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Comment by zepton | Hacker News Reader

DoorDash is being misleading when they imply that NYC required a minimum wage of $29.93/hr for delivery workers. DoorDash could comply with the bylaw by paying its contractors $17.96/hr for the full time they work (including time waiting for orders). But DoorDash instead chose to use the "Alternate Method" which has a 67% higher minimum wage, but only for the time the contractor is actively delivering food (not standby time). (full text of bylaw: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYC...)

The implication that Dashers earn 2x more per hour than "other workers" earning minimum wage is false, since "other workers" are paid for 100% of the time they work, including when they are waiting for work.

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The other part of this is that Doordash workers need to pay for their own delivery vehicles (gas, upkeep etc.) which factors into the actual wages they get. They are not making significantly more than minimum wage workers.

The delivery vehicles being used in NYC are almost entirely e-bikes, so the expense is not as big as you might be thinking. It's certainly nothing close to the cost to gig workers for running an Uber car.

So does it include health and sick pay for when you get injured or older and you’re less mobile? Cycling all the time could be way more taxing than driving.

Of course it doesn't include any of that. It's "independent contracting".

Though keep in mind they're throttle e-bikes, so there isn't a lot of actual pedaling going on. And as far as accumulated workplace injuries go, merely riding a bike is pretty easy compared to a lot of blue collar work. No, I think what'd get you here is the crashes.

I wouldn’t discount the long term health costs of breathing exhaust fumes all day either. Even as a recreational cyclist or occasional commuter in NYC I noticed it.

Tbh... It's likely still has a better balance then your average office job where you are sitting all day every day.

The act of cycling shouldn't be any sort of problem. The accidents though are another story. The e-bikes are as silent as regular bikes but much faster.

Sitting in a chair in a metal box is definitely worse for health than cycling all day

Than (e-)biking on roads alongside metal boxes? This ain’t biking through the woods. Just think about the pollution and chance of getting hit.

How often are people on e bikes getting mowed down where you live? What kind of hellscape do you live in where cycling causes you to ingest more polluted air than sitting in your bioweapon-proof, hermetically-sealed, fart-fermenting 3000 kilo Tesla? Sheesh

Are you joking that everywhere is a hellscape, or did you make a typo, or what?

Because anywhere that has any air pollution, you'll ingest more when you're breathing harder and have no air filter.

I’m kinda joking, but I genuinely feel bad for people who live in places where cycling makes their health worse because of the air pollution. I had to deal with that situation a few summers ago when wildfires caused ash to rain from the sky and made the air quality shit. It felt like a low-level hell.

I'm not sure if you noticed that the GP wrote "e-bike". Yes, even riding a e-bike would be more taxing than driving for many, I would say that an e-bike is much less taxing than a regular bicycle.

I'd estimate in NYC that 90% of deliveries I get are made by bicycle, so their average expenses are comparatively very low.

I’ve even had Uber eats deliveries from places close-by where it said “X is walking”.

Though the significant risk to life and limb from working on a bicycle has to be accounted for.

What is the hourly rate for bicycle couriers in NYC? They are frequently used in the legal and real estate industry to quickly move physical documents between offices.

Can they not offset these expenses against their tax? If you’re running a business out of your vehicle, the cost of operating that vehicle is the cost of running the business which should be treated like that by the tax code.

The marginal federal tax rate for someone making $50,000 is 12%. So every dollar spent on gas (or whatever other deductible expenses) would lower federal taxes by 12 cents.

But I'd be surprised if many drivers grossed more than $50K/year. If they earn less, the tax benefit of deductibility is even smaller.

Personal income tax and the tax treatment of businesses are different - as a business, you’d earn some revenue from doordash while showing some expense (like gas, insurance premiums, and your salary). Your company would then pay tax on the net and you’d pay tax on the salary you give yourself from your company.

Not a CPA so I’m pretty sure I’m oversimplifying this and there are lower bounds I don’t know about which prevent most gig workers from operating like this.

I think we're in agreement, because I'm assuming serious DoorDash drivers file Schedule C, which is the practical equivalent of dividing your life into personal and business sections but without the paperwork (or benefit) of incorporating.

My comment was motivated by OP's question asking whether it was possible to "offset these expenses against their tax" (emphasis added). No, it's not possible to offset an expense against tax. It's only possible to offset against income. I frequently see people on HN saying things like "it doesn't matter if it's a ripoff because it's a tax writeoff!!!" If they actually look at their tax returns, they are surprised that an expensed dollar saves them only 10-20 cents, so the price definitely does matter.

Tax credits, on the other hand, are a lot closer to what people are usually thinking of when they say tax expense. If you install residential solar in the US in 2023, for example, you get a 30% tax credit. That means if you spend $10,000, your federal tax bill goes down by $3,000. If it were merely 30% deductible, then you'd subtract $3,000 from your income, which at a Doordash driver's tax bracket would reduce taxes by only about $350.

(I'm not a CPA, either, as any CPA can surely tell.)

