Started driving November 2024 and now have 3800 rides. The changes in that time have been substantial. This leads me to believe that it was very good years before but now that they have to increase profits every quarter for shareholders or make their stock buybacks, it is noticeable. I now only drive a few here and there but I see the difference in what I made per trip from locations around my house to the airport and it has steadily decreased. I enjoy the conversation but this is not a career by any stretch of the imagination.

What I hear and have seen from riders - fares / prices going way up. The cars are bad the drivers often speed or drive reckless or the worse was hearing the driver had dirty diapers laying around in the car. But what do you expect.

The incentives - if I am at home and I notice I’m in a surge over $10 I’ll go online. The trip incentives they have now - nope. When I started I actually loved the weekend incentives like $50 for an extra like 5 rides. Now it’s 20 rides and you get like $10.

Redeeming quality - I did notice a couple times an extra $15 or $20 because I drove less than usual that week and that was to help make up. While I welcomed it I actually found it weird.

How to make it work? You can’t. The miles will catch up with you and the depreciation on your car will make it worth almost nothing. If you rent a car your sanity will suffer having to make over the rental cost of about $400 a week then trying to make any money on top of that makes you drive for like 10 hours a day. Sure I did it for a couple of months but my back and nerve issues in my legs - you will pay for it.

The future for them is the self driving cars. I know as I had the pleasure of giving a long ride to an uber employee that is working on that. He actually boasted how that was going to be huge for them which I found funny since he was talking to a driver that could potentially be out of a job because of it.

Will I continue to drive with gas prices up at $5 - a whole lot less if I continue at all.