Lyft is offering as much as $10,000 a month to commercial drivers in NYC | Hacker News Reader

Lyft is offering as much as $10,000 a month to commercial drivers in NYC

bloomberg.com

27 pointszabalmendi36 comments

Lyft in NYC is such a shit show. First they refused to follow the rules that Uber was smart enough to follow (every driver has to be registered with the TLC, and Uber often pays for that registration for Uber-exclusive drivers, at least in the early days, mind you, Uber also maintains its own livery companies for its drivers to be under, Hinter, Weiter, Schlinkel, etc.), then they finally do a mea culpa, but realize very quickly that they didn't have enough licensed drivers (Uber smartly partnered with existing liveries for the black cars early on while it built out its Uber X line).

THEN they launch, but have no cars, have insane surge pricing - you can't apply a free trip to a the tip pricing, the app doesn't make it clear how much extra you'll pay with the surge stuff.

Oh, and the drivers from what I'm hearing (and my one experience) are seriously lackluster.

Fail. Total fail. Uber FTW.

Don't get me wrong, Lyft have been awful, but Uber have also shown huge disregard for rules and regulations, particularly in the rollout of UberT.

Uber has been in New York for a long time now, so I'm not ready to dismiss Lyft by comparing a brand new service with a very established one.

Very interesting. My experience with Lyft in Seattle has been far better than my experiences with Uber/UberX. I've yet to have an Uber driver be nearly as nice and friendly as a Lyft driver. I do think the price can be lower on Uber sometimes though. Also Uber cars seem to be available more often. I still try Lyft first though.

Better late than never I suppose - IMO the NYC launch was not very well executed. I didn't end up taking any rides opening night, but watched on the app throughout the night.

Supply basically vanished immediately - whether that's from extreme demand or insufficient drivers (or both) I'm not sure, but by about 8pm literally zero available drivers were in Lower Manhattan. You could not get a ride on Lyft on opening night - whatever the cause this is a pretty extraordinarily poor user experience.

Surge fare also kicked in, which IMO should've been turned off during the launch period. It also wasn't clearly communicated - on the NYC subreddit numerous people complained about "mandatory tipping" without realizing this is analogous to Uber's surge fares (which are well-known locally).

Overall the opening week was a poor showing for Lyft. Maybe this new program will turn it around, but at this point IMO they're playing PR catchup - anecdotally public interest in Lyft is pretty low around here.

So if drivers pooled together, using the same account from Lyft's perspective, they could pull off a $6,666 / month guaranteed salary for 40hr weeks. I.e., four accounts working 60 hour weeks are staffed by six people working 40 hour weeks. (I doubt the terms of service would smile upon this activity)

Sorta but lower than that if you want to compute a salary equivalent— this is guaranteeing pre-expense revenues, i.e. prior to gasoline, vehicle maintenance, commercial insurance, etc.

The word "offer" is used misleadingly here. Its a guarantee that if you work for 60 hours a week you will earn at least $10,000 a month.

Thanks. We changed the title to the first sentence of the article.

You also need a taxi or limmo license. Not sure how much that costs but it must not be cheap.

Also insurance - I was chatting with a UberX driver in NYC a few weeks ago and apparently his insurance is $7K a year. Not chump change by any means.

On the otherhand, when I was shopping for auto insurance I asked my Lyft driver what he pays and he says he has the state minimum and pays ~100$ / month.

Lyft covers insurance for their drivers while the fare is on. The driver's personal insurance is normal for a personal vehicle doing personal work. Now, if someone tries to go after that private insurance from an accident during a fare, that private insurance company will deny the claim and they may drop the person from the policy/raise rates if the person lied about using the vehicle for business purposes. I'm not sure they'd get that rate if they answered "Yes" to business purposes for the vehicle.

Why would people in NYC use Uber or Lyft? Are they really so much cheaper than taxis?

Ever try to grab a taxi in NYC? It's not always easy.

It's still pretty easy though - except when the bars let out in the bowery.

I take cabs around NYC a lot. Never had trouble except around closing time near some bars on weekends.

Because the experience is 100x better for the same price.

It's the same experience, for the most part. The livery car services near me now also offer Uber. It's more expensive for the same trip, same driver, and same car with Uber, of course. They like it. For the rest of us with their number saved in our phone, we just keep using it for the same price as before.

