So… you’re sick of the gig driving life. You’re finding it too much work for too little money, or business just isn’t what it used to be. Maybe you’re road-weary from the miles and miles you travel on a daily basis, or just plain tired of working your tail off and not having benefits like worker’s comp and health insurance.
You can probably list at least a dozen more reasons for being sick of gig driving, but no matter what your reasons are, when you’ve finally had it, you’re done and you need some exit options.
But before you permanently delete your driving app and toss your Dasher bag in the dumpster, you’ll need to do some pondering.
First, if there is life after gig driving, what does it look like?
In this blog post, we’ll share info from some brave drivers who’ve made their way out from behind the wheel. Hearing their stories might help you examine some options that would work for you. Here’s how it will break down:
- Is there life after gig driving? What’s it like?
- Craig: Muscle in motion
- Chelsea and Tom: The joy of caregiving
- Matt and Brenda: Hard work and big pay
- Jasper: From coffee runs to coding
Is there life after gig driving? What’s it like?
First, you’ll be relieved to know that life after gig driving does indeed exist. As for what it looks like, that will be entirely up to you. There are numerous opportunities for work, even in an economy that’s crawling back from a major economic slowdown.
If you decide to stop gig driving, you’ll need to ask yourself what you’ve liked about it and what you don’t like about it. For example, do you like the flexible hours? Then you won’t like being tied to a desk or standing in one spot, the way an office worker or security guard would be.
You’ll also have to decide if you want a full-time job or one that’s part-time. With full-time jobs you often get benefits, whereas working part-time offers the benefit of flexibility for family time, studies, and/or another job.
When we spoke to people in our driver community, we found that they had different ideas about what their life after gig driving was going to look like. Let’s see what they had to say.
Craig: Muscle in motion
Craig hails from L.A., and he’s spent a lot of time and a small fortune working out so he can succeed on a national scale as a competitive bodybuilder. He used to like gig driving because he could make money and still have time to fit in workouts with his favorite coach, almost whenever he wanted.
What he hated about driving was that he was stuck behind the wheel all the time. He could almost feel his deltoids atrophy as he sat stuck in traffic. Then when he’d get breaks, he’d grab a bite—usually of something disgusting enough to undo all the nutritional effort he was putting into building muscle.
When Craig looked around for a job, he found that most of them kept his body still and his mind idle. He absolutely wanted to keep the work-when-you-want schedule gig driving offered him. He was getting tempted to bench press extra-heavy orders from Grubhub when he came across a job that rang all his bells: being a mover.
Now, working for a moving company isn’t always that flexible. Sometimes there are long hauls, and you don’t get a choice about which job you’re willing to take. But with gig work becoming so common, Craig was able to find a moving job he could deal with through an app that lets him choose his moving jobs.
Today he can set his own schedule and has time to follow his passion as a bodybuilder. He’s using his muscles while he works, and is developing great business skills at the same time. Craig is in an urban area, where people are typically moving short distances, so when he puts his available hours in the schedule, he can almost always find work.
The downside is that it’s still not a gig with benefits, and he only makes about $15 to $20 per hour. Still, it gets him away from the driving grind and allows him to use his weightlifting skills while he’s working—a win-win.
Chelsea and Tom: The joy of caregiving
Chelsea and Tom live together in Manassas, Virginia. Both have been gig driving for the last seven years, ever since the afterschool program they ran for the public schools shut its doors due to lack of funding.
Driving in the D.C. area used to be easy and fun—until the pandemic and the current precarious situation in the nation’s capital put a damper on business.
Chelsea and Tom love children and have years of experience working with them. They have two of their own, and until recently their driving schedules allowed them to alternate shifts watching the kids and doing the gig driving. It worked well when they could depend on office commuting and business travel to feed their driving work, and when they could work while the kids were in school or were otherwise occupied.
Now, with homeschooling and only virtual afterschool activities, parental duties have doubled. Someone has to be at home all the time, so they had to cut back on their driving hours. That also meant the hourly rates they were earning for driving, from $15 to $20 per hour, just weren’t cutting it anymore.
Chelsea and Tom needed a gig that gave them the same flexibility as gig driving, but at much higher hourly rates. They looked around, but most jobs didn’t offer the schedule or the rates they needed. Then … they discovered a caretaker service.
