{"id":4229,"date":"2016-02-16T07:48:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T12:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxifarefinder.com\/newsroom\/?p=4229"},"modified":"2016-02-15T15:50:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T20:50:41","slug":"2016-survey-results-how-satisfied-are-uber-drivers-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxifarefinder.com\/newsroom\/2016\/02\/16\/2016-survey-results-how-satisfied-are-uber-drivers-really\/","title":{"rendered":"2016 Survey Results: How Satisfied Are Uber Drivers Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How satisfied are Uber drivers? This question seems to be floating around the web a lot lately and our team at TaxiFareFinder was curious to find some truthful answers! As it turns out, one of our good friends, Harry Campbell (The Rideshare Guy<\/a>), was also curious to learn some answers about driver satisfaction and morale and created a survey for his network of drivers. After receiving 453 responses, his team put together a fascinating report depicting Uber drivers and how they really feel. Check out the findings below!<\/p>\n

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Every year I send out a survey to all of my drivers\u00a0here on RSG. \u00a0Honestly, I\u2019m not a big fan of filling out surveys myself, but it is a great way to get feedback from my readers and confirm trends that I\u2019ve been seeing in the on-demand economy.<\/p>\n

So to everyone who filled out a 2016 survey, thank you! \u00a0We sent the survey to 10,234 e-mail subscribers and got 453 responses, which is awesome, and I\u2019ll be sending out some RSG swag to 10 lucky winners. \u00a0Scroll down to the bottom to see if you were randomly selected. I\u2019ll also be contacting you by e-mail.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s survey had some really interesting results and I\u2019m also getting better at asking interesting questions. \u00a0So if you\u2019re a company or start-up interested in going over the results with me or one of my staff members, please e-mail me.<\/p>\n

For everyone else, hope you enjoy!<\/p>\n

2016 Survey Results: Getting Started With Driving<\/h2>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

According to Uber\u2019s own numbers<\/a>, half of all drivers quit after just one year. \u00a0I was surprised to see that\u00a0only 17.4% of my audience has only been driving for 0-3 months, which tells me that although there are a lot of new drivers out there, they aren\u2019t finding the online resources like my site, rideshare Facebook groups<\/a> and forums.<\/p>\n

This also speaks to the challenges of organizing drivers<\/a> since there are so many new drivers who really only talk to\u00a0Uber and don\u2019t know how to get in contact with their fellow workers.<\/p>\n

A little quick math<\/strong>: If Uber currently has 400,000 drivers and half are quitting after one year, that means they need to replace about 17,000 drivers each month (200,000 drivers\/12 months). \u00a0And if they\u2019re growing at a monthly rate of 10.6%<\/a> (they announced 162,000 drivers on 1\/22\/15<\/a> and 400,000 drivers\u00a0on 11\/3\/15<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 active drivers are defined in both cases by having taken at least four trips in a single month), that means they need to hire 42,000 new drivers each month.<\/p>\n

So in order to replace the drivers that are quitting AND\u00a0sustain growth, Uber needs to hire about about 59,000 drivers<\/strong>\u00a0in total every single month. \u00a0Wow!<\/p>\n

\"Where<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering where Uber finds all of those new drivers, this chart gives a good glimpse into that. \u00a0I\u2019ve talked before about Uber\u2019s main marketing channels<\/a>\u00a0and although I\u2019ve always known they pumped a lot of money into their referral program, I was surprised to see that so many people \u2018heard from a friend\u2019 about driving for Uber.<\/p>\n

Not all of these word of mouth referrals are paid referrals, but it\u2019s impressive to see just how important the network effect is when recruiting on the supply side. \u00a0Basically by having such a large passenger base, this also helps recruiting efforts. \u00a0This is also why a lot of the smaller to mid tier \u2018Uber for X\u2019 companies have such a hard time recruiting new drivers (and they don\u2019t have as much $$ obviously).<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re curious about some of the \u2018other\u2019 responses you can view those here<\/a>. \u00a0The only major category I missed was Facebook ads, which is basically the same type of paid marketing as Google Ads.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s Driving For Uber And Why?<\/h2>\n

\"Which\"Which I\u2019ve commented many times before that most drivers prefer driving for Lyft, but they get more rides and make more money with Uber. \u00a0I think these two charts prove that pretty clearly. \u00a0Even though an overwhelming majority of drivers are primarily working for Uber and thus making more money with Uber, an equal number<\/strong> of them prefer Lyft to Uber.<\/p>\n

Lyft is often mentioned in the same breath as\u00a0Uber, but outside of a few select cities like SF and Austin (where Lyft claims<\/a> 40% and 45% market share respectively), they don\u2019t offer much in the way of passenger demand. \u00a0Drivers in small to mid tier Lyft markets often wait 30 minutes+ for rides and ETAs can be as high as 20-30 minutes.<\/p>\n

But Lyft has done a great job cultivating a special relationship with drivers. \u00a0I\u2019m not saying they\u2019re perfect (ahem $1,000 driver bonus snafu<\/a>), but when their president e-mails drivers<\/a> after fare cuts to explain why Lyft had to cut fares, that says something.<\/p>\n

Lyft has always been on the forefront of driver friendly features, but there just hasn\u2019t been enough demand to make it a viable main option for drivers. \u00a0Imagine how many more drivers would prefer Lyft over Uber if they\u00a0actually made the same amount of money as they did driving for\u00a0Uber!<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s Doing Most Of The Work?<\/h2>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

Uber has obviously been in the news a lot about its controversial tactic of treating drivers as independent contractors instead of employees.\u00a0 In response to the current lawsuit they\u2019re facing in California<\/a>, even Uber\u2019s CEO Travis Kalanick has stated<\/a> that Uber is best suited as a way \u201cto fill in the gaps\u201d, implying that employee status would not make sense for a bulk of their drivers.<\/p>\n

Their recently released survey<\/a> confirms that 50% of drivers are driving 10 hours a week or less on average.\u00a0 Uber is clearly presenting driving as a secondary gig and some (Harris & Kreuger<\/a>) have even called for a third class of worker since your average\u00a0Uber driver doesn\u2019t fit into the traditional employee\/independent contractor boxes. \u00a0But the problem with these assessments is that they don\u2019t take into account who\u2019s actually doing a majority of the work.<\/p>\n

Based off the numbers collected in our survey, we calculated<\/a> that\u00a050% of drivers are working 20 hours a week or less, but they only account for a total of 24% of the actual hours worked out on the road. \u00a0This is similar to the phenomenon we see with Airbnb<\/a> \u2018super hosts\u2019 that bring in a majority of income for Airbnb with hotel style listings as opposed to private rooms or individual listings.<\/p>\n

If you take the mid-point of hours worked (i.e. 5 hours for 0-10) for drivers in our survey and multiply it by the number of drivers you get a rough approximation of each group\u2019s contribution to the total hours worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Hours Per Week<\/td>\n# Of Drivers<\/td>\n% Of Total
\nDrivers<\/td>\n		% Of All
\nHours Worked<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
0-10<\/td>\n85<\/td>\n19%<\/td>\n4%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
11-20<\/td>\n139<\/td>\n31%<\/td>\n20%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
21-30<\/td>\n107<\/td>\n24%<\/td>\n26%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
31-40<\/td>\n57<\/td>\n13%<\/td>\n19%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
40+<\/td>\n65<\/td>\n14%<\/td>\n31%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

You can see pretty clearly that a majority of the work is not being done by the 0-10 or even 10-20 hours per week crowd.<\/p>\n

This poses several questions:<\/p>\n