Hailing a cab is not similar to using uber. Cabs you never know what to expect. The driver is rude, they tell you the credit card machine is broken, the car is in horrible condition.

With uber you consistently get a pleasant experience.

You didn't even read my post. I said calling a livery car. Aka a car service. Aka the exact same guys that come when you use Uber. Car services have existed for longer than the internet has. Car services are different from cabs. It is illegal to hail a car service in NYC, you can only hail yellow cabs.

Quite literally the EXACT driver in the EXACT car will come if you use Uber in my neighborhood because my local car service works with Uber. It costs more on Uber than if you call them directly, of course.

I get you. My response was to the original comment though, which was asking why use uber when there are cabs everywhere.

Because NYC is bigger than just Manhattan. In fact, Manhattan is bigger than just Manhattan below 96th St ;)

In the wealthy side of Manhattan the city is swarming with cabs. In Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and even Harlem, Washington Heights, etc, cabs can be hard to come by.

UberX is also cheaper than a cab nowadays with the recent price drop.

I disagree with billmalarky below about the experience being better though. Uber's drivers are almost always considerably less experienced than cab drivers. I've lost count of the number of times I've sat in an immobile Uber while the driver futzes with some shitty GPS unit so he knows where the hell to actually go. Also lost count of how many times an Uber driver couldn't find his way to the Manhattan Bridge on-ramp. These are things that are second-nature to cab drivers.

When I get into a cab I might get a surly guy who's yakking on the phone the whole way, but I'll get to my destination quickly, and cheaply. When I get into an Uber I'm almost guaranteed to get someone who is polite, genial, and doesn't really know where they're going. I'll take the former, thanks.

In my experience most Uber drivers were taxi drivers, so there is very little difference in that aspect. Sure, every now and then I get a noob that has to put the address into the GPS, but most of the time that is not the case. I have only taken a taxi once (in the bay area) in the last 2 years that I started using Uber and instantly regretted. It cost more, the condition of the car was horrendous, and the driver did not let me use his cable to charge my phone which I was using to call my friend to find the address of his place.

> Because NYC is bigger than just Manhattan.

You know, you're right. When someone says "NYC" I pretty much only think of Manhattan (from the top of central park down). I forget how enormous the city actually is.

Taxis are no longer cheaper in NYC, and I've never met an inexperienced Uber driver.

Whereabouts do you take Ubers? I rarely have problems in Manhattan, but let's be honest, if you can't navigate a perfect grid you probably shouldn't be driving passengers.

In Brooklyn and Queens though Uber has been considerably worse than cabs (green or yellow) in my experience. They just don't know the lay of the land as well as cabbies and frequently have to resort to GPS units (themselves not as good as a knowledgeable driver).

To be fair, the city has set up the green cab program to increase coverage outside of Manhattan. In my anecdotal experience, it's working very well.

Lyft in NYC is virtually a different company from what I can tell. I guess the sharing economy model for vehicle ownership isn't scaleable in NYC since so few people own cars. It went from 'riding with your best friend' to riding in a black car with a pink mustache.

Is there a word to describe a professional amateur driver?

Not sure about driving but in college athletics they call the professional amateurs "student athletes", no (direct) promise of 10K a month though even if the schools get insanely rich off of it.

$10k for 60 hours, $5k for 40 hours?

Here are a few choice words for Lyft:

Fuck you.

It looks like it's some kind of revenue guarantee, which might be attractive to some people if they worry about hitting those revenue targets, although it depends on expenses and other opportunities. They're guaranteeing effectively either $38/hr revenue if you commit to 60 hrs, or $28/hr revenue if you commit to 40 hrs, in both cases prior to expenses (gas, maintenance, etc.). Not sure how to estimate what that'd work out to as income post-expenses.

Conditioning the payment on a 60-hour commit seems questionable, although I assume they had their lawyers vet it. Independent contractors are exempt from a lot of labor law, but things get dicier if you contract them in such a way that they become de-facto employees working full-time for you and unable to take other work.

Can someone put this into context. It sounds like a huge sum? What would someone with a taxi license & without Lyft typically earn?

Attractive, but demanding, and who knows how long it could last, a month or two? Less the expenses it sounds like a number that could attract the providers what they need.

As a contractor, you're responsible for gas, vehicle, maintenance, insurance, and a taxi license. I'd imagine that eats up a surprising amount of the total.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com