$0 Down Car Lease Deal From Fair - Rideshare Driving Without a Car (of Your Own)

Obviously, it isn’t possible to be a rideshare driver without a car.

You have to either provide your own or take advantage of one of the lease programs available for Uber and Lyft drivers.

The referenced article is documenting the car leasing app Fair, which has some seemingly sweet deals for Uber drivers needing a vehicle in California. It isn’t obvious from the article whether Fair will be expanding their offerings to other markets.

All-Inclusive Lease

One of the attractive aspects of Fair’s lease program is that it covers all vehicle expenses except fuel – “all inclusive” is how the article describes the program.

A driver using one of these vehicles will know the exact cost of operating a vehicle as an Uber driver.

A driver using their own vehicle, on the other hand, has to account for all vehicle expenses – both the direct ones like fuel and insurance, and the indirect expenses like depreciation and repairs.

Indirect costs like maintenance, repairs, depreciation, and ultimately replacing the vehicle with another one, can be quite challenging to identify and even harder to place a dollar value on.

These indirect costs make it difficult for a rideshare driver to know exactly how much money they are actually earning.

How Much Do Uber Drivers Make

The squishy nature of the indirect costs also makes it difficult to talk about Uber driver earnings.

If a driver says they are making $20 per hour, what does that really mean?

A driver can look at the Uber app and see the total amount of fares that passengers have paid. With a quick calculation, the driver can then determine how much of those fares they will receive in pay after Uber takes its 25% cut.

As an example, let’s say a driver finishes their day and they drove $200 worth of fares. Obviously, they will “take home” $150 from Uber, but that $150 is NOT their take-home pay.

Take home pay is what is left after accounting for gas, insurance, maintenance, repairs, depreciation, etc. This number is considerably less than the $150 “take home” pay from Uber.

Now consider the driver who uses a vehicle leased through Fair.

They drive the same $200 worth of fares and receive the same $150 from Uber.

What’s different is that the driver with the leased vehicle knows exactly what the vehicle costs them to drive.

Because insurance is included with Fair’s lease program, the driver’s only direct expense is fuel.

Maintenance and repair costs are zero because Fair’s lease is all-inclusive. Depreciation and vehicle replacement are not a factor because the leased vehicle gets returned to Fair and the driver walks away clean.

$185 per Week

Instead of $185 per week for one of Fair’s vehicles, let’s talk about $26.42 per day.

In our example above, the driver is taking home $150 minus whatever he spent on fuel. He then subtracts $26.42 from that amount to find out how much he gets to keep for the day.

For a full-time driver (30+ hours/week), the $26.42 per day for a vehicle might be OK. It’s still a big expense, but the $0-down lease deal might be the best or only option for some drivers.

For drivers who really put in the miles (50+ hours/week), the all-inclusive lease deal from Fair might actually lower their vehicle cost for rideshare driving when compared to a vehicle that they own.

There’s a mind-blowing thought! Leasing a high-MPG vehicle for rideshare driving could be cheaper than using the vehicle you already own, once you account for both direct and indirect costs.

Now consider the part-time driver.

Let’s assume they will drive 20 hours per week, so we’ll break the $185 down into an hourly cost.

That’s $9.25 per hour!!!!!!

At 30 hours of driving time per week, we’re still talking about $6.16 per hour, just for the leased vehicle.

For a part-time driver whose only option is using a leased vehicle, there are probably better ways of earning income.

Uber’s Reimbursement Program

Refer to the article for details or go directly to the Uber Fair Weekly Rental page.

Uber is currently offering to reimburse the expense of leasing one of Fair’s vehicles.

Doesn’t that mean the only expense for driving is fuel? Hello!

Note that the reimbursements are intended for full-time drivers.

The 70 Uber trips required to receive $185 will take most drivers about 23 to 35 hours to complete.

120 rides will take 40 to 60 hours to complete, but the $305 reimbursement is sure a sweet incentive.

A full-time driver might choose to complete the 70 rides as a baseline and then surge every-other-week to reach the 120 level.

$0 Down Car Lease Deal from Fair – Rideshare Driving Without a Car (of Your Own)