As I write this blog post, I am no longer doing these gigs due to losing my car.
Since 2022 I have worked my hardest, physically, doing Uber Eats and then Amazon Flex. I gave Shipt and Instacart a try. I did not like how it took me so long to complete just one order for each of the apps. After giving both, Shipt and Instacart, one try each, I decided it was not something I would want to do for income. So I stuck with Uber Eats the most. I was accepted to do Amazon Flex almost a year from when I applied. So I started Amazon Flex a year after starting Uber Eats.
Positives for me
Uber Eats
Get tips an hour after delivery
Be in the car by yourself with no strangers
You just have to pick up orders or packages and go
You choose which orders you want to accept without much penalties
You work whenever you want with no scheduling in the app ahead of time, as of 2024
You have the option to cash out on the same day for a fee or wait to get paid Monday or Tuesday for no fee
Amazon Flex
Pays pretty good for each route
You pick the days you would like to be paid. I chose M,W,F.
Multiple types of deliveries; Amazon facility package pick-ups, store pick-ups, or grocery pick-ups.
Choose schedule beforehand which tells you the amount the route is and how many, estimated, hours it will take to complete the route.
You get tips for grocery pick-ups through the app. Although with the packages you don’t get tips through the app I have gotten tips in cash when the customer has seen me come up to the door.
Negatives to me
Uber Eats
A lot of gas money
Miles add up QUICK. Big emphasis on QUICK
People have the option to take away their tip after delivery. They can change the tip amount up to one hour after delivery.
If the person’s order was missing an item and you decided to go back and get it for the customer, the app will automatically close out the delivery after I think an hour or so. That’s if you do not confirm the delivery is complete. I’ve done this once and luckily I had already put the customer’s address in my GPS. As I was driving back to the customer’s home the app closed the customer’s delivery order so I was not able to call the customer. They lived in an apartment building where you had to use the call box for the resident to buzz you in. I also did not have the customer’s real name because they used a nickname in the app. So I had to leave the drinks by the door in the garage, underneath the apartment building where I initially met her at. I felt so bad.
Amazon Flex
You do not know where your delivery route is until you get to the pick-up station
You also don’t know how many packages you’ll get when you arrive at the Amazon facility to pick up packages
Some areas are sketchy and or far out in rural places. At one rural address, I had to drive up this long driveway that was very bumpy with deep potholes. Thankfully I figured out how to drive over them just enough to not get stuck. That kinda messed up the bottom of my car.
You can have a route that is about an hour away from the pick-up facility or store. I’ve had several routes that were an hour or more away from the pick-up facility. The furthest I drove out was 1 hour and 40 minutes away from the pick-up facility and it paid a few dollars less than $150. That made me so mad. I took some weeks off from doing Amazon Flex. When I did get another route that far I canceled it as soon as I found out. I got penalized for it. I did not care because that was just ridiculous to me for the little bit of money they were paying for that route, around $60. The route was far but only had a few packages. It was not worth it to me. I realized that I would take routes that were 3 hours or under to not run the risk of getting a route that was too far out.
I made a lot of money doing Uber Eats and Amazon Flex because those were my primary incomes at the time. In 2023, with both Uber Eats and Amazon Flex, I made a little over $35,000 the whole year. This is with me not working every day of the week.
Because of my life at the time, I had trouble keeping up with my bills. Before I left my job I had thousands of dollars of bills that were just too much to keep up with without the salary I was once getting. I left my job in 2021 after having my baby.
Between 2023-2024, I had my car repossessed twice, the second time I did not have enough money to get it back. So I lost both of my incomes until I talked to an ex from high school. He told me to start renting cars to do Uber Eats. I was so happy to have talked to a person who could help me think clearly.
I looked into it and figured out how to get a rental car and do Uber Eats. For some reason I did not do Amazon Flex when I had the rental cars.
I was approved for a credit card and used that card to rent a car with Hertz. I remember seeing Uber promoting discounts for rental cars and renting a car to do Uber. I went with just renting the car for a discount because I was not picking up anyone in the rental car to do Uber. Now, if I was doing Uber and picking up customers I would have had to go to a location an hour away to rent a car to do Uber driving. It’s because of the legalities and liabilities that come with Uber driving.
I used my car insurance to cover the rental car. I got specific car insurance with Geico that would cover any car I got in. Plus it was something else Hertz told me to add to cover the rental car completely. I did many deliveries in the many rental cars I rented.
Because Uber tracks when your car insurance is expiring, they gave me notice to update my car insurance. Once I tried to update my car insurance with no specific car listed on the insurance, Uber told me that I had to have a car attached to the insurance to continue doing Uber Eats.
That devastated me because I was about to lose my main source of income.
Eventually, I had to stop doing Uber Eats in June of 2024. This is when my delivery driver gig ended.
I did a little over 3,000 deliveries with Uber Eats and probably 50 routes with Amazon Flex.
I would recommend Uber Eats and Amazon Flex if you need fast money, if you are pretty introverted, if you do not mind driving, and if you have a reliable vehicle and car insurance. Here’s my link to sign up to be a driver or deliverer for Uber.com.
Here are two videos I’ve posted while doing Uber Eats.
Let’s connect and be cool.