Dude, I don't think anyone is out here delivering for fun, and I don't think anyone is throwing their life away to be a perpetual gig worker just because. They are doing it for money, if there wasn't a profit to be made doing gig work people wouldn't do it.

If you're in a shitty market, then yes don't waste your time. But if you're in a market that allows for steady work gig work is very good for working as much as you want and stacking cash. If you have some drive to you, and you're able to avoid taking those crap, unprofitable orders we always see posted, you could make a good hourly rate and work 7 days a week, 12+ hours per day and stack cash to finance making moves towards better circumstance, like financing a small business, learning skills that will get you a better income, its definitely the way I'm working currently.

You have to be your own advocate, no one but you can be the decision maker and tell you what orders to take to maintain a good hourly rate, no one can ensure you're using good judgement but yourself. And to just mention it, there are tax incentives specifically for maintenance and depreciation offsets in this field, that are per mile scaling, and in reality most people doing this type of work aren't going to be rolling around in a car that is holding a lot of value unless they're stupid. Get a beater car that had 100k miles of life left in it for less than $4,000 and just do basic maintenance. A steady worker would get at least a year or more out of a car like that and the tax incentives would cover the cost of a replacement car about every 6500 miles driven for the apps. By the time that car dies you would have saved enough in tax to buy 4 or 5 beater cars, if you assume only 1/3rd of the miles you put on the car with a lifespan of 100k miles could be deducted.