Silent All These Months

What's it like to do rideshare during a pandemic?

Reasonably lucrative for a side hustle. But quiet. Really quiet.

I used to drive a lot of college students. Travelers who did routine commutes from New York City. Drinkers. People on expense accounts, out for a night on the town, doing the responsible thing by not driving.

This was all predictable. Surge prices were known, distances were pretty standard. You could bank on pretty consistent hourly rates, cadge a few conversations from people, see your tip revenue rise as you played with people. I'd try a little stand up from time to time, offer water, mints and cough drops, and clean at the start of the night only, for my ratings.

None of that now.

Now, it's essential workers going to warehouses, court houses, fast food restaurants and big box stores. People coming home from the grocery store with supplies. Stragglers at train stations with fairly random drop points. I crack the windows to the point of making things uncomfortable, enforce the mask mandate, and have bought my own spare masks if the fare is without one and looks like they'd actually wear it. I also rank those people low enough so I'm sure I don't get them again.

You can make a lot in an hour, or you can make very little. 

The rideshare platforms have been more and less aggressive in courting drivers. Tips have gone down while ratings have gone up. People are grateful for the service, but they are quiet, and all of them probably make less than I do, so I can hardly blame them.

Most of the time, I don't mind the silence. If I talk, there's more heat in my mask, and I have a three-layer mask that keeps me safe at the sake of comfort. I pinch the metal clasps, perch my glasses further on my nose to cut down the fog, and work more hours than I used to.

I also try not to think about the odds that someone with the virus has already been in the car, has already put me at risk. I try to stay local, because my area has low infection rates outside of nursing homes, and I know the roads (and potholes). I watch the rates. 

Since the pandemic started, and since I've gotten back on the road, here are the numbers.

1,190 rides in 486 hours for $14.5K in gross, $13.5K in net. That's $27 an hour.

Living wage for a ghost.

The Five Types Of Mask Scofflaws

  

5) Chinly McChinMask

The rule is not that you wear a mask, you mooks. It is that you actually cover your breathing holes.

4) Nasal Negator

Well, it's on your face at least. Now if it was only covering the holes you are probably actually breathing through.

3) Mask and Switch

So you were wearing it when you got in the car, but not as soon as I take my eyes off you to drive? Very, very slick. Enjoy those increasingly open windows and the only ride you are ever getting in my car -- or, if the platform is responsive, any other...

2) The Least You Can Do

You say you have one, but you aren't going to wear it until the second you get into the car. Very reassuring. 

1) Mockmask

I've got a two-ply cloth mask with a pocket, and inside the pocket is a medical grade N90. During daylight, I top it off with a plastic face shield. That's because I've driven over a thousand people in my car since the start of the pandemic, and have (somehow?) remained disease-free so far.

So your opinion of my set up is... *extremely* pointless? Really not necessary? Best left unexpressed? 

Yes, yes and yes...

The Giving Car

 

So here's a story that's taken me some time to tell, because it took a long time to play out.

Early on Saturday, July 25, I was doing the hustle, looking for 1 or 2 more rides to finish off my day. It had been a good shift; busy, surge pricing, reasonable customers. I picked up an unaccompanied female in Trenton for about a 10 minute ride, with the app lining up another immediately after she got in the car. Both of them are surge price, short and helping me to get to the ride bonus. It's all OK. I'm a little tired but alert and fine; it's just another Friday night, honestly.

We come up Route 129 in Trenton, a 4-lane highway that cuts through the center of the city, with an island in the middle. I'm going to make a right turn on Lalor Street, then another left, and get my current passenger to her drop point in a minute or so. But first, I have to wait for the light to turn green. I'm second in line for this. 

My car, a 2010 Honda Insight, has 309K miles on it. It's 10 years old. I am its only owner. It has a dent in the middle of the back bumper, some cosmetic damage on the driver side rear-view mirror, a dent in the passenger door, some paint chipping, and liners in the back seat that tend to slide out from time to time. It's never had a significant mechanical issue. It's survived a low speed collision that was my fault, a rear-ending in Trenton that gave it the back bumper issue, and it's been back and forth to California multiple times. In terms of pure miles, it's been to the Moon.

The passenger in the car is the 15,731st ride share ride it has served. The car has made me $163,826 in 6,533 hours of time in apps.

I look into my rear view window at a sudden flash of light, and hear a screech of brakes about a tenth of a second before the impact.

My passenger is suddenly in the front seat. My glasses fly off my head. Her possessions scatter all through the cabin. We are hit with such force that the car is shoved hard into the car in front of us, despite my foot remaining on the brake the whole time. The front of the car folds inward, and a few seconds after everything has stopped, the airbag feebly deploys. With part of the front cabin now exposed to the running engine, the cabin heats up. The heat focuses me more than the pain in my shoulder, where the seat belt locked me into place. 

I turn the car off and check on my passenger. She says she's OK. My leg is wet and I'm worried that I'm bleeding, but it turns out just to be from my passenger's beverage. I try to open my door, but it doesn't open. I open the passenger side door for my passenger, collect some of her things, and follow her out.

Neither the driver that hit me, nor the folks that we got shoved into, are seriously hurt, but we're all sore and kind of dazed at what happened. Soon afterward, police are on the scene. I talk briefly with the other victim and the perpetrator. He gives the former his insurance information, but not me, and I figure whatever, there's police here. He seems kind of out of it. I never lose consciousness or awareness, 

I take a few photos of my trashed car, and I know immediately that it's a total loss. The back is caved in, there's broken lights, and that's not even talking about the front, which is an accordion. I text my family that I'm OK, then follow up with pictures. The next 40 minutes are spent finding my passenger's things, talking to police, waiting for my wife to come pick me up (the house is 15 minutes away), and not finding my glasses. A tow truck shows up and gets all of the cars off the highway. We go home.

The next day, I wake up and I'm sore all over, but otherwise OK. The day after, I go to my local Costco to replace the glasses, and get told that I may have a detached retina. The day after that, I check in with a retina specialist, who tells me that's not the case, but a pre-existing condition that I need to keep an eye on. A few days after that, I get the paperwork dealt with from the police and get all of my personal effects out of the old car, and my wife finds my glasses.

A few days after that, after a few checks around the area, I find that the dealer that I bought my car from has... a nearly exact replica of it. Same color, same model, just four years newer and with nearly a quarter of a million less miles on it. It's also in perfect cosmetic condition. I take the hint from the Rideshare Gods and take delivery of it. We've now been in the saddle together for a month, 137 app hours, $4,224 in billing and 353 rides. I've got another 3 years of payments on it at a good rate.

The driver that struck us, according to the police report, was eating chicken wings -- so, um, I have no idea what to make of that information, other than to wonder where he got the wings from, because damn, must have been good wings. He also was driving without insurance (of course) which winds up being a benefit, in that it causes Uber's carrier, Allstate, to activate and reimburse for damages. I'm still collecting on that, and it won't be a ton, but better than getting rear-ended on a Saturday morning in Trenton.

The biggest takeaway I have from the experience -- beyond some nerves about waiting at traffic lights in Trenton, because it's not like I can avoid the area when doing ride share -- is that it could have been so much worse, really. I don't seem to have suffered any long term damage. The new Insight has performed fine, and actually has been producing significantly better miles per gallon so far. My ratings are on the uptick, because it's a nicer car (newer, leather seats, a little bigger, undamaged), and I probably drive a little slower and safer for wanting to delay its first bruise. 

The Insight was the first completely new car that I've bought in my life, and quite clearly one of the best purchases I've ever made in my life. Good car. I hope its child does nearly as well.

And that it doesn't spend its last moments in my presence getting destroyed for no reason at all...

Plague Driver

The New Normal

At some point during the pandemic, I knew that I'd have to get back in the car, turn on the apps (I drive for Lyft and Uber) and do the side hustle. Today, after a little more than two months on the sidelines, was the day.

It did not come without a *great* deal of hesitation. I'm the breadwinner for my family and currently on at will contract for a tech company, which means that my health benefits are mostly vapor. My wife and children have risk factors that make their continued health far from a given. Our financial situation is better than a lot of people, and I'm very grateful to be working during the recession. But if the contract is terminated -- and it's at-will, with  budget cuts announced for other aspects of the program this week -- we are f*****.

Rideshare won't solve any of that, of course. But supplemental income may help us to get the credit card level down a little more, especially if we're lucky with car repair and maintenance. My Honda has taken over 15K riders to where they wanted to go, and has made me over six figures in three years of doing this. Without this income, we would be in a much worse place than we are right now.

I haven't been hesitant to do the side work just for health reasons. I've also been more than a little cynical that there would be any demand. Most of my work pre-pandemic was college students (gone), pick ups from train stations (yeah, that should be gone too), grabs from bars in late night (closed)... so I kind of doubted there would be any pings.

In the two months since I've made a pick up, there have been laws passed in New Jersey that require me to sticker my car with my photo on the back rear windows. This is more than a little irritating, frankly; outing myself as a driver when I am not, and giving my name to anyone who sees my car is more than a trifling indignity, but so be it. I also removed anything from the car that would inspire additional touches, so good bye to the water bottles, cough drops and breath mints that used to be in the ride, along with the courtesy trash can. That last one wouldn't have worked anyway, because the latest word is that you should drive with the windows down to increase ventilation and lower your risk, and contents would leave the liner. Needless to say, I'm also going to say no if people ask if they can charge their phone now, too.

Removing all of the side stuff is likely going to harm my rating and definiely my potential for tips, but during a pandemic, my guess is ratings are going to stay high enough as is. People who need rides aren't going to limit their choices so much, and if you give a driver three stars or less, you're out of their lives for good.

 A final once over from the car wash, and a wipedown with Clorox wipes that we had in the house pre-pandemic, finished the car prep in about a half hour.

