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Comment by rmoriz | Hacker News Reader

I watch some YouTube channels of delivery people (usually on bikes) just out of curiosity.

Most of them do it only part-time and see it as a work-out gamification. Looks like during the pandemic many restaurants also closed delivery options and the orders dropped according to some YouTubers in the UK.

The most important aspect: It does not scale. It's very hard to earn a living outside of the "surge pricing" rush hours.

In some regions "surge pricing" is not available or delivery platforms require full time with a fixed but low salary (e.g. in Germany).

Here's a list of YouTubers doing bike deliveries:

- Chicago, IL (US) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4hE0AhisGkRscjxSMudn-Q/vid...

- London (UK) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCruD32HAzsb9UN4KpOcSxZg/vid...

- Los Angeles, CA (US) https://www.youtube.com/user/impulsivewilliam/videos

- Bristol (UK) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOtaF2WKa0wNysH4ZRH8-w/vid...

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I think the bike delivery labor market is super different from the delivery driver market. You are much more likely to find people "gamifying" it as bikers than as drivers.

Is it? According to the videos, they outperform delivery drivers bound to cars. Sure, with a car you can easily work in rain, cold, long distance deliveries. But usually it does not pay out to commit full time or to a specific, expensive vehicle.

If one does plan to deliver (bulky) non time-critical items, payment drops significantly (almost no tips, fixed fee for each parcel).

Are most uber eats drivers buying cars in order to drive uber? That was not my understanding.

For Uber 'transit' drivers, anecdotally people bought cars just for uber. My neighbor bought a Toyota Corolla as a 2nd car for Uber, and drove that car for uber and ride-sharing exclusively for 200K+ miles in Bay Area, 200+ miles/night for years. Exclusive use for ride-sharing simplified business expense tax deduction.

The vast majority almost certainly do not buy a car just for delivery-gig work, but they are still putting a lot of wear on their vehicles. It's still important to be conscious of those costs and they should be factored in, even if the the car was boughtfor some other reason.

They wear it down and they need to "make it up on volume" (they don't).

As I wrote earlier, payment is not linear. It depends on the region, day and time. One can make a lot of money in 1-2 hours on some evening, but also sit idle for another 8 hrs in a parked car waiting for another order. (to my knowledge, one has to be booked into the uber eats app all the time and broadcasting the current location. So one is encouraged to still hunt/stay next to interesting restaurants, usually big chain stores like Mc Donalds, Starbucks. IMHO it's not a plausible add-on business for regular Uber/taxi drivers or other gig economy jobs like harvesting electric scooters)

Let's say one can make 40$ in 1 hour but 50$ in 9 hours.

The one profitable hour is probably within the evening rush hour, lot of traffic, down-town, short distances. 0 parking lots.

The other 8 hours are past midnight, in the morning or between noon and evening. Longer distances (=>less drivers, less orders => bigger coverage => no surge pricing).

Overhead costs stay the same.

No, but they are reducing the useful life of their cars by using it more than "normal", which will lead to them buying another car normal than if they were not doing Uber.

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