Happy Nice Mall

When Adam Potash started driving for Lyft six months ago to make a living, he was happy with his salary. The job was far from lucrative, but it earned around $200 a day before paying for expenses like gas and car maintenance.

But as gas prices have soared in recent weeks, Mr. Potash has barely been at par. To make up for this, he focused on driving during customer rush hours and tried to refuel at cheaper gas stations around San Francisco, where he works. It also cut the driving time from around 45 hours per week to around 20 hours.

“It hurts. I don’t have any money coming in,” said Mr. Potash, 48, about the reduced hours. “But I’m not willing to work at a loss.”

Concert workers who work for transit and distribution companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash have been hit hard by rising gas prices, as their ability to make money is directly tied to driving hundreds of miles each week. And because drivers are contract workers, companies don’t reimburse them for refueling costs.

Some drivers say they have enough gas and that the added cost of gas makes an already difficult financial equation untenable. The national average price of a gallon of gas hit a record $4.33 last week, according to AAA. In California, where Mr. Potash lives, gasoline now averages $5.77/gallon.

“High gas prices are the final nail in the coffin,” said Harry Campbell, who writes a blog called The Rideshare Guy and hosts a podcast aimed at helping drivers who drive. “Rising gas prices make a difficult situation even more difficult and for many drivers it is the last straw that pushes them to the edge of the abyss.”

In a survey of 325 drivers who followed his content last week, Mr. Campbell found that 38 percent drive less because of higher gasoline prices, and 15 percent have stopped driving altogether.

Some drivers across the country boycotted ride-hailing practices on Thursday, but it was difficult to say for sure how many participated. The effort, initially organized to raise awareness of driver safety, has been replaced by a frustration over how high gas prices make a tough job even harder.

Torsten Kunert, who advises drivers, said: “We started organizing about the lack of safety months ago, and when gas prices skyrocketed, many drivers said, ‘We need to get up and involve companies in both.’ On his YouTube channel, Professor of Rideshare.

Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash say overall driver numbers aren’t dropping. Uber said it now has more active drivers than it did in January. Both Uber and Lyft added small fees to ride prices in most locations over the next two months; they say this change will help compensate drivers.

“We know that drivers and couriers are feeling the sting of the record prices at the pump,” Liza Winship, Uber’s head of driver operations in the United States and Canada, said in a statement announcing the gas surcharge. Lyft has this feeling blog post On Monday.

DoorDash announced a gas rewards program on Tuesday. The company said those who use a prepaid debit card designed for DoorDash employees will get 10 percent cash back at gas stations, and DoorDash adds bonus payouts based on miles driven. Grubhub also said it will increase the driver’s salary.

Both Uber and Lyft say that even when factoring in rising gas prices, drivers are making more money since lockdowns were lifted than during the pandemic and even before the pandemic. And both companies are promoting a partnership with an app called GetUpside, which offers some cash back rewards for buying gas.

Gridwise, an app that helps drivers track their earnings and collect data, has found that drivers’ earnings have risen nationally in recent months, rising from an average of $308 a week in early January to $426 a week in early March. However, gasoline costs for drivers who come to call also rose from $31 per transaction to about $39 during the same period.

Uber and Lyft say all of the new gas charges — 35 to 55 cents per ride for Uber and 55 cents for Lyft — will go to drivers. However some drivers say the action is insufficient. Gas prices rose an average of 49 percent last year, according to the AAA.

“This insulted literally every driver and it was their first communication since gas prices soared,” said Philippe Jean, an Uber and Lyft driver in Coopersburg, PA.

Jennifer Montgomery, an UberEats driver in Las Vegas, whose gas costs $5 per gallon, admitted that the gas charge “hasn’t made the slightest change” in the cost of fuel, which has been at least $30 more each day since prices. started to increase.

Ms. Montgomery, 40, said she began to feel frustrated with work and began looking for other jobs that didn’t require her to drive. She has halved her six-hour daily shift because “it’s not really profitable anymore”.

“I don’t want to surrender anymore,” he said. “The groceries, especially when you have bills to pay and increased rent and mortgage costs — that affects everything else.”

Mr. Jean mostly takes Uber and Lyft during the winter and spring months when his job as a mechanic tends to slow down. He said he enjoys interacting with passengers and typically earns $300 to $400 a week, of which about $60 will fill his tank.

Recently, however, Mr. Jean had been paying twice that amount for gas and had to make deductions elsewhere to make up for it – including reducing his car insurance coverage.

“I no longer use Uber in the hope that I don’t have an accident because if I do, I will lose my car completely,” he said.

The gas price woes actually caused Mr. Jean to drive more in the short run, because people who had cars that were low on gas told him they had stopped driving. With the hybrid Toyota Prius, he thought he could close some of his business and still make some money. But Mr. Jean said he would give up Uber entirely later in the spring, when the mechanic business resumes due to high gas prices.

After all expense, he questioned whether he or the other drivers had profited from the call-in business.

“Personally, if I sit down and do the numbers, I think it will be head-to-head,” said Mr. Jean. “I don’t think we’re making any money out of it anymore. I guess I’m afraid to admit it to myself because then I would definitely stop doing it.”