If you’ve been in a Walmart lately, you’ve undoubtedly seen Walmart employees poring over lists on handheld electronic devices and pushing carts loaded with bins full of groceries and other items. Welcome to Walmart Spark, Walmart’s home delivery service. And guess what? It’s a gig driving job.
At the end of 2023, there were more than 4,600 Walmarts in the US. However, your goal in becoming a Walmart Spark driver is to narrow your focus to a few strategically located Walmart stores. This strategy reduces driving time, distance, and wear and tear on your car. You can also earn good money—higher than almost every gig driving job, except for the top rideshare companies.
Check out this recent Gridwise blog post, How to Make $1000 a Week with Walmart Spark, to get on the road to greater earnings. You can also be more profitable by downloading the Gridwise app. It’s free and has features invaluable to all drivers.
What’s inside this blog post:
- What is a Walmart Spark driver?
- Is being a Walmart Spark driver for you?
- How to become a Walmart Spark delivery driver
- How much do Walmart Spark drivers make?
- Considerations for being a Spark driver for Walmart
- How Gridwise can help
What is a Walmart Spark driver?
Like so many other societal changes in the last few years, you can point to the pandemic as the cause. Even though grocery delivery services were around before the pandemic, they gained lots of traction in Q1 and Q2 2020 as we all hunkered down. Walmart Spark was no different.
The industry’s growth didn’t stop with the end of the pandemic. In early 2023, Zion Market Research released a study in which they forecasted a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26% for the grocery delivery business, extending to 2030.
Walmart had already developed a proprietary service in 2018 called Walmart Spark. They used a firm, Delivery Drivers, Inc. (DDI), to administrate the program. Walmart Spark drivers worked for DDI. There was also a relationship with DoorDash to handle some of the deliveries. In August 2022, Walmart ended its relationship with DoorDash and purchased DDI, making Walmart Spark an in-house operation.
Walmart Spark drivers are gig drivers. They receive and accept orders through the Walmart Spark driver app, directing them to a Walmart store to pick up a delivery. In most cases, a Walmart employee has selected the items; the driver needs only to load the items into their car and deliver them to the customer’s residence.
Is being a Walmart Spark driver for you?
In deciding if Walmart Spark can be truly profitable, you should determine if you’re reasonably close to a cluster of Walmarts.
What is meant by a cluster of Walmarts? Very simply, how many Walmarts surround you within a few minutes’ drive? For instance, in a seven-square-mile area in the California suburban cities of Upland and Ontario (about 35 miles east of Los Angeles), there is a Walmart Supercenter, a Neighborhood Walmart, and a standard Walmart. The farthest distance between any of these stores is 4.4 miles, making this area heaven for a Walmart Spark driver. Three Walmarts in an area means that a Spark driver will stay busy. It is unlikely they will receive an order from a Walmart farther away. The result is that they drive less and spend less time traveling back to their home territory.
If you live in a densely populated suburb, there is a good chance of a similar network of Walmarts in your area. This is great because you can draw from every one of them. If you live in a more rural area, you’ll need to drive farther to make deliveries.
Brenda Brown, a Walmart Spark driver in Las Cruces, NM, was highlighted in a 2020 article in Business Insider, telling how she made $113,000 in one year as a Walmart Spark driver. It wasn’t easy. Brenda says she averaged 80 hours a week and drove 48,000 miles making those deliveries. Her earnings came out to about $25 an hour, not counting fuel costs and car wear and tear. You should also note that Las Cruces, where Brenda delivered for Walmart Spark, is a town of around 113,000 people on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert. That’s a far cry from the suburbs of larger cities with many Walmarts.
There are a few other details to Brenda’s story. She claimed about $95 in tips for every $100 in Walmart Spark earnings. Brenda’s territory included three Walmart stores, the farthest ones being 14 miles apart, and she said she made the trip between them several times daily.
How to become a Walmart Spark delivery driver
Start with the Walmart Spark website. The requirements for Spark are that you have
- a registered vehicle
- a valid driver’s license showing you’re at least 18 years old
- a valid Social Security number
- a smartphone
- a clean background record
You complete the application online, which takes about a week for processing, and then you get a return email. The return email comes from Walmart, but also look at anything from DDI, because they still administer the program internally. Upon being hired, you become a contract employee. You go through an orientation program and download the Walmart Spark app.
