re: Anyone drive for Uber or Lyft in NOLA?

I drove around 20 hours/wk for a month. Came out to around $10/hr. Factor in taxes, gas, car depreciation, and especially wear on tires/shocks (thank you Nola potholes), you probably make less than minimum wage. I'd rather try to cut grass if you're looking to make some extra cash.

No problem. I drove for Uber but never tried Lyft. I've heard Lyft drivers make a bit more. While driving isn't a good source of income, it doesn't hurt to sign up anyway. Takes 5 minutes to sign up and you can drive whenever you feel like. Good luck to you.

I think the actual lyft rides are cheaper, but you have the option to tip through the app, so I can see people making more money. With uber, you've got to have cash. That kinda defeats the whole purpose

I just signed up for both to test the waters driving during Jazzfest surge prices. Here's my thoughts:

1. If it's not surging, don't waste your time. If you just wait until, for example, 6 or 7 during Jazzfest weekend and just nail that horde trying to get out of there, you can make a pretty good hourly rate. Anywhere from $20-40/hour. If it isn't surging, you really have to grind to make $10 after your vehicle costs.

2. Apparently Uber/Lyft both just recently upped their commissions from 20% to 25% at the beginning of this year. That extra 5% can really sting. And I understand the commissions used to be even lower than that, so neither of them are as good an opportunity as they once were.

3. It's probably much more profitable in a much bigger city. The demand in Nola is usually decently high, but the fares are calculated per minute and per mile. So if you pick someone up at the Fairgrounds and they're going to Harrah's or something, that could be a 20 minute ride in Nola traffic, but it's only around 3 miles total so that really limits how high the fare can get. My best fares were one or two that wanted to go from Jazzfest to Loyola in Kenner during surge. But that long of a trip didn't come up often for me.

4. Lyft did seem more favorable as a driver. I seemed to get noticeably higher fares for comparable trips. Plus the tipping in Lyft helps a lot.

5. Be prepared to get a shitty passenger. I never got one, but if you do it regularly you'll probably get one, especially if you try the 11pm-2am shift.

6. Be aware you don't get paid for the time you're on your way to pick someone up. I know that's obvious, but sometimes it can be a real nightmare just getting to where the person is and then the fricker only wants to go 1 mile. Had one group during Jazzfest that I had to take like 3-4 detours to get to because of all the streets being blocked off, and then they decided they were going to walk 2 blocks away from where they said they were without telling me. People are stupid.

For this reason I also don't recommend trying it anywhere on the northshore. Demand is much lower obviously, but I thought it could even out since there doesn't seem to be as many drivers (Nola is saturated already). But when you're the only jackass driving you get pinged by people that are like 20+ minutes from you (especially with how spread out the northshore is). I got one guy who needed to go WAY the F out there in Bogalusa. That's a decent fare by itself because of the time/distance, but you're not gonna get shite on the way back because it's freaking Bogalusa.

7. This is a no-brainer, but you shouldn't consider doing it at all if you don't get good gas mileage. Obviously somebody who drives a sedan is going to have a much better margin than someone in a truck.

8. Apparently this hasn't come to Nola yet, but I read about a feature with Lyft called "destination filter," where you can make it a condition that you only want to pick up passengers who are on the way or are going to the same area as you. So if I'm in Nola and heading to Mandeville, I'd gladly pick someone up and bring them since I'm going that direction anyway. This would make it much more ideal to be a casual driver who just turns the app on every now and then. I got lucky once picking up someone in Mandeville who needed to go to Nola and I needed to go down there too. Made $50 for doing what I was going to do anyway.

9. It'd be great if there was anywhere in Jefferson or St. Tammany parish that would regulary surge because driving around in Nola all night sucks. With the shitty streets, construction, one-way streets, traffic, etc. I can't stand navigating it for more than 2 hours

Anyway, that's all I can think of. It's not a hard gig and it's easy as hell to sign up, so you might as well. Just don't expect much.

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I hear that you're better off driving for Lyft, but I personally wouldn't do any rideshare, knowing that I would have to save some of that money in preparation for every tax season.

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Get a 1040ez blank form and fill it out based on your estimated quarterly net for driving multiplied by four(or monthly by 12) . Then after figuring your tax anticipated payment divide by 12 and save that amount to the side for tax season.
Your mileage deductions will offset the amount and you will wind up owing less than you saved up. Win, Win.

I wouldn't do it for a full time job. I was thinking I would turn it on leaving Pelicans games and such and get paid to drive home

A friend of mine does it and only logs in when it's surging. Last week he did good, he killed for FQF.

But he says he makes more at his full time job.....delivering pizza fwiw.

Neauxla, thanks for the detailed response.

Is the device that they use to notify you portable? Can you hang out at your house, turn it on, and get notified of a fare? Does the notification give you the destination of the fare?

How does Lyft compare to Uber in terms of number of riders using it?

Did you get additional commercial/ for hire insurance on your car through your insurance company? I have Giaco insurance and they recently stated on my insurance renewal documents that I would not be covered in an accident where I was driving for a ride share company. That I would need additional coverage for that.

Thanks again for the info.

Three years ago when I used uber for the first time in DC I would say hell yea, sign up. Now day, personally using Uber about 3 times a week, no way I would want to do this. Fares are really low, great for the customers but terrible for the drivers. I took Uber back and forth to jazz fest these past 2 weeks and our fare was under $10. From Jazz Fest to Warehouse district.

Soccerfut has quickly become one of the worst posters on this site

Troll for sure

Try hard