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Comment by JMTQp8lwXL | Hacker News Reader

Minimum wage isn't really that expensive. Suppose a driver makes $12/hour. That's $96 per day. If they do just 10 rides in 8 hours -- and they could do much more -- riders need to pay just $9.60 per ride. Sure, the rideshare company needs their cut, so add a 15% premium. It doesn't sound all that expensive. A 3 mile trip through town isn't going to become a $30 affair just because the driver makes minimum wage.

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Add in about $0.50/mile for the cost of their car. (People can argue the exact numbers but that's about the number the IRS allows for deductions.) Which isn't a lot for a 3 mile ride but in spread-out areas, the ride is more likely to be 10 or 20 miles. Then double for round-trip.

Though, to the general point, a minimum wage driver is probably not as big a proportion of rental vehicle costs as many assume.

Incentives change. Right now there’s zero incentive for a driver to log in at remote location at weird hours - they go where and when the riders are. If you’re guaranteed a minimum pay just for making yourself available, all of a sudden logging yourself into a system at 2 am in a sleepy suburb is basically free money.

Uber doesn't have to make "logging in" the same as "clocking in".

Does that include fuel, maintenance and depreciation?

Doesn't seem to, but they pointed out that they were being conservative in saying that an employee that makes 10 rides in a day charging $9.60 per ride covers their salary. If they made 15 that would probably cover fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and their salary.

Of course this would be a company owned car and they'd be reimbursed for fuel and stuff so at least the company is the one taking that risk. But if they're real employees, firing ones that can't make fifteen rides happen in eight hours is just kind of the obvious result.

Pizza drivers don't generally use company cars, I don't see why Lyft or Uber would necessarily do so.

>Doesn't seem to, but they pointed out that they were being conservative in saying that an employee that makes 10 rides in a day charging $9.60 per ride covers their salary. If they made 15 that would probably cover fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and their salary.

I think its the opposite of conservative to ignore the greatest cost of being an uber driver - your car.

This study from Cornell attempts to estimate expenses and total costs in Seattle across both platforms https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

Drivers received about $23.50/hr according to it.

The Parrot and Reich recommendations https://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2020/07/Parrott-Reich-Seattl... are much more generous in terms of estimating expenses. Neither considers a company car model which might imply drivers taking shifts in one vehicle.

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