男士痘痘肌用什么面霜 Postmates Is Now Uber. Is It Different & Worth Driving For?

When you decide whether this side hustle gig app is worth your time, you he to consider:

How much money you’ll actually take home after you account for your expenses Whether you enjoy the work itself, or whether there’s something else you’d rather do

We’ll look at both of these questions below. Uber’s acquisition of Postmates doesn’t actually change the answer to either very much; as we’ve alluded to, while there are slight differences between the major delivery gig apps, they’re more alike than they are different.

Put another way, if Postmates was still an independent service, driving for it would probably be much the same as driving for Uber Eats (or another one of its competitors, such as Instacart or DoorDash). The Uber-Postmates merger doesn’t change the game in a significant way.

How much will expenses eat into your profits with Postmates / Uber Eats?

Driving gig apps like Postmates he a lot of expenses associated with them.. The biggest one is fuel, which the company won’t pay for. You’ll also need to set aside a chunk of your earnings to take care of vehicle maintenance and your yearly taxes.

Your exact expenses will depend on several factors, including how fuel-efficient your vehicle is, but as a rough guide, plan on budgeting:

Gas: 10% of your earnings Maintenance: 10% of your earnings Taxes: 15% of your earnings

All told, your expenses will probably eat up around 35% of what you make, leing you with 65%. In other words, if you’re able to earn an hourly rate of $20 (your gross profits), you’ll take home just $13 of that.

An effective wage of $13 per hour isn’t terrible; it’s considerably higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, although it’s below the minimum wage in 14 states and the District of Columbia, as of February 2024. 1 It’s comparable to what you’d make at a lot of entry-level retail jobs, which makes sense—like them, running deliveries is a relatively simple gig that most people can do.

What is driving for Postmates / Uber Eats actually like?

Now that you’ve calculated a more realistic take-home pay, the question becomes: is driving for Uber Eats worth it for $13 per hour?

Obviously, the answer to that depends on your personality and on what you’re looking for from your side hustle. That said, we’ve interviewed a number of gig workers for our delivery app reviews, and we can share what they’ve told us about the work.

Delivering is usually a low-stress job

Most people seem to find driving for apps like Uber Eats reasonably pleasant. The biggest source of stress is traffic (particularly if you drive during rush hour), but you don’t he to interact with customers very much, meaning it’s a great side hustle for introverts. Again, in the post-pandemic world, many people opt for contact-free deliveries, meaning you’ll just lee the food or groceries on their doorsteps.

When you drive for Uber Eats, you can keep yourself occupied by listening to music or a podcast—one of the biggest perks of the job, according to the drivers we’ve spoken to.

You he complete control over your schedule

As a gig worker or freelance worker, you’re effectively your own boss. When you drive for Uber, you don’t he to commit to shifts ahead of time. You can do it whenever you want and stop working the second you want a break.

This flexibility is another significant perk of the job. It means that you can make your work for Postmates and Uber an occasional side hustle, a full-time gig, or anything in between. It depends on what you’re looking for.

You may he to reject a lot of lowball offers

This is the main source of frustration for Uber Eats drivers. A lot of the offers on the app just aren’t very good, and you may spend more time than you’d like waiting for a worthwhile one to come in.

You can partially mitigate this by downloading other delivery apps and switching between them to hunt for the best offers. Sometimes, when it’s a slow day on Uber Eats, there might be more lucrative offers on Instacart, and vice versa.

If you’re not sure whether this gig app is for you, the easiest way to find out is to just download the app and give it a try. You don’t he to commit to driving for any particular period, so you he nothing to lose by completing a few deliveries and seeing how much you like it.