Every rideshare driver wants to make more money, so we try to drive different routes, drive at different times, take advantage of events, and even chase the occasional surge.
Many of these tactics can be successful (except chasing the surge… never chase the surge), but how do we know?
The truth is that if you aren’t tracking your performance metrics, you don’t know if you are improving your performance and actually making more money.
But how do we actually track our performance as rideshare drivers? What metrics do we follow? These are important questions with that we hear rideshare drivers asking all the time, so we’ve put together a list of the 4 most important metrics that rideshare drivers should be tracking and give you insight into why they are so important and how you can improve them.
Let’s take a look!
Earnings per hour
When people speak about their rideshare driving performance, they tend to speak in terms of earnings per hour, and for good reason. Your most important asset is your time, so you should always be aware of the value that you are receiving by giving your time to Uber/Lyft/Via or other TNC’s.
How you can calculate earnings per hour
The calculation for earnings per hour is simple. You just need to know exactly how much you have made during a session, and how many hours you’ve been driving. From there, the calculation is simply:
$ made/hours spent driving
If you’re tracking your performance with Gridwise, you will automatically see this figure calculated.
If you’re a Gridwise user, these metrics will automatically be tracked.
How you can improve earnings per hour
If your earnings per hour isn’t where you’d like it to be, you are likely not getting enough rides and spending a lot of time idle, or you are getting many rides that are not making you enough money.
If you’re not getting many rides, you need to start thinking of where the highest passenger demand with the lowest driver supply is. Start looking into what events are going on around your city to understand where and when certain areas will be ripe with potential passengers. This is a great opportunity to use your Gridwise app to check out what events are going on.
If you’re not making very much when you are getting rides, this is likely because you’re getting stuck in traffic. You can use Gridwise to watch out for traffic and know what locations to avoid.
Remember that you get paid more by the mile than you do by the minute!
Trips/hr
Your number of Trips/hr is an important metric that gives you insight into how much time you are spending idle, but you want to be careful when you analyze this stat.
If you are a airport driver, you should be expecting a lower trip per hour number, however, if you are driving in a city or suburb where you will be spending less time waiting for rides, you’ll hopefully have a higher trip/hr number.
How to calculate trips per hour
This is another easy calculation, you simply need to know how many trips you’ve completed during a session and then how many hours you drove. Then the calculation is simply:
Number of trips completed/Number of hours driven
Cake!
You can also easily track this metric using Gridwise if you’re tracking your performance.
How can you increase your trips taken per hour?
If you’re an airport driver, increasing your trips per hour is all about figuring out when you should be at the airport. Check your Gridwise app to understand how many drivers are in the queue before you arrive and compare that to how many passengers are expected to be coming in.
If you see that there are a significant amount of passengers and only a few drivers, you can expect a shorter wait time at the airport.
If you’re driving in the city, you should be predicting surges by knowing what events are going on in your area. Be in areas where events are letting out by watching your Gridwise app for alerts.
Earnings per mile
The most important metric that most drivers forget to track or think about is earnings per mile. Why is this so important? Because every mile you put on your car has a REAL cost that includes gas, maintenance, and depreciation. Check out this article by The Rideshare Guy to see how you can calculate how much your car costs to run per mile.
It is crucial for you to be making a significant amount more per mile than it is costing you to drive your car per mile because of these costs. If you are not, you’re actually losing money.
How to calculate earnings per mile
Calculating earnings per mile is simple. You will need to know how many miles you drove during a given session and your earnings in a given session.
$ made/miles driven
You can also easily track this metric with Gridwise if you’re tracking your performance.
How to improve earnings per mile
One of the biggest causes of low earnings per mile is driving around too much when you don’t have a passenger.
When you are looking for passengers, don’t drive around from one end of the city to the other searching for demand. Instead, research where passenger demand will be highest and SIT in that area. Chasing passengers around the city or chasing surges is only going to use up gas and rack up miles on your car.
Find a good spot, and SIT.
To improve earnings per mile you can also leverage airports more. By design, you will have more idle time, however, when you get rides they tend to be longer and higher paying trips.
Earnings per TNC
Do you drive for multiple TNC’s? Do you know which is more profitable for you?
This metric will tell you if you what TNC you are making the most money with.
How to calculate earnings per TNC
There isn’t much of a calculation here. You will simply want to understand in a given session how much you made while driving for each TNC.
If you’re tracking your performance with Gridwise, the app will automatically track this for you.
How should I use this metric?
Your earnings per TNC isn’t a metric you should really focus on improving, but you should use it to tell you what companies you are having the most success with. You can then use this information to decide which TNC you will drive for and when.
Which metrics are you tracking?
Are you tracking your driving metrics? If so, how are you improving them? Let us know in the comments below!
