I’m officially a Taxi Uncle

Yes… it’s official. Today is the day I start my foray into a Uber lifestyle.

Collected my car in the late morning around 11am and only managed to finish the registration and orientation training (by Uber and the car rental company) at 2.45pm. Yupz, it’s that long. I think there are opportunities for them to fine-tune their internal processes. I thought it was going to be a pick-up car and start ‘ubering’… Even the car rental company promise of collect car on the same day and start driving… was a fallacy. I registered with the rental company on Wednesday (in my first posting) and only got the car on Friday.. that’s 3 days of lost earnings.

Anyway, after my own personal admin was completed (like getting season parking and topping up petrol), I could only start ubering at 6.10pm. First ride was to pick up a teenage couple from Bishan MRT pick up point to St Andrews JC. Thankfully it was to a destination I’m familiar with. Thereafter, I had 4 other trips excluding one rider who cancelled on me. I must say the ride requests came in almost each time I completed my trip, so I didn’t really have to wait too long. Another point was that most of the rides were around $8 to $8.80. I think for the same distance via taxi plus the booking fee, the journey would easily cost the rider approximately $10 to $12. I guess that’s why Uber is an attractive alternative compared to conventional taxi.

Another point I noticed was that most of the riders are younger except for an elderly couple (the filial son booked the ride to take his parents home). This is probably the younger generation are more tech-savvy while most of the pioneer generation would either take the bus/ MRT or just try to hail a cab by the roadside.

So when it was 9.30, I decided to call it a day after my last ride took me to Bukit Batok East. So how much did I make for that 3 hours of driving around (including two toilet breaks)?

$48.57

and I’ve not included the Uber deduction of 20% yet. I guess it’s not too bad for approximately 3 hours of work.

Let’s see how I’ll fare tomorrow.