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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Fuck Cars
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there's no way to make delivery worth it for small items like this, be it by foot / bike / electric scooter / carrier pigeon
Well apparently there is considering it’s a popular service. I’m not sure what you mean by this.
It's popular because the companies that run it are profiting enough to keep doing it. The actually drivers, however, don't realize how much they're being screwed over.
I drove down doordash for a while. Trust me, every driver knows how much they're getting screwed. You'll never be more class-conscious than having 30+ interactions with people as broke as you every day, and seeing every possible angle of fellow working class jobs. You do it for one of several reasons: you want some tiny modicum of control in your life through your schedule, you desperately need the money and it's easy as fuck to get a delivery job, or you started it for one of those reasons or something similar, got good enough to be ahead of the curve, and it's now more appealing than finding something else. The last one was where I was at.
I had done the job enough that I was making $18 an hour, well above the average in my area, and despite needing to pay for gas and taxes on a 1099a, it was still more appealing to keep control and flexibility over my life than to do something else. I could take days off whenever I wanted, see friends during the week, and coordinate my schedule with my fiancee easily. You're very aware that you're getting screwed, but you choose the devil you know, as they say.
Ding ding ding.
I don't hate myself enough to do Doordash (yet), but I'm too fucking autistic to keep any job other than rideshare.
If you don't have a fuel efficient car, I wouldn't even consider it. If you do, you need to devote a lot of time to it before it becomes at all worth it (100 orders in last 30 days, good ratings, and above 70% order acceptance rate). Once you're there, it's basically as profitable as any other service job, but with the caveat that it's entirely on you and your executive function to work enough (very boring) hours to pay the bills.
Edit: also, wear and tear on your car is gonna be worth more than the job in any job where you use your personal car for 100% of the work. I would consider any of these jobs a temporary measure.
I encountered a guy doing DoorDash in a fucking RAM truck the other day. Just couldn't believe what I was seeing.
And it should be mentioned that lots of short trips are hard on cars. EVs are probably much better for this, but I would guess that most delivery drivers (who are using their own personal vehicle) aren't rolling around in EVs.
Yep. For this reason, I left my car running when I'd stop, as idling on the hybrid battery was better than needing to cold start the car 50 times a day.