What: Deliver food
Expected pay: $5 to $15 per hour
Husl $core: $$
Where:
Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Bellevue, Boston, Brooklyn, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, East Bay, Evanston, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston, Indianapolis, Jersey City, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Louisville, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Orange County, CA.
Requirements:
- A method of transportation (car, bike, skateboard, scooter)
- Over the age of 18 (21 in some states)
- Have a valid ID and Social Security number
- Have any license and/or insurance you need to qualify to work for yourself and (where applicable) drive in the state where you live.
Review: Like many side-hustle opportunities, Postmate’s makes it difficult to figure out whether you’re going to make a reasonable hourly wage. The pay formula is: Base rate + per minute waited (for time you spend at the pickup location) + per-mile rate for the distance between the pickup & drop-off location + 100% of your tip.
What’s the base rate? It varies from market to market, but ranges from a few pennies to $2. However, Postmates has a minimum pay per pickup that ranges from $4 to $4.50. Driver reviews indicate that’s about the amount you should expect, so unless you make more than 3 deliveries an hour, you’re earning less than minimum wage, especially after you account for the cost of gas and, potentially, the cost of parking. Also beware alcohol deliveries, where they are accepted, since the driver is responsible for checking ID and making sure the recipient isn’t already intoxicated. Drivers have complained about having to cancel orders — and getting penalized for that — because they were sent to deliver alcohol to someone who was not legally of age.
This is the relevant passage from Postmate’s Terms and Conditions: Contractor agrees that if Contractor accepts a Delivery Opportunity that includes alcohol, Contractor is solely responsible for ensuring that the Delivery complies with all federal, state, and local laws, including but not limited to ensuring that the individual accepting the delivery is the individual who placed the order, has provided valid identification, is 21 years old or older, and is not intoxicated.
You may be better off working with Caviar, Grub Hub, