Should You Drive Long Distance With No Boost Or Surge?

Breaking down the cost

Being an uber driver is not easy.

"Well, who told you that being your own boss is easy?"

However, now instead of being paid per month, you are being paid weekly! But, there will be expenses like rental, petrol, car wash etc.

We all know that one of the highest cost on the road as an uber driver is your petrol. So, how can we use it to our advantage effectively and efficiently?

Well, one of the first step is to determine your car's fuel consumption rate.

For example, if you are driving a 7 seater Toyota Sienta (non hybrid), you will roughly know that if you gas up $50 based on $2.17 per litre from Esso today, it will roughly travel for a distance of 300km.

Which is $0.167 per km for the cost. Let's round it up to $0.20 (because in business, we want to use the best scenario approach)

So, if you are able to get an earning of $1 per km (according to experience this is at least above average good earnings), you will be getting a $0.80 nett earnings (after minus away your petrol cost)

And assuming that for an hour of drive of averagely 30km per hour, you will be getting nett $24/hr (Yes, you are right, we haven't less off the car rental yet)

Therefore, if you are a full time uber driver who drives 8-10 hours per day, you will be roughly getting $192 to $240 

In order to calculate your nett earnings after car rental (assuming in the range of $50 to $75), we shall take $192 - $50 = $142 (if its $50 per day rental), $192 - $75 = $117 (if its $75 per day rental)

So what's the conclusion?

As the above assumption came with $1 per km travelled and not factoring in the amount of time spent to pick up the rider,  the real amount can vary greatly.

However, if you have been ubering for quite long enough, you will noticed that for long distance with no boost and surge, it is very unlikely that you get paid more than $1 per km travelled.

Therefore, if you are a full time uber driver who wants to make a daily nett income of more than $117 per day, probably you might choose not to go for long distance pick up without any boost or surge. 

Not forgetting that you still want to hit the quest given to you (long distance per trip means lesser time to go for more trips)