Now that the car was prepped, it was time for myself. A friend of my eldest gifted her with a small box of N95 masks, so that's my base level. My wife has made fabric masks, that goes on top. The eldest started work this week in a plant that shifted to produce face sheilds, and nabbed me one. Yellow rubber gloves are my permanent go-to for shopping trips. It's hard to use the phone with those, so I saved them for between trip pick ups, when I'd wipe down places the last passenger might have touched. No one's allowed to sit in the front seat anymore, and shared rides are also out. I grabbed a return water cooler jug for the Home Depot, and turned on Uber. I thought I'd switch on both that and Lyft and drive to the store, and see if I got lucky enough to get a ride or two to pay for sundries today.

I never got to the Depot.

So... good news and bad news, really.

First, the good news. Eight rides and $81 in three hours is a reasonable return on investment for the hustle, even pre-pandemic. I didn't run into anyone actively rude, or anyone that made me very afraid for my health. I spent the entire time either driving someone or en route to driving someone, and $12 of my take was surge. I took 9 out of 10 ride offers, only got one cancel, and didn't have any incidents of real note. $81 might not sound like a lot to you, or enough to run any kind of health risk, but this is pretty much my only way to add income right now. And we need to add income.

Now, the bad. Less than half of my riders wore masks, and only one person wore gloves. Conversation through the PPE is pretty much a non-starter, and the number of people walking the streets without a mask on a nice Saturday was even lower than the percentage of people masked up in my car. My area is also top 10 in the country in terms of per capita virus impact, so questioning this decision is something I can do whenever I want.

Driving with PPE eventually gave me a tension headache, and the lack of access to my mouth also meant I didn't take a drink or use a cough drop while driving. With the world mostly closed, so are public restrooms, so I don't know if I'm going to be able to take much in the way of long rides, which is generally where the hustle does better on per hourly income rates. My fares were almost all from poor neighborhoods, and one of them, I think, just pounded a bong for 35 minutes while I was thankful that the new normal is a lot of ventilation.

As I write this, I'm looking over my finances, and adding would help. I'm also feeling a slight something in the back of my throat, which is almost certainly indigestion from dinner or seasonal allergies, but also could be yeah I should think of something else now.

Tomorrow, in all likelihood, I'm going to get back in the car and try to get to the Depot again.

I'll also, in all likelihood, turn on the apps.

Wish me luck. I need it.

You Brave

No caption needed. Move along, you.

Thoughts from a ride share during the early stages of a pandemic...

I'm doing the hustle on a weeknight in Trenton, the struggling capital of New Jersey that's only a few property value busting miles away from my home. It's where you find short rides, poor ratings and no tips, and the occasional incredulous look from a passenger when they realize the driver doesn't share their skin color. Or much else beyond the transaction. I'm there fairly often, because short rides frequently serve my purpose of trying to qualify for bonuses.

The hustle these days is part time (nights and weekends), when there isn't something more pressing going on. The reason why is that I'm working in my field again for a reasonable salary, but one that hasn't gone up since... gulp, 2013. So if I want to make more, I either need to consult or, in the last 3 years and 15K+ rides, this.

This has been here all that time. And now, suddenly, it might not. I get a fair number of rides from college kids, and that's done now. I get more from people going to train stations and yeah, not so much now. Still more go or come from airports, or sporting events, or concerts. The last part is folks coming home from bars and laundromats and grocery stores. I think they'll still do that. Probably.

So I'm in Trenton, and I get my fare. He's chatty, and tells me about his sister who drove for a platform, and how she got killed. "You do this, man? You brave."

And I don't know if he's messing with me or not, and I've heard variations of this conversation before -- honestly, after 15K rides, the conversations I haven't heard are rare -- so I fall to my default, which is to talk about how the app knows who the rider is, and who wants to jack my 10-year-old Honda with 299K miles that's secretly a great car, but only if you are OK with small and not much pick up, and, well, most people aren't. I drop him off and go on with my day, but the words stick.

You brave.

Well, maybe. Or any number of other words -- stubborn, stupid, depressed, doomed, lucky, short-sighted, desperate, debased -- because...

One of these rides really might end in something unfortunate.

Even more so now, in the starting days of a pandemic. Every time one of my passengers coughs now, I wonder. And every time I touch my face (stop touching your face), and for them, every time I sniff (seasonal allergies, honest), they probably wonder.

It's not like I'm taking their temperature before I let them in the car, after all. And it's also not as if my car is completely clean. It gets attention at the start of my shift, not during. (Unless there's been an obvious problem.)

It's stupid to risk my health and the health of my family. But I can't really pay back my debt if I don't have side hustle money. I'm a contractor on a contract these days, and these days are not made for keeping every conractor. Side hustle could be main again. Make the money while you still can.

In a world without sports, or travel, or public gatherings. At least for a little while.

You brave.

As long as I can be, sir. As long as I can be.

3/12/20 - Update: I'm taking a break for now. Too many cases reported close by, and while I think I can do this safely - bleach surfaces between rides and do a fever check before allowing entry - the risk is too high to friends and familiy. I'm pretty sure we are going to find super spreaders in the rideshare industry. In a full shift, I can easily be sharing the air with 50 people a day.

But, well, money's right. I might change my mind later. Not sure.