You may not have a bad market. You may just have bad hours. I hear it all the time from Uber and Lyft drivers: “My market is dead.” No requests. No surge. No bonuses worth chasing. You sit in your car for 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, watching the app, wondering where all the passengers went.
Then Friday night comes around and suddenly the same market is slammed. Airport runs. Bar crowds. Concerts. Dinner reservations. Late-night rides. Surge pricing. So what happened? The market didn’t suddenly become good.
Demand changed. And more importantly, the supply of available drivers changed.
This is something too many drivers overlook. We tend to judge a market by what we see on our app at the exact moment we’re sitting there. But rideshare is a supply-and-demand business, and your biggest advantage isn’t necessarily finding the best market. It is finding the best hours within that market.
The Problem With Being Online All Day
There is a certain comfort in going online at 9 a.m. and staying online until 5 p.m. You worked eight hours. You made $160. That’s $20 an hour gross. Sounds reasonable, right? Not necessarily. What if six of those hours were mediocre and two hours were fantastic?
You could have made $60 during the morning, $40 around lunch and another $60 during the afternoon. Your average looks okay, but your actual opportunity was concentrated into a few specific windows. This is where drivers get themselves into trouble. They assume that because they’re online, they’re working.
You’re not necessarily working just because the app says you’re online. You’re working when your time is producing revenue. That distinction is huge.
Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube Channel for all the latest chatter, insights, and news from the delivery and rideshare industries.
Your Market Has a Rhythm
Every market has a rhythm, every market regardless of size is different. I’ve been driving for over a decade, and one thing I’ve learned is that you have to understand when your particular market breathes.
Monday morning may be completely different from Friday night. A Tuesday afternoon in the suburbs may be dead while downtown is packed. Airport demand may be strong at 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. but terrible at 2 p.m.
Restaurants create demand during dinner. Bars create demand late at night. Commuters create demand during rush hour. Airports create their own patterns based on flight schedules. Events can completely change a market for a few hours.
The point is simple: Passenger demand isn’t evenly distributed throughout the day. So why would you expect your earnings to be?
Stop Confusing Driver Saturation With Low Demand
Here’s another mistake I see constantly. A driver sits in a parking lot for 30 minutes without receiving a decent request and concludes: “There are too many drivers in this market.”
Maybe, but that’s not the only explanation. There could simply be too many drivers relative to passengers at that particular time and location. That’s a very different problem.
At 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, you might have 100 drivers competing for 80 available trips. At 7 p.m. on a Friday, you might have 100 drivers competing for 300 trips. Same market. Same drivers. Completely different economics.
And this is why I don’t like hearing drivers say, “Uber is oversaturated.” Oversaturated when? Where? For how long?
The Highest-Paying Hours Are Usually Not a Secret
You don’t need a Wall Street analyst to figure this out. You already have the data. Your own driving history can tell you. Look at your last 30 days and ask yourself: When did I make the most money per hour? Not the most gross income. Not the most rides. Not the most online hours. The most money per hour.
You might discover that your best hours are Friday and Saturday evenings. Maybe it’s weekday mornings. Maybe the airport runs between 5 and 8 a.m. Maybe Sunday afternoon. Every market is different. But once you identify your strongest windows, you can stop treating every hour as equally valuable.
This Is Where Multi-Apping Changes Everything
This is also where multi-apping becomes powerful. If Uber is slow at 2 p.m., why should you sit there staring at the screen? Turn on Lyft. Maybe Lyft has the better request. If both are slow, perhaps you should switch to delivery. The goal isn’t to be loyal to an app.
My time is for sale to the highest bidder.
If Uber has a $10 ride while Lyft has a $22 ride going in the direction I want to travel, why would I pretend those opportunities are equal? They’re not.
This is why tools that make multi-apping easier can be so valuable. Instead of manually bouncing between applications all day, you can let technology help you identify and manage opportunities across platforms.
The more important point, however, is the strategy behind it. Don’t optimize for being busy. Optimize for being profitable.
Check out the latest podcast episode: RSG269: This $12K EV Could Change Uber Driving Forever With Bingo Tech
Fewer Hours Can Mean More Money
Here’s the part many drivers don’t want to hear. You might actually make more money by driving fewer hours. Imagine Driver A works 50 hours per week and averages $18 gross per hour. That’s $900. Driver B works 30 hours but targets the best demand periods and averages $27 per hour. That’s $810. Driver A technically makes more. But Driver B worked 20 fewer hours. Those 20 hours have value. You could use them for another job, family, exercise, errands, investing, or simply not sitting behind the wheel waiting for a $6 ride.
And if Driver B improves from $27 to $32 an hour, suddenly the equation changes dramatically. 30 hours × $32 = $960. Now the driver working 20 fewer hours is making more money. That’s the game I want drivers to understand.
My Final Take
The next time you find yourself sitting in your car thinking, “Uber and Lyft are dead,” don’t immediately blame the market. Ask yourself better questions.
Am I online during the right hours?
Am I in the right location?
What does my historical data tell me?
What are passengers doing right now?
What other apps can I use?
What is my opportunity cost for sitting here?
Because your biggest problem may not be too many drivers. It may not be in low demand. It may not even be Uber or Lyft. You may simply be selling your time when nobody wants to buy it. You don’t need more hours. You need better hours.
Be safe out there!
Email me your comments to sergio@therideshareguy.com
