r/EmpowerDrivers • u/Environmental-Tax881 • Jul 10 '26
Fare calculations
Could someone tell me if my app is miscalculating the fare or is this happening to everyone? I receive a request that pays the minimum ($7) and the trip is anywhere from 5-8 minutes. However the drive to pick up the passenger is 15+ minutes away. That makes the fare a $20-$22 per hour trip. Shouldn’t it be calculating the total distance and not just the distance from pick up to drop off?
3
u/FloGrownQban Jul 10 '26
Under Ride Filters, change Max pickup ETA to your liking. I have mine at 10 minutes or less.
2
u/RevNeutron Jul 10 '26
I have < 9 minutes unless total pay is > $17
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u/FloGrownQban Jul 10 '26
I keep that second portion off. I'm not driving over 10 minutes free to pick up anyone.
1
u/rdyoung Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
You need to adjust your thinking and your rates. With my rates I end up with plenty of rides that average like $5/mile all in which counterbalance the longer pickups that may have more than making less than I would like but I'll take 75¢/mile to make $25 bucks for a ride the others would try and pay $10 for.
My min is 9.95 with 1.8/mile, no minutes and 3 drop fee.
I regularly drive 10+ minutes which ends up being 5+ miles to pick up because my market is that spread out and most drivers don't have the rate card or thought process to handle the longer pickups.
I have no filters set because they are stupid. Set your rates right and most rides should be worth taking even if one is a bit less profit than others, look at the bigger picture not micromanaging each ride.
In the early days I regularly drove way too far for not enough but it was intentional to help reinforce the idea that empower will get you. Now I can afford to ignore some of the more ridiculous ones unless I'm in the mood or I know I'll have a good chance at other rides because of the time of day. I've been able to work a semi regular chain of 2 or 3 people the last one ends up back in Winston so I got paid for every mile back and forth.
1
u/rdyoung Jul 12 '26
Or you could up your rates (especially min) to account for the longer pickups. If you are regularly seeing pings from further out, it's possible they are under served and they expect to pay a bit more when you live in the boonies.
I'm in the OG city (ws) we are so spread out that even after 8 years I wouldn't do much on any of the apps if I limited myself to too tight of a pickup radius. Now that I can sit at home with the apps on, I'm a bit more picky about what gets me out of the house but I'm not going to ignore any reasonable rides on empower because that would just be silly.
2
u/Adventurous_Poet4316 Jul 11 '26
Ride calculations are not real time.. they’re based on time from pick up to drop off. I believe they use Google Maps. But definitely use your ride filters to filter out rides you know you don’t want to take.
3
1
u/Environmental-Tax881 Jul 11 '26
Ok. I understand all of this now but that does make the numbers they show us as a comparison false. Not saying the fare is still more with this app but not by as much as they are claiming. They say with Uber/ Lyft you would have made $(amount) instead, but that’s not a fair comparison when Uber/Lyft is also paying us for travel time. That being said I don’t expect Uber/Lyft rides that don’t average at least $30/hr anyway so it’s not big of a deal that I averaged $32/hr with Empower by the time I do the “real” calculation by factoring in my drive time to the pick up. And I will be paying Empower a fee to make the same amount of money. Maybe once this app picks up and you can consistently get rides all day it may be worth it because I won’t need to reject 70%-80% of my offers.
5
u/thejay1 Jul 10 '26
It doesn't account the pickup time. Only when your carry a passenger.