Ask most new drivers what driving costs them and they’ll say gas. In this video from The Rideshare Guy, host Chris walks through the expenses that quietly eat into your pay long after you’ve filled the tank, and why a $25 ride doesn’t mean you made $25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWzE0sxuY6U
He starts with depreciation, the cost he says drivers overlook most. Put 30,000 to 40,000 miles a year on a $30,000 car and in a few years it can have well over 100,000 miles. Nobody sends you a depreciation bill every Friday; you find out when you go to sell, and the car you thought was worth $15,000 is worth $9,000. Next comes insurance: a rideshare endorsement or different coverage can add $20 to $50 a month, and skipping it to save money can backfire badly after an accident. Then maintenance: with oil changes every 5,000 miles, a 30,000-mile year means six of them, and brakes, rotors, alignment, and suspension wear out faster too. His advice is to treat maintenance as a cost per mile, such as setting aside 10 cents a mile, instead of waiting for the repair bill.
From the driver’s seat, this is exactly why full-time rideshare is such a tough living. The app shows you a fare, but your car is paying part of it, and you don’t feel that loss until it shows up all at once as a repair or a trade-in offer. The platforms don’t pay for any of it; you do.
If you drive full-time, run the numbers per mile, not per trip. Once you subtract depreciation, insurance, and maintenance, a lot of “good” rides stop looking good.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare.
Every driver knows the feeling: you pull up, send the “I’m here” text, and then you sit there watching the clock. In this Daily Drive episode, Levi Spires of the Tip You in the App channel breaks down a ride where his passenger made him wait the full seven minutes, and why Uber’s wait pay still left him behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOKVFMtL5VE
He accepted a $9 offer that he figured would pay about $29 an hour after expenses, but only if the passenger was ready and the trip ran on schedule. On UberX, the first two minutes of waiting are free, which he calls time donated to the passenger, and the five paid minutes that follow pay less than the ride itself. If he cancels at the seven-minute mark, he might get around a $4 fee, which covers his cost but not what he expected to earn. He also shares the signals he uses to decide whether to cancel early: a canned “be right there” reply, a low passenger rating, and how busy it is.
From the driver’s seat, this is the part of the job nobody advertises. Levi says about one in three pickups involves waiting, and every one of those minutes chips away at an already thin margin. The platform sets the wait rules, the passenger controls the clock, and the driver is left making split-second calls about whether to wait, cancel, or risk a bad rating.
If you’re driving full-time, those small losses add up across hundreds of rides. Know your cost per minute, set your own rules for when to walk away, and don’t assume “paid wait time” means you’re actually getting paid for your time.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare.
Uber or Lyft? It’s the first question every new driver asks, and in this video on The Rideshare Guy channel, Chris says it’s usually the wrong one. His point is that the drivers making the most money in 2026 aren’t loyal to either app anymore. They run both and use strategy to dodge low-paying trips and wasted time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3fh5xkaAJo
He walks through ride volume, pay per trip, the app experience, and bonuses. Uber tends to send more requests, but he lists the cons right alongside: more driver saturation, more terrible low-paying offers, and upfront fares that feel heavily manipulated. Lyft can feel more relaxed in some markets, but lower demand means dead periods that really hurt. And on bonuses, he notes Uber’s quests are becoming few and far between, with requirements that often feel unrealistic.
From the driver’s seat, notice what the “pros and cons” really add up to. One app floods you with junk offers, the other leaves you sitting with no pings, and the bonuses that used to fill the gap keep shrinking. “Use strategy” is good advice, but it also means the driver does the extra work of juggling two apps and filtering bad trips just to keep earnings where they used to be. Neither company is competing to pay you more.
If you’re thinking about driving full-time, the honest takeaway is this: switching apps won’t fix the business model. Go in knowing the pay is set by algorithms you don’t control, and plan accordingly.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare.
After 10 years and 32,000 rides, Jay Cradeur is done. In this video on The Rideshare Guy channel, he explains why he’s stepping away from driving Uber and Lyft, and from writing for The Rideshare Guy. He’s clear it isn’t a rage quit. It’s an honest look at what rideshare gave him, what it took from him, and why it was time to move on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8fSIWwLE8M
His biggest lesson is that rideshare is a tool, not an identity. He admits that for his first five years it was his identity. Then the pandemic changed things. He says he realized robotaxis were for real, and that at 66 his body couldn’t keep sitting in the car all the time.