You can check this FAQ page on the Walmart Spark site to answer additional questions.
How much do Walmart Spark drivers make?
What do Walmart Spark drivers get paid? Spark delivery drivers receive pay on a per-delivery basis, depending on how many deliveries they make per hour. Every delivery shows your approximate earnings once you have completed it.
Take a look at this chart recently published in the Gridwise blog, How to Make $1000 a Week with Walmart Spark.
December 2022–February 2023
| Average hourly earnings | $24.10 |
| Median hourly earnings | $23.70 |
| 90th percentile hourly earnings | $24.50 |
| Average earnings per week | $323.00 (average of 13 hours of work/week) |
Source: Gridwise Analytics
As we have discussed before, if you find a region where several Walmart stores are clustered in a small area, you can make more and keep your expenses relatively low for a gig driver.
Walmart Spark drivers can also earn more money through incentives, surges, and referral programs for referring other drivers. These offers are constantly changing, so check your app for the current incentives. Also, you get to keep 100% of your tips, whether they’re in cash or through the app.
When does Walmart Spark pay? Earnings are electronically deposited into your bank account each Friday.
Considerations for being a Spark driver for Walmart
With most Walmart Spark orders, a store employee collects the order, bags it, and meets the driver outside the store.
When this system works well, the order is ready when the driver arrives or shortly afterward. There are reports of Walmart Spark drivers having to wait as long as 45 minutes for a pickup. Drivers point out that if you work in a specific area for any length of time, you’ll get to know which stores are more likely to keep you waiting.
Other drivers report that getting stacked orders (two deliveries in a single trip to a store) is not uncommon. You should be careful, however, to ensure that they don’t go in opposite directions.
Some Walmarts are short on personnel. In this case, the driver will have to go into the store, fill the order themselves, and then deliver it. There is no information on if or how these drivers receive compensation for the extra time required to complete the order.
Pros and cons of being a Spark driver for Walmart
There are some distinct benefits of being a Walmart Spark driver:
- The potential for good pay is a possibility if you’re willing to work hard and have access to an excellent territory.
- If you’re in an area with a cluster of Walmarts, you can keep the miles on your car to a minimum. Reduced miles mean fuel is less of an issue, as is maintenance and wear and tear on your car.
- You don’t have to deal with passengers in your car. Rideshare drivers have to keep their passenger pleased with charging cords and breath mints—you don’t have to.
- The hours tend to be better. In most areas, the real money as a rideshare driver means working weekend nights until the early morning hours. Walmart Spark drivers deliver only when the stores are open.
- Since peak hours for Walmart Spark drivers are often in the daytime, you still have the evenings if you work rideshare or the food delivery platforms.
There are also some considerations:
- The story of Brenda Brown and some other very profitable Walmart Spark drivers have made the rounds. Many drivers have signed up, and rather than deal with an oversaturation of drivers, Walmart has a waiting list for many areas. Some drivers have waited six months, and others complain that they don’t get many orders.
- Another casualty of Walmart Spark’s desirability is that the service is so popular that many stores can’t keep up with the demand. Drivers report long waits, eating up time that could be spent making other deliveries.
- Like many apps, the Walmart Spark driver app has proprietary algorithms that govern its function. According to reports, the app favors drivers who take whatever order they receive. Which is good news for drivers looking for more trips.
- There have been recent reports (including on Reddit) that drivers are using bots to grab the most profitable offers. Walmart told the South Florida SunSentinal that using bots was against the terms of service and drivers who get caught are deactivated. A good reminder to stick to best practices.
Like all gig jobs, you’re a contract employee responsible for your expenses, including gas and upkeep of your car. Walmart Spark drivers also do not have taxes deducted from their earnings, so you need to make quarterly payments.
How Gridwise can help
Gridwise is dedicated and committed to making all gig drivers as successful as possible, and Walmart Spark drivers are no different. The Gridwise mileage tracker is the best mileage tracker app for Walmart Spark drivers, saving you hundreds and often thousands of dollars in taxes at the end of the year.
If you multi-app, like many other drivers, you can link all your apps to the Gridwise platform. There are invaluable tools such as Where to Drive and When to Drive. You can see these features and more when downloading the Gridwise app for free. You can also track earnings and determine the best driving times and places, all for free!
Try the Gridwise app today to start driving smarter.
And have fun out there!
Check out these Gridwise articles to learn about Walmart Spark opportunities:
