BETTER EARNINGS THAN CABS?
The fares may be good for users, but not so much for me. On average, I collected $161 a day as an Uber driver – a quarter of which came from the financial incentives offered by the firm.
After deducting $50 for car rental and $25 for petrol, I earned $86 for about eight to nine hours of work. This works out to a monthly income of around $2,600.
Daily takings can be bumped up to $120 (which means a monthly income of $3,600), but that is only if I drive 10 to 12 hours. My daily earnings using GrabCar were similar.
A big reason for the lean fares was that demand for Uber and GrabCar dries up swiftly after the morning peak hours, before picking up again in the evening.
On one weekday morning after 10.30am, I drove 11km along Commonwealth Avenue passing through Queenstown, Holland Road, Ghim Moh and Clementi housing estates without a single booking on my GrabCar app.
The Uber surge during peak hours – when fares spike as demand does – also proved elusive.
On my first day, the app showed that there was a surge in demand in Buangkok which was five minutes away from my location, so I went for it. By the time I got there, the surge had ended.
Of my 44 Uber trips, 43 were in the morning and evening peak hours. And only two of them involved passengers paying additional surge fares. The extra I collected amounted to just $11.76.
Without incentives, the earnings from Uber and GrabCar fares were much less than from driving cabs.
And drivers who depend on incentives to boost their regular income put themselves at risk when the sweeteners change weekly, or even daily.
During my week’s driving, Uber lowered its minimum hourly guaranteed peak hour fare from $18 to $17 an hour, while GrabCar bumped up drivers’ fares during the peak hours by 25 per cent.
The incentives peaked on Christmas Eve, with GrabCar guaranteeing $25 for each trip and Uber promising $25 to $30 for each hour of driving that day. But this Uber bonus was unavailable on Christmas Day.
Uber’s most appealing pitch to drivers is how they can drive a car that pays for itself. Its subsidiary Lion City Rentals rents out used cars at $58 to $62 each day for a minimum of five weeks and new cars at $71 to $82 each day for at least six months.
While these rental cars are cheaper than taxis, which cost $130 a day to rent, a driver still needs to put in at least four hours each day just to cover the cost of rental and petrol.
I also found several extra costs – a higher fuel bill, Uber and GrabCar’s commission, the high insurance excess payment in the event of an accident, and waiting up to one week to be paid.
My daily petrol bill was about $25, roughly double that of diesel taxis since diesel costs about 40 per cent less a litre but gives about a third more mileage.
The 20 per cent commission to Uber and GrabCar was a bit of a downer. A hard-working driver who earns $200 in fares each day by driving more than 14 hours would lose $40 to Uber and GrabCar.
Work in the $80 rental for a new car and the higher fuel bill, the cost of running a new private-hire car works out to be the same as renting a new taxi.
There is also the worry about accidents. Car rental companies slap an excess of as high as $4,000, even if the driver is not at fault. A single accident could wipe out a month’s earnings.
Demand for Uber and GrabCar rockets when it rains, but I stopped driving when the visibility was poor. The risk was just too high.
Uber fares are paid using credit cards and it calculates payment in weekly pay blocks from Monday to Sunday, paying out on Wednesday the following week.
And since some car rental companies deduct the weekly rent directly from Uber’s payment and pay the driver the balance, it means another one or two days of waiting before one receives his earnings.
Several drivers I met said this was a reason why they preferred GrabCar – most of its passengers pay cash.
INCONSIDERATE PASSENGERS
While the peaks and troughs in daily demand were easy to get accustomed to, dealing with inconsiderate passengers was less so.
Most preferred to be left alone, with headphones glued to their ears and their eyes focused on their smartphones. Of the 88 passengers I ferried, only one addressed me by my name and asked whether I had my lunch.
My most pleasant encounter was with an American in his 40s, his pre-teenage son and their poodle called Hugo. They were chatty and said my car was very clean. Just before getting off at their swanky Nassim Hill condominium, the man bent down to straighten the car mat with his hands.
One GrabCar passenger in shorts and T-shirt – a man in his 20s who had a strong cigarette odour – took off his slippers as soon as he sat next to me. He tucked his left foot under his right knee, giving me a full view of the bare sole of his dirt-stained foot. It was not very nice.
Several passengers brought food into the car. One young couple heading to East Coast Park even started eating their McDonald’s fries.
Several did not give exact details of their pick-up points. I had a GrabCar booking for a pick-up at simply “Lorong Telok”, a 150m one-way street of shophouses. The passenger also had a Malaysian telephone number, which I could not get through to.
A handful disagreed with how I drove. One wanted me to drive against the flow of traffic at the basement carpark of her Jervois Road condominium, while another chided me when I drove against the flow of traffic by mistake at the basement carpark of her Holland Road condominium.
A woman that I picked up at a Cavenagh Road townhouse at 7.45pm on a Friday wanted to go to Duxton Hill “by the fastest way”.
I told her that there was a massive jam in Orchard Road and Bras Basah Road, and I could avoid the jam by taking Bukit Timah Road and North Bridge Road. She agreed, but only to grumble later that I took a longer route.
Two passengers even directed me to break traffic rules – the one who wanted to be picked up along a red bus lane, and another who, after being picked up in Eu Tong Sen Street, insisted that I go straight on the left-turn-only lane.
The most annoying passengers were those who cancelled their bookings after I had accepted them.
The most unreasonable case was one in which I had already arrived at the Verge to pick a passenger up. She asked me on the phone to wait for her at a side road, which I did, only to cancel minutes later.
When I asked Uber about the cancellation, a helpdesk staff member pointed out its policy of allowing passengers to cancel bookings without penalties if they were made within five minutes. It did not matter that the driver had already arrived.
ALL A NUMBERS GAME
After a week on the road, I received a decent 4.76-star rating out of the maximum five for Uber. For GrabCar, it was 4.5 stars. I also accepted 85 per cent of the jobs assigned to me by Uber and 88 per cent of those by GrabCar. And I did not cancel a single job.
The numbers are vital because both Uber and GrabCar require a minimum four-star rating, and drivers accepting 85 and 70 per cent of jobs respectively, before they pay out weekly incentives.
Numbers apply to Uber passengers too. After each trip, drivers get to rate them. There is no real penalty for passengers, except that drivers may be less likely to accept bookings from those with poor ratings. GrabCar passengers do not get rated.
After I ended my driving stint, I found an online forum where Uber and GrabCar drivers hang out. It is awash with complaints about long hours spent on the road.
One forum member, who stopped driving with Uber after five weeks, wrote: “I drove for SMRT, TransCab and Premier. Taxiing (sic) full time can still send our kids to school. Ubering full-time you don’t even have time for your kids.”
Uber and GrabCar work for those who already have a car and are looking to earn some extra cash.
But for those who are drawn by the prospect of driving a personal car or to earn a living, it does mean long hours on the road.
In this sense, driving with Uber and GrabCar is not significantly different from driving cabs, even if the cars do not carry the taxi liveries.