I door dash mainly in Queens & sometimes in Manhattan using an electric scooter. I have not had any extra expense so far. 80% of the time I charge my scooter at work or at the gym so I'm not really paying extra on my electricity bill lol. Also, I stick to following traffic rules and stay on the bike lane as much as possible for safety reasons. If I see a large truck coming through, and it is a narrow street, I get on the side walk and let the truck pass. It has been easy accumulating active time, especially when dashing in Manhattan. So far, I have had a good experience and it has been an easy $30+ hourly.

While true this would lead to thousands of people being online without demand. If one really wants their food in 45 minutes, or an uber driver always 3 minutes away, they need a lot of people doing nothing staring at their screens for long periods of time

Capping the # of people online would cause tons of other issues, its very easy to exploit a system like that, plus it would slow everyone down

Either we want people to do things for us, want it super fast, and want to pay everyone for every second of their time. Can't have all of these without hiring a personal driver working just for you full time

Not in a city the size of NYC.

In between deliveries, they are on their shift, and they should be paid for their time.

> Either we want people to do things for us, want it super fast, and want to pay everyone for every second of their time.

Yes, you either pay people for every second of their time, or pay enough money for their work hours. There's no way out of this.

A courier or a taxi driver does not chose to sit on their ass the entire day. You can get a hundred orders in a row, or you can have no orders for an hour or two, and you have no control over that. And it's not like they can just get up, get a cup of cofee and go to a second job in the meantime.

Does this also introduce a bad incentive for drivers to delivery food slowly? Or do delivery apps account for that somehow already?..

I'm pretty sure Doordash tracks that and will boot drivers that don't deliver quickly as that affects their bottom line.

I stopped using door dash when I watched multiple delivery drivers go pick up my food, sit and wait for a bit, drive in the wrong direction, pick up food from another restaurant, drive in the wrong direction to another location, then deliver my cold food.

Nit: Most food delivery workers in NYC are on e-bikes or mopeds. There are surely some drivers but it is prohibitively difficult to use a car for food deliveries in nearly all of Manhattan and decent portions of Brooklyn/Queens/the Bronx.

As it is there is public outcry about dangerous and aggressive riding behavior from food delivery workers. It is not strictly a bad idea to tilt the incentive structure so that while you can earn a little extra on tips for completing more deliveries, it's not such a huge part of your earnings that you need to cut corners, ride the wrong way on one-way streets, ride on sidewalks etc. to hyperoptimize your delivery rate.

Wouldn't this incentivize Dasher's to... take longer to deliver?

This whole model feels screwed up to me.

Indeed, it would be better if doordash would just hire full time employees. And vet them before hiring with a regular interview process. Instead of constant punitive surveillance with the threat of instant unemployment.

Can you imagine if your dev job was like this? Picking up jobs to write a single function. And if youre too slow, or one too many tests fail you get sacked.

The “problem” is that many (most?) delivery cyclists in NYC aren’t legally allowed to work, so this option would be jeopardizing a large part of their workforce (bad for DoorDash) while also being bad for the workers themselves (who aren’t exactly swimming in job options). I’m not making a value judgement here, just weighing in with a tradeoff to consider.

    many (most?) delivery cyclists in NYC aren’t legally allowed to work

Woah. Are you saying these people are illegal immigrants, or don't have a work visa? I never heard this before. That is a bold claim. Do you have any evidence to share? I tried Googling, but I couldn't find anything.

Illegal immigrants. Here are some sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/nyregion/migrant-delivery...

https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/tidal-wave-of-migrants-in-nyc-...

https://gothamist.com/news/doordash-legal-group-set-to-deliv...

>Can you imagine if your dev job was like this?

Mine is. We have stack ranking and it's a living nightmare.

Weekly or monthly stack ranking? I doubt it. Probably annual or twice-yearly reviews. And how much of the stack is released for poor performance during each review? 5/10/15%? Still: Nothing compared to being a DoorDash delivery person.

... or incentivize them stop instead of running over pedestrians, ride on roads/bikelanes instead of sidewalks.

I know I stay the hell out of the way of by-the-minute "communal" rental cars.

And as an additional incentive, DoorDash has decided to fuck with tips!

Thanks for the info. Can you share more details? Tipping a delivery person always seems bizarre to me. Any reasonable society would just pay a better wage, but instead, the US prefers slave wages plus "tips" to maaaaaaaaybe make a living wage.

They reduced the default tip amount, hide tip information from delivery drivers and moved the tipping to after the order, all together ensuring that tipping happens less & for lower amounts.

Only if you ignore tips.

I deliver for door dash as a side gig (supplemental income). If drivers try to milk the system and take an exaggerated amount of time to deliver orders, those drivers will not receive as many offers for orders (messes up their algorithm in the long term). I think the new model encourages people to drive safely and not rush and risk getting into an accident just because they work on tips and are trying to rush through traffic to get their money worth/ time worth for labor. It also does not put pressure on the consumer to tip since the delivery drivers will earn a livable wage. Employers should pay their workers a fair wage, not the consumer.

+9000. Thank you very much to share this vital information.

How do you know this information? Example: Are you involved from the legal or labor (union?) side? Or, are you a DoorDash "partner"?

If you own a delivery service or even thinking about owning one you know sane choice is the alternative even it is more expensive per hour for you.

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