From the driver’s seat, that hits home. Here’s a guy who did everything right: 2 a.m. alarms, a weekly car wash, gas the night before, and something like 350,000 miles on one Prius. Even so, the job wore on his body and the threat of driverless cars kept growing. Discipline can make you a better driver, but it can’t stop the platforms or the technology from changing under you.
His description sums it up well: rideshare can be a powerful tool when you use it on purpose, and a trap when it becomes who you are. If you’re driving full-time with no exit plan, take Jay’s advice and make the job serve a bigger plan, not the other way around.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare.
Chris from The Rideshare Guy has been driving for nearly a decade, and in this video he answers a simple question: would he start driving Uber in 2026? His honest answer isn’t yes and it isn’t no. It’s “it depends.” Watch it below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cec_EQeqwFA
He says it can make sense for extra income, as a bridge between jobs, for college students with odd schedules, or for retirees who like getting out. But if you’re looking at it as a forever full-time career, he says to think hard before you commit. Coming from someone with ten years in the seat, that’s worth hearing.
The most telling part is his history lesson. When he started, drivers got about 80% of what the passenger paid. Then came a rate card based on time and distance, with rates that he says rarely moved in the driver’s favor. Now it’s upfront fares, and he says that has meant lower pay across the board. In his words, pay has gone down since he started, while vehicle, maintenance, and repair costs have gone up.
From the driver’s side, that’s the real takeaway. Ten years of experience didn’t earn him a raise. It earned him a smaller cut and bigger bills. His tip to run several apps and stay loyal to none is smart, but it also tells you the platforms won’t be loyal to you either. If you’re thinking about doing this full-time, go in with a backup plan.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare.
The Gridwise channel put out a video asking how much Lyft drivers really make in 2026. The host drives in Jacksonville, and he’s upfront that in his market, turning Lyft on can feel like a waste of time. Watch it below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9o-nQpGw8c
He walks through how Lyft pays: a base rate, per-mile and per-minute rates, and Lyft takes its service fee off the top before you see a dime. Then come the extras. Bonus zones sound great until you do the math, and he points out that 10% on a $15 ride is only $1.50. Ride challenges pay out in tiers, but they lock your time into Lyft, even when your market is slow.
The number people screenshot is a little over $20 per active hour. But he’s clear that’s gross, before gas, maintenance, tires, insurance, and taxes. After those, he says most drivers land in the low teens to low twenties per hour in actual take-home. And the dead time between trips, which nobody pays you for, drags that down further.
From the driver’s seat, that’s the whole story of this blog. The app shows you the big number, and you quietly cover the costs that shrink it. If you’re thinking about doing this full-time, plan your budget around the take-home number, not the screenshot.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare.
The Rideshare Guy channel just asked the question every new driver asks: is driving for Uber still worth it in 2026? Host Chris’s honest answer is “yes and no, it depends.” That hedge says a lot, so watch it below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWKpAHBQUHU
Chris frames Uber as a possible side income, money for an extra bill or a vacation. Notice that he isn’t pitching it as a full-time living. Then he gets into the traps, and those are what full-timers live with every day.
His first point is the big one: Uber prices rides for what’s good for Uber, not for you. Gas goes up, tires get pricier, and the app doesn’t care. He says some rides don’t even cover what it costs to run your car. From the driver’s seat, that means you, not the company, carry the whole cost of the business.
He also warns about long trips that leave you with no ride back, so you drive those miles home unpaid. In his words, that fare you thought was good should be cut in half. And sitting in the wrong spot can mean waiting a long time for nothing.
His fix is to know your cost per mile, skip bad rides, and study your market. That’s solid advice, but it proves the point of this blog. Making rideshare pay takes constant math, and you take all the risk. When the best answer to “is it worth it?” is “it depends,” you shouldn’t build your whole livelihood on it.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare.
On every Uber or Lyft trip, three parties sit in the deal: the rider, the platform, and you. The rider gets a ride. The platform gets a cut, data, and control. You bring the car, the gas, the insurance risk, the unpaid wait time, and the wear on the odometer. If you are driving full-time for a living, that imbalance is not a quirk of one bad night. It is the job.
This is not a rant about one surge that fell through. It is a clear look at who actually comes out ahead when the trip ends, and why full-time rideshare drivers so often feel like the person who paid for everyone else’s convenience.
