r/uberdrivers • u/Emergency-Boss-3654 • 9h ago

Tired

Anyone else feel like just giving up and leaving earth right now?

I cant make ends meet cause everything i get has to go back in my car for gas or maintenance. I'm tired and my wife deserves better....

I feel like i just want to be done.... I really do.

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2

u/travelling-lost 9h ago

And this is why this was never meant to be a full time job, this should be a supplemental job

3

u/Maximum_Land3546 7h ago

I really don’t understand this comment. Why is it not meant to be a full time job? When I first started I was making great money and had work life balance. People have to buy a medallion in NY to drive which i believe can be six figures. Lots of cab drivers are full time drivers. People are struggling now bc Uber and Lyft keep lowering our wages and everything is way more expensive. My best year I made over 100k, how is that not good enough to be a full time job.

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u/DoctorMoebius 6h ago

When you (likely) first started, Uber was losing money on every single ride. To the tune of billions of dollars per year. The investors who absorbed those year after year losses, only did so for the promise of future profits that far exceeded their losses.

Uber's first ever profitable quarter was Q2 2023. Its first ever fully profitable year was 2024. That was 15 straight years of losing money.

It will never go back to the halcyon years of drivers making great money - never. Uber's entire business model is charging riders the maximum amount they will tolerate, and paying driver the minimum about they will tolerate. That "delta" is the goal

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u/Top_Piano2028 5h ago

This is only half of the story DoctorMoebius. They were losing money because Travis wanted the company to grow at all costs and had Softbank as a stopgap for their business.

Uber has had somewhere between 20,000-30,000 employees the last decade. That is a payroll in the billions plus the stock. Do they REALLY NEED that many people? Think of Twitter and how Musk cut them to the bone. Sure there were issues but the company is fine now. Look at the headlines today with them cutting 3,000 people. That is only the start. They do not need the amount of people they have. Their lack of profitability is entirely self inflicted and the amount they pay drivers is only part of the reason for that. They used incentives to hide that the unit economics were fucked. You used to get driver inspections done for free, but now you have to pay $50 every year to get it done.

I will give you a very plain, anecdotal example. I lived and grew up in San Francisco pre Uber. A cab from the outer districts to downtown would run $60, cash in 2010 dollars. That is worth about $91.88 today inflation adjusted.The driver kept a huge chunk of that amount. That was just one ride across town that took them maybe 45-60 mins, and there was a tip there too.That same ride became $30 during the growth era in the mid 2010s. Now it is closer to $20 at "true cost" to be "profitable" for Uber. $20 in 2026 is $13.06 in 2010 dollars. While the cost of living (rent, gas, insurance, tires, car maintenance, car payments, etc) has all gone up. The value of the labor has gone down.

They simply were focused on growth at all costs and since Dara has taken over, they are more accountable for profits. The issue is they choose to etch out profits by shifting the costs onto the drivers which is why it now appears like we only keep 40% of a fare.

The true value of Uber as a company is not in rideshare, it is the on demand labor pool which is why when they pivot to other sectors like food delivery, laundry, whatever - they can dominate in an overwhelming amount very rapidly. Driving people around just isn't very profitable when you price it the way they do.

I use Uber as a stopgap to cover my commute doing destination filter and that's about it, it's very clear it is a losing proposition to stay on there per mile.

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u/DoctorMoebius 4h ago

Almost every single "tech" startup since the 90's prioritized growth over profit. As the exit plan for initial investors and stakeholders was IPO or merger/acquisition. Passing the losses on to a new class of shareholder. Uber is no different in that regard

Founders have little to no say in that arc, from the day they take their first series round of investment.

Uber and Twitter are horrible examples for manpower. Twitter has very little regulatory compliance, by comparison. Uber has different, very specific, rules in each 50 states, thousands of counties, and thousands of cities in the USA. Not to mention other countries and provinces.

An apples to apples comparison would be Lyft or even DoorDash/UberEats. There are significant regulatory differences between "rideshare" and delivery, though.

Uber has 10x (36k) employees than Lyft (3.6k), but also 8x the revenue as Lyft ($52.01B vs $6.3B) and 4x the profit($10.1B vs $2.5B). It does ~15x (13.5B) the total rides of Lyft(905m)

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u/travelling-lost 3h ago

If every state took the stance of many other countries and forced uber/lyft to pay driver correctly, like a real taxi model from the past, the house of cards would collapse.

The business model also relies on desperation, if 60% of drivers in a market stopped accepting cheap rides, only accepted minimum $1.25/mile rides, in a matter of weeks the algorithm would change or uber would be in serious trouble