# You can't, you won't, please don't



## MHR (Jul 23, 2017)

*Inspiring: Local Uber Driver Makes $100k A Year Driving 84 Hours A Week*

You can't, you won't, please don't.
By Edward Ongweso Jr​
Over the weekend, a video following one UberEats driver's progress towards $100,000 a year went viral-brought to you by Grow, a sponsored content partnership between CNBC and Acorns, a financial services company.

"This Uber Eats driver is on track to make $100,000 a year - here's how he's doing it" read the corresponding article's headline. After the pandemic killed his online business and caused a hiring freeze, Sam Lyon created what he called the "Uber Eats Challenge" on TikTok to see how much he could earn in the month of June.

The challenge was simple: make as much money as possible by driving as long as possible, every day, for the entire month; Uber Eats allows drivers to be online for a maximum of 12 hours, so Lyon worked 12 hour days, 7 days a week, for 30 days.

The video is quick to point out that he made $8,357 for the month, putting him on track to make over $100,000 "at his insane pace" while a typical five-day work week earns a measly average of $72,540. Some of his expenses are talked about concretely, namely: gas ($599), mileage (4,844 miles), an oil change ($49), and a phone holder ($5), and taxes (30 percent or ~$2,961). His post-tax income is estimated to be $5,396 with another $653 in expenses.

The video's core premise of projecting one month's earnings into the year is absurd once you step back and ask whether a human being should spend 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, inside of their car. Even if Lyon could earn $100,000 a year doing this, why should it be seen as anything other than horrifying? In most states, other types of commercial drivers are prohibited from driving more than 10-11 hours a day or 60 hours a week because that's when you begin to see increases in driver fatiguethat correspond to increases in fatal crashes.

Multiple studies and experts have laid out that driving full-time for ride-hail companies has a serious toll on a driver's health and mental-well being. In New York City, poor working conditions led to a string of app-based driver suicides and are connected to another string of suicides in a taxi industry decimated by ride-hail companies.

Add on the fact that ride-hail drivers and food delivery couriers like Lyon are misclassified as independent contractors, despite the existence of an employer-employee relationship, and are left footing the bill for benefits employees enjoy such as health insurance and paid leave. Even during the pandemic, Uber's own paid sick leave program was a spectacle that failed to provide for drivers who contracted covid-19 or were at risk.

*But what makes this video even more absurd is after actually calculating expenses and taxes, Lyon is barely on track to make $40,000 a year despite working 12 hours a day, every single day.

Immediately, the video fails to accurately portray his earnings or expenses. In Lyon's own breakdown video, he says that $2,988 of his money came from tips-about a third of his income, so Uber only actually paid him $5,369.*

Lyon drove 4,844 miles but it's not clear how much that would actually cost him if it kept at this for a year. The IRS pegs business vehicle operating costs at 57.5 cents per mile or $2,785 and knocks his non-tip Uber pay down to $2,584 ($7.18 an hour). With tips, he'd earn a grand total of $5,572 or $15.48 an hour. However, studies tend to find that driving expenses are much higher: a 2020 study of Seattle and Washington State ride-hail drivers, put the operating costs per mile at 72.5 cents, which would cost Lyon $3,512. That brings down his non-tip Uber pay to $1,857 ($5.16 an hour) for a grand total of $4845 ($13.46 an hour).

Lyon is also setting another 30 percent of his income for taxes-which contractors pay their net income, not gross income as the video suggested. After taxes, Lyon would be left with $3,360 a month-that's approximately $9.33 an hour or $40,320 a year for driving 84 hours a week, every week, for an entire year. A far cry from the advertised $100,000 a year.

If not for the video's giant Acorns and CNBC branding, it would be indistinguishable from the ongoing PR blitz spearheaded by Uber to preserve its misclassification scheme in California and prevent other states from getting ideas about reclassification. Uber, Lyft, and a coalition of gig companies have now spent $181 million on Yes on Prop 22, a campaign supporting a ballot measure that would exempt them from following California's labor laws. Uber and Lyft have also massively expanded their lobbying operations in California and Washington DC in attempts to undermine any legislation deemed a threat to their business model.

Just last month, Uber's PR campaign moved to co-opt the #DeleteUber-a campaign to delete the app after it tried to break a strike by JFK airport taxi drivers protesting Trump's 2016 Muslim ban-by revealing a billboard that read "If you tolerate racism, delete Uber" and in smaller print read "Black people have the right to move without fear." Nevermind the fact that Uber exploits its predominantly Black and brown driver workforce by paying them subminimum wages.

Lyft has also had its own PR campaign and released two ads last month meant to paint it as an engine of equality and justice. During the Democratic National Convention, Lyft aired an advertisement defending its misclassification. The ad asserted that its misclassification of drivers as independent contractors gave them the "flexibility and freedom" needed to be "on the frontlines of the pandemic" and "deliver food and medicine to keep everyone safer." Another ad, titled "Lifting Up Communities of Color"featured Maya Angelou's reading of On the Pulse of Morning, which the poet laureate first read at Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration.

"Access to transportation is one of the biggest drivers of social and economic mobility," Lyft explains in the ad's description. "Underserved communities of color lack access to affordable and reliable transportation, which has been magnified by the pandemic. People are facing high levels of unemployment, health care challenges, and more."

It is hard to reconcile such words with the fact that a recent study found both Lyft and Uber hike prices for trips in non-white neighborhoods. As Aylin Caliskan, one of the study's co-authors, told the New Scientist: "Basically, if you're going to a neighbourhood where there's a large African-American population, you're going to pay a higher fare price for your ride."

