because he didn't (or couldn't) buy his own car at the time.

[seanmccann]

This is not true. They perhaps contract with them to set minimums, but Uber does not own the cars.