But so-called
“ride-sharing” is changing our culture in a profound way. With
the advent of Uber and Lyft, “taxis” are available in parts of
our city/county where they never were before, or where it would take
a very long time for a cab to get to you, if you
could even get a driver to accept the trip request. With Uber/Lyft,
semi-retired guys like myself who live in outlying areas can log-on
and get trips. People who need transportation in those areas can
also log-on and see that cars are available nearby.
So now, a couple with only
one car isn't inconvenienced if one spouse takes that car to work.
The other spouse can now get out and run errands or do whatever. Alternatively, the working spouse can Uber to work, leaving the car
home for personal use. Or, families that used to own two cars don't need
to do that now. This is huge. And it's happening.
In my town, there is a lot
of Uber/Lyft business between 4:30 and 9:00 am. People
go to work, to school, to the airport...to all the places you'd
imagine. After nine it really drops off until the evening. The bulk
of the ride-share drivers – and there are plenty of them! - come
out after nine. Competition is keen and the few trips are split
between dozens of drivers. However, this leaves the very early
morning hours fairly open...to guys like myself.
As I've written before, I'm a "morning person." I'm not proud of it, and
it's not because I want to be. It's been
thrust on me out of necessity. For most of my adult life, which
includes 30+ years as a professional pilot I've had to be at work and
ready to go thirty minutes before sunrise. So I'm used to getting up
super-early. All of us helicopter pilots are. Habits are hard to
break, and even though I'm pretty much semi-retired from flying, I
still get up early.
People who own helicopters
like to get the most out of them. The aircraft enables people to be
efficient in moving around their world, getting much more work done
than if they had to drive. Thus, helicopters start their workday
early. Unfortunately, so do their pilots.
You'd think that as you
get some seniority and longevity in a career that you'd qualify for
the “cushier” jobs that don't start so early. Aaaaand you'd be
wrong. My last job, the one up in Washington State required that we
fly at sunrise if it rained overnight. And since we never really
knew if it rained or not while we were sleeping, every morning we pilots would get up and check the weather early enough to fly as soon as it was
light enough to see. In Washington, sunrise happened at around
4:30am at that time of year. If it hadn't rained, it was
permissible to go back to bed. But you know, once you're up...
At 63 I am not (yet)
cursed with the malady that afflicts a lot of men in my age group –
that being the need to get up periodically in the middle of the night to...you
know...pee. As long as I don't drink too much in the evening, I can
go to bed around eleven pm and get up at four am without any
interruptions. But nowadays I do reliably wake up at four.
So I get up early and get my day going. Sometimes I'll just turn the Uber and Lyft apps on around 5:00 am
and stay home until I get a trip, which invariably comes before I've
even finished making breakfast. Or I'll get in the car and drive up to a
“honey-hole” that I know of – a hotspot for trips. There, I'll
stop at the Circle-K, get the newspaper and a cup of coffee, and then
retire to the Target parking lot to wait for a trip. Usually one or
the other app will ping while I'm on line in the
convenience store. I “work” until about noon and then go home.
It turns out that this is being a morning person is something of an
advantage when it comes to being a ride-share driver.
2 comments:
So are you doing both Uber and Lyft now? Being able to perform the entire transaction on the phone and not having to worry about sitting in traffic with the meter running is huge. Though I mainly use it when traveling to other cities, my wife and I are using it more locally. Parking for events in downtown Nashville has gotten ridiculously expensive and traffic can be a nightmare, and it’s just too easy to order an Uber. And on a recent outing we ran into some friends who gave us a ride home at no charge!
Yeah Bob, I started off only doing Uber. Which was fine. And then I suddenly got a nice little four-day "vacation" from Uber! The only thing they told me was that there was a report that I "denied service to a person with a federally-protected trait," and I was suspended while they investigated it.
Turned out the supposed event happened on a rainy Saturday when I only did four trips and cut it off early. One of my four passengers complained to Uber that I refused their service animal (dog), which we cannot do. When Uber finally contacted me I stressed that I love dogs and would never refuse one! (Not all drivers share that philosophy though.) I asked the Uber employee what the passenger actually said, since I neither cancelled nor even declined any trips on that day? The employee's response: "Well, we can't force anyone to answer their phone."
I was reinstated, as I hoped I would be. But it drove home the point that we ride-share drivers are merely independent contractors, not employees. And our tenuous "relationship" with Uber and Lyft can end at any time.
So while I was cooling my heels waiting for Uber to resolve my issue, I signed up with Lyft. And now I do both. Turns out I do a lot better with Lyft - more trips and more revenue. I'm curious to see which platform survives. Surely, like the competition between Beta and VHS videotape formats (or for the really old, CP/M and MS-DOS computer operating systems), they both won't.
Finally, yes, using Uber/Lyft can be much more convenient when going to a congested area like a downtown event where you'd have to fight traffic in and out *and* pay for parking while you're there. The popularity of ride-sharing largely comes from that increased convenience - as well as the fact that there are usually Ubers out in parts of town where taxis are not.
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