Out of the 29 cities in the country that the low-priced ridesharing app uberX is currently available in, Los Angeles has the lowest base fares. And yet, uberX driver Enoch Shadkam isn’t complaining.
Shadkam was a taxi driver in the city of LA for 15 years. He paid $750 per week just to lease his cab from the company. He drove for close to 100 hours every week – 50 hours to make up for his lease and 50 hours more to make his living. In the months that business was slow, there would be days when he wouldn’t be able to even make up for his lease. Moreover, he would have to pay the lease sum even for the weeks he didn’t drive, making vacations and sick leaves extra expensive.
“You go home after driving for 10 or 12 hours and it’s still a minus,” he said. “They don’t care if you drive or don’t drive or fall sick…they just want the money.”
Shadkam joined uberX 6 months ago, after he learnt that he didn’t have to pay hefty lease amount. With uberX, he drives his own car and just pays a five percent commission to Uber on every trip. Shadkam now works half the number of hours he used to work as a taxi driver and yet makes more money.
“It’s too good to be true,” he said.
This is possible because of a number of reasons, Shadkam says. First, the monthly installments he pays for his new car is $75 per week, only ten percent of the cab lease amount. It’s true that uberX fares are much lower than that of taxis. For example, Yellow Cab Taxi in LA has a base fare of $2.85 and charge of $2.70 per mile, whereas uberX has a base fare of $1.61 and charge of $1.25 per mile. But even then, Shadkam makes more money because he gets more rides with uberX. As a taxi driver, he spent hours at airports, railway stations or outside hotels, waiting and scouting for rides. But now, all he does is drive around the city, while the app looks for rides and connects him with them.
“Taxi business is dead, it’s just a matter of time,” Shadkam said.
While Shadkam is relieved to wake up every morning without worrying about having to make his lease money, Vajra Hodges has different reasons for being an uberX driver. Hodges quit his corporate job of six years at an architectural firm to follow his dreams. He is exploring a career in photography and filmmaking and drives uberX on the side to support himself.
uberX drivers have the flexibility to choose their days and timings of work. They can drive whenever they want, for as long as they want. The company follows one and only one simple golden rule – if the drivers switch on the app, they are on if they switch off the app, they are off.
Hodges is attracted to this flexibility, he said. He would stay off driving for weeks when he has other photography assignments, but would rely on uberX for income at other times when things were slow.“I feel it has the potential to replace that working actor, who also waits tables,” he said. “It helps me maintain my bohemian sense of lifestyle.”
When Uber launched in San Francisco in 2010, they started out as a premium luxury offering. They only offered UberBlack, a service in which a private driver in a high-end sedan picked customers who called for them. Within the next three years, they expanded their reach to 35 cities in the US, with four different services (UberBlack – High-end sedan for four people; UberSUV – for larger groups; UberTaxi – connecting people to taxi drivers via the Uber mobile app; uberX – a cheaper alternative to UberBlack.) Different cities have different services and uberX is available in 29 cities.
View Uber services across North America in a full screen map
Though Uber has been growing at a neck breaking speed, disrupting the well-established taxi industry has been easy – drivers have sued Uber accusing the company of taking their tips, customers have complained about their surge pricing policies and city authorities have banned them from operating.
It’s not like Shadkam and Hodges like everything about the company. Shadkam said he doesn’t like the idea of surge pricing because it drives customers away.
“Customers are smart. When there is surge pricing, they order cabs,” he said.
Hodges said that he doesn’t like the company’s rating system because the ratings are just in form of numbers and don’t provide feedback and therefore, don’t serve any purpose.
But still, for both of them, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. Shadkam could finally go on a vacation and Hodges could follow his dreams.