I have been riding Uber(cab) weekly from the beginning, and American taxis for decades. I have made it a point to interview many taxi drivers and almost every Uber driver about their experience as a businessperson.

The above article is excellent in conveying that “there is not one taxi driver”.

However, having collected hundreds of stories from Uber and Taxi drivers, I came out with some consistent themes, and some interesting anecdotes:

  1. uberX was amazing as a career until they dropped the price below that to taxis in ‘12/’13; at which point it became a better job for part-timers and harder to make a living at
  2. taxi drivers are generally oppressed by owner/operators; as usual, those with capital who can afford to buy medallions in those cities, then rent the cars to the drivers, who hustle-hustle-hustle to make their paycheck, use exploitive payment processing for credit cards like PayPass and or dialing in the number and having to wait for their payment from the owner. In the major cities I have sampled, Philly to NY to SF, Bay Area and Oakland, Las Vegas, LA… the taxi driver experience is not to be envied, the money is capped, and there are many people with capital who control the game
  3. there is no “winning” over the people with access to capital, there is a very small range of potential earnings, and the only ways OUT of the game is to become a private driver, limo driver, or to hopefully graduate up to having a medallion and then renting it out half the time to another driver and then being able to relax a little
  4. Sometimes I have met chill, older drivers who have figured out the game, own their own car, have their own medallion, and these drivers I have met do not complain about Uber.
  5. I met one man who had a limo license, a medallion that he’d got a 250K mortgage to pay for because SF had raised the price, AND he was an Uber driver with a Black SUV — he expressed exasperation and confusion, not knowing which way to go — he’d played the medallion game, he’d won, but now it didn’t matter because of Uber…

Hope this data helps.