Okay, but what am I actually making an hour?
Behind the wheel with Hudson Driver
The clock
kept running.
All of it is my time.
It didn’t take long for Lyft and Uber to frustrate the hell out of me.
I’m supplying the car. I’m paying the expenses. I’m doing the driving. And somehow, I’m also supposed to untangle the math to figure out whether the work is worth taking.
The apps give me offers, incentives, and rewards to chase. But I quickly realized I needed to answer my own business question: Which rides actually make me money?
Lyft and Uber want rides accepted and passengers moving. I want good rides that pay enough for my time and my car. Those interests overlap, but they’re not the same.
And I’m already limited in when I can drive.
The family schedule
family drives
One mark = one one-way drive.
Our family’s schedule includes 72 one-way drives for four kids in different schools, sports, and extracurriculars. That’s not counting fun!
Unless I want to stay up all night, I have specific windows to work. If a shift goes badly, I can’t just keep driving until the numbers look better. Somebody needs to get picked up.
When I carve out three hours, my target is $100 before taxes and expenses, with at least $50 left after both. I need a way to judge whether that’s realistic before I commit the time.
So I started figuring it out manually.
First up: that booked hourly rate.
An offer shows an hourly number, and it’s tempting to think, “Okay, that’s what I’m making.” But I can’t assume I’ll stay booked every minute I’m available to work. There’s time between rides. There’s waiting for an offer worth taking. There’s getting back from a drop-off that leaves me somewhere I don’t want to work.
- Rides
- Waiting
- Cancellations
- Getting back to work
My afternoon keeps going whether there’s a passenger to pick up or not.
The $12-an-hour shift
On one early shift, I was making only $12 an hour. I’d accept rides, then get cancellations. The clock kept running. That booked hourly rate wasn’t telling me what I was actually earning for the time I was giving to the work.
And even figuring out where a ride is going can be a project.
I grew up here in Wilmington. I should have the home-field advantage.
But somehow, the way these apps present pickup and drop-off locations can still leave me trying to decode my own town.
I’m trying to filter the offer in my head: Where am I picking up? Where does this leave me? Do I want to be over there?
Give me clear locations and let me use what I know.
And give me some guidance about whether I’m headed into no-ride land—somewhere I might drop off a passenger and spend the next twenty minutes waiting or driving back toward work.
The ride ends. My time commitment doesn’t.
That matters when you’re putting an hourly rate in front of me. A trip can look reasonable on its own and leave me with a lousy hour once I account for what happens afterward.
And if I pass on a lousy offer, that waiting time counts too. I have to include it when I decide whether being selective paid off.
So my first calculation is simple:
Then I still have to account for vehicle expenses and taxes to understand what I keep.
I’m a businessman, an entrepreneur, and a dad driving Lyft and Uber in Wilmington, NC. Hudson Driver is where I’ll share the frustration, the calculations, and what I learn as I work this out.
I want to finish a shift knowing I used my time well, earned money worth the miles I put on my car, and can get back to the rest of my life.
First, I need to know what I’m actually making an hour.