*No amount of spin can change the fact that these companies do not offer livable wages and they do not lift up communities of color, but that won't stop them from insisting others-or benefiting from others eager to repeat corporate propaganda as fact.*

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...kes-dollar100k-a-year-driving-84-hours-a-week


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## SHalester (Aug 25, 2019)

ha ha. wake me up when he does that for 12 months......Not going to happen.


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## RideShare_Hustler (Jun 18, 2020)

Good for him, I put about the same hours for 14-15k a month. It’s tough but doable, while you’re young.


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

MHR said:


> *Inspiring: Local Uber Driver Makes $100k A Year Driving 84 Hours A Week*
> 
> You can't, you won't, please don't.
> By Edward Ongweso Jr​
> ...


This . . .this Applies to That !


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## NauticalWheeler (Jun 15, 2019)

tohunt4me said:


> This . . .this Applies to That !
> View attachment 507845


This is why I often don't pay my bills. The obligations don't follow me into the afterlife and I enjoy life much more while ignoring them


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

NauticalWheeler said:


> This is why I often don't pay my bills. The obligations don't follow me into the afterlife and I enjoy life much more while ignoring them


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## NauticalWheeler (Jun 15, 2019)

tohunt4me said:


> View attachment 507860


Do you use Mozilla Firefox as your main browser?


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## Lissetti (Dec 20, 2016)

Wow! Uber's propaganda machine is on fire this year, with this guy. I think I recognize him. Wasn't he on Glee?


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## Paul Vincent (Jan 15, 2016)

Lissetti said:


> Wow! Uber's propaganda machine is on fire this year, with this guy. I think I recognize him. Wasn't he on Glee?
> 
> View attachment 507914
> 
> ...


I thought it was Ashton Kutcher


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## Fuzzyelvis (Dec 7, 2014)

tohunt4me said:


> This . . .this Applies to That !
> View attachment 507845


Well that's the most depressing thing I've ever read...


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## ConkeyCrack (Nov 19, 2019)

Most I made a month doing UE was 10K. You know, back when you got paid per mile and minute. I was working crackhead shifts. 12-14 hours a day 7 days a week


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## Nats121 (Jul 19, 2017)

I notice this time it's revealed that this "news story" is the result of some sort of financial partnership between CNBC and a financial services company. In other words it's an infomercial.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to discover that the author of the story, Edward Ongweso is a shill in a Three Card Monte game playing the part of the "good cop" by "criticizing" the overwork of the driver.

The driver was fed a steady diet of unicorn deliveries by Uber for recruitment purposes.

The story becomes a bigger scam when the propagandists extrapolate the earnings to a full year and present it as a 100k per year job even though the alleged deliveries took place for only one month.

Scam.


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## WEY00L (Mar 6, 2019)

SHalester said:


> ha ha. wake me up when he does that for 12 months......Not going to happen.


I made $200 on a 1 hour trip once...I was on pace to make $876,000 for the year if I could have kept up that up.


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## bethswannns (Mar 22, 2020)

this guy is not going to finish his year of doing only UE. After his first month, he already started trending towards doing social media since his videos are so popular... 

Youtuber/Twitch is the real deal if you are a popular streamer.. Easy cash will rain down on you..


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## I will crack Lyft hacks (Aug 5, 2019)

WEY00L said:


> I made $200 on a 1 hour trip once...I was on pace to make $876,000 for the year if I could have kept up that up.


Your not counting expenses.

Deduct 30 cents a mile like Dara suggests. You barely make 650,000$.

NO way you make a penny more than 650k. IMO.


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## #professoruber (Feb 19, 2018)

The expenses part is clearly inline with how drivers think. I spent $599 on gas and drove


NauticalWheeler said:


> Do you use Mozilla Firefox as your main browser?


Firefox is used for porn and chrome is used for safe browsing. We must all keep them separate just in case family/friend needs to use the browser. I hate when my wife sees my history and questions my porn choices. &#129300;


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## Taxi2Uber (Jul 21, 2017)

MHR said:


> put the operating costs per mile at 72.5 cents
> Lyon is also setting another 30 percent of his income for taxes


Silly.
Neither one should be that high.


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

A


NauticalWheeler said:


> Do you use Mozilla Firefox as your main browser?


Anything but Google.


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## DJJoeyZ (May 1, 2020)

More voodoo math sugar to lure in other gullible ants and allow UE to cut our pay again due to an abundance of wannabe millionaires.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

WEY00L said:


> I made $200 on a 1 hour trip once...I was on pace to make $876,000 for the year if I could have kept up that up.


Then WHY ARE YOU WASTING TIME HERE??!!


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## WEY00L (Mar 6, 2019)

I will crack Lyft hacks said:


> Your not counting expenses.
> 
> Deduct 30 cents a mile like Dara suggests. You barely make 650,000$.
> 
> NO way you make a penny more than 650k. IMO.


Nobody likes a hater.


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## Kurt Halfyard (Dec 13, 2017)

If there is one thing that unites 90% of uber drivers, it is being BAD AT ARITHMETIC.


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## Young Kim (Jan 28, 2015)

MHR said:


> ​
> *No amount of spin can change the fact that these companies do not offer livable wages and they do not lift up communities of color, but that won't stop them from insisting others-or benefiting from others eager to repeat corporate propaganda as fact.*


@MHR my friend, yours is truly an eye opening article! Thanks for your input. I read every word, and won't forget it.


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