What the rider actually gets
The rider taps an app, sees a price, and usually gets door-to-door service without owning a car for that trip. They get GPS tracking, a rating system that pressures you to be polite even when they are late, and a support path that often starts with the company, not with you.
They also get something you do not: a fixed cost for that ride. Yours starts before the ping (fuel, insurance, miles already on the car) and keeps running after the drop-off (dead miles home, cleaning, the next unpaid reposition).
What the platform keeps
Uber and Lyft do not just “match” you to a rider. They set the price the rider sees, the offer you see, and the rules that decide whether you stay online. Under upfront pricing, the fare the passenger pays and the pay you accept are not a simple fixed split. That gap is the platform’s take.
How big is that gap? It depends on the market and the trip. A 2025 Guardian report on University of Oxford research into Uber’s UK pricing found a median take rate of about 29% after dynamic pricing, with some trips above 50%. In the U.S., the National Employment Law Project has described Uber and Lyft take rates as around 40% on average, and much higher on some individual rides. Uber’s own help pages say drivers earn the rider’s base, time, and distance rates minus Uber’s service fee, and that tips go 100% to the driver. The tip line matters; the fee line is where the platform’s real leverage sits.
The platform also keeps something softer than money: control. It can change offers overnight, raise acceptance pressure, or deactivate an account and put the burden on you to prove you should keep working. The rider still gets a car. You may lose the week’s income.
What the driver puts in
You supply the vehicle: depreciation, tires, brakes, oil, and the day a big repair hits after years of high mileage. You supply unpaid minutes waiting for pings, circling an airport queue, or driving empty to the next hot spot. You supply the customer-service face when a rider is drunk, late, rude, or wrong about the pin.
Even the tax code treats your car as a real cost. The IRS business standard mileage rate for 2026 is 72.5 cents per mile from January through June, and 76 cents per mile starting July 1, 2026. That rate is not extra income. It is the government’s rough measure of what it costs to put a business mile on a car. If app earnings look decent before you subtract those miles, you are looking at gross, not take-home.
Then there is risk the rider and the platform do not share the same way: a scratched bumper, a cleanup that never pays enough, an insurance gap between trips, a rating streak that tanks after one bad passenger. Full-time driving stacks those hits week after week. A part-time driver can shrug and go back to a W-2 job. A full-time driver is paying rent with that stack.
A real driver walks through the take rate
You do not have to take my word for how opaque this feels from the seat. Longtime Uber driver Levi Spires (Tip You in the App) recorded a trip where a passenger paid about $20 and he received $8, then broke down why so many people still assume the driver gets “at least half.” Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP7oyk4bHGs
His point is not that every trip looks like that one. It is that the mental model most riders (and a lot of new drivers) carry is wrong, and that wrong model keeps people from asking the only question that matters for a living wage: after the platform’s cut and after the car’s cost, what is left?
Why full-time makes the imbalance worse
Part-time rideshare can plug a gap. Full-time rideshare asks the same deal to fund your whole life. That is when the three-party split stops being an annoyance and starts being a trap.
You need more hours to hit the same net because expenses scale with miles. You chase late-night or early-morning demand because the offers look better, and you pay for it in sleep. You stay online longer because the week has a rent number attached to it. The platform still takes its cut on every completed trip. The rider still pays a known price. You are the only one whose true cost rises with every mile and every empty minute.
There is also no career ladder inside the app. Five years of perfect ratings does not turn into a title, a pension, or a skill that reads cleanly on a resume. The work teaches local roads, patience, and hustle. It does not teach a hiring manager why those years should count like a traditional job.
So who comes out worst?
The rider gets the trip they paid for. The platform gets revenue, pricing power, and the right to rewrite the rules. The driver gets what is left after fees, unpaid time, the car’s share, and self-employment taxes.
That does not mean every trip is a loss, or that nobody should ever drive. It means if you treat Uber or Lyft as a full-time living, stop measuring success by the gross number on the weekly summary. Measure the week the way a business owner would: money in, miles out, hours actually worked, and what broke on the car. If that math only works when you ignore depreciation and dead miles, you are not winning the trip. You are subsidizing it.
On every ride, someone is paying more than they think. Too often, that someone is the person behind the wheel.
Follow Rideshare Sean on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (username: Rideshare Sean) for more real talk about driving rideshare. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ridesharesean
Full-time rideshare means no health plan, no retirement match, no paid time off, and the full self-employment tax. Here is how to build your own safety net.
