# Uber Sucks in Florida!



## crowsandcats (Sep 17, 2015)

*Summary*: Used to Uber in Santa Barbara, was successful with it there. Just moved to Port Saint Lucie, FL where demand is almost non-existent.

What are decent cities to do Uber in Florida?

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I recently moved out to Florida from Santa Barbara, California, and am currently living in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. I'm applying to some local post office jobs in the area and in other areas around central-south Florida. The position I'm looking at is Rural Carrier Associate for the post office. The pay is decent (over $15/hr), but they only _guarantee _one day of work per week. The rest of the time you're on call, so it's not really feasible to have other jobs, since you can't say for sure when you're going to get called to work - could be 1 day a week, but other weeks you could work 7 days a week.

So, I need to do something like Uber on the side, which I can do whenever.

I did Uber in Santa Barbara and could easily net $400 per week if I worked 40 hours. I was doing a 5am-1pm shift with an hour break, and consistently made $1300-$1700 per month. After factoring in wear-and-tear costs and gas costs, I calculated that I was earning $11.70 per hour. I should also mention that I was doing Lyft too. Lyft earnings composed about one fifth of those figures.

Now here in Florida, Wow! fares are $1.80 per mile in Port Saint Lucie. That's great! Yet, once you cross the border into Martin County, the fares drop to $0.95 cents per mile. Horrible! It doesn't really matter though, because the bottom line is that there's no demand here.

Last Thursday I tried doing Uber here in Port Saint Lucie for the first time. I hit the road at 6am and didn't get my first request until 7:20 and had to drive 14 minutes away to take someone a decent distance, but that was in Martin County so, I netted less than $5 for that one ride. I drove around some more after that for a half hour and didn't get any more requests, so decided to stop Uber for the day, because I had other things to do.

The next morning I went out and took someone almost as soon as I left the house. It was a decent trip, and started in Port St. Lucie, so it came out to almost a $13 fare. Then I drove around, waited about a half hour, had one more request that was more than 20 minutes away, so the guy cancelled after a couple minutes, and then I waited another hour and a half or so, and didn't get any more requests.

Third day: An hour and a half...no requests.

Fourth day: Had the app on for a good two hours (6:30am-8:30am) and didn't get any requests.

I had some flop mornings in Santa Barbara (mostly during the middle of the week), but those flop mornings were nothing like here. I could still get the occasional ride, and make some decent money.

I don't get this place. My second passenger said that Uber is only two months old here, but I remember about 5 months ago, looking at the Uber ride request "heat map" of the area, so I figure it's been around longer than a couple months.

Also, there's no promotion. In Santa Barbara they ran ads in the papers, had office time with in-person Uber support employees, did the first ride free deal, and everyone used it. Port Saint Lucie is just a suburban sprawl, without any downtown, no well-trafficked airport, and it seems like everyone owns a car, and there's no college party crowd. The locals suggest waiting until the snowbirds come down, but isn't that just old retirees? Can't imagine they're a popular demographic with Uber.

I could snatch a post office job anywhere in Florida, so I prefer to be somewhere where Uber is popular. Any suggestions? I'm not looking to make a killing, but just want to be somewhere where I could at least make enough to get by during times when the post office is slow.


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## Roz (Oct 14, 2015)

Orlando, Tampa, Broward


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## mywealthyplace (Sep 25, 2015)

Now that Broward is back online, that would be my choice....anywhere but here in PSL. I drive north to Indian River county to make any money.


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