Now, they work as highly paid sitters for children in such diverse settings as Airbnb accommodations, hotel rooms, and even their own home. Like Craig, Chelsea and Tom use an app-based company, and technology matches them with children in their areas.
They get to choose their jobs, and when it’s a last-minute assignment, they can name their rates. A bonus for Chelsea was being chosen as a “favorite” with one of the families, meaning they call her at least twice or three times a week.
Even though they face some challenges, like having to purchase their own insurance and work that isn’t always steady, they’ve fared pretty well.
Matt and Brenda: Hard work and good pay
Matt and Brenda fall somewhere between the other driver scenarios we’ve covered so far. Neither is big on brawn, but they both like working with their hands.
Driving just wasn’t working out for them once the pandemic set in. Living in the outer suburbs of Oklahoma City, they relied on business travel and commutes to the city to feed their driving gigs, and that all but dried up. Matt drove for Lyft and Brenda drove for Uber until she switched to Uber Eats.
While the switch to delivery let Brenda continue to earn close to what she made before, it was still not enough. She and Matt wanted to have a nice wedding and buy a house, so they needed to make far more money than they ever could from gig work.
They also wanted more action in their lives, and to be able to roll up their sleeves and put in really hard work. Driving around all the time seemed boring and like a dead-end. Their solution? To get some trade training, which they financed using some of their stimulus money and Matt’s unemployment supplement. After seven months Matt became a welder. Brenda took up a career as a pastry chef, and now works for a local boutique bakery chain.
The great thing about this career combo is that once they decide to start a family, they can work opposite shifts so one of them will always be able to take care of their children.
The tough part? They’re stuck with quite a bit of debt. Matt’s accelerated welding training, and Brenda’s stint in culinary school racked up quite a bill.
With the high salaries they’re earning, though, they should be able to make it. Brenda will pull in around $50K each year, while Matt stands to make around the same. As long as they can both work full time, as they do now, they have awesome company benefits so they won’t have to buy their own insurance. The downside is paying off the tuition for both of them and less flexibility in their schedules.
Jasper: From coffee runs to coding
Working for Grubhub and DoorDash was never Jasper’s dream job, but it covered his rent and let him have a decent life. He always had enough cash to hang with his friends and buy the gaming equipment he craved, and his flexible hours allowed plenty of time to tinker with his motorcycle.
Still, he felt that while driving deliveries around his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, carrying those double-shot Americanos and Teavana Oprah’s Chai Teas to customers, he was just driving in circles.
Jasper wanted a bigger life, a real career that would let him use his brain without making him sit through four years of college, taking courses he’d never need. He also wanted a job that matched his interests in technology and problem-solving.
Jasper didn’t see a lot of places where he could get this kind of training without tearing him away from the city he loved. Then he heard about Kenzie Academy from Southern New Hampshire University, and he knew he’d found the right avenue to take.
Kenzie offers programs in user experience design and software engineering online. In less than a year, he could learn coding, software engineering, and all the hot skills that would put him in one of the most in-demand fields on the planet. Rather than just playing video games and appreciating entertaining apps, he could learn how to develop them—and make a great living too.
Jasper enrolled at Kenzie, and after completing the program, he got a great job right away: working from home for an app developer that’s one of Kenzie’s employer partners. Kenzie helped match him with a job he has come to love—one with a salary that’s 250 percent more money than he earned as a delivery driver.
Jasper says the tuition for his training at Kenzie was one of the best investments he’s ever made. With his new salary, and Kenzie’s generous payment plan, he’ll have it all paid off in no time.
Instead of driving in circles, Jasper has now got it all: a dynamic new career that lets him use his brain power, a secure income, benefits, and the ability to work as a freelancer if he ever feels confined working a full-time job for one company.
His training at Kenzie has empowered Jasper, so he now has a career that offers upward mobility on top of challenge and intrigue. In his first six months, his state-of-the-art training helped him earn a promotion. Now it’s Jasper who’s ordering those double-shot Americanos … and when the Grubhub driver drops it off, Jasper gladly adds on a generous tip.
So, if you’re scanning for the exits that will get you out of the driving grind… check out Kenzie Academy. As Jasper will tell you, it’s worth every penny you spend and the rewards are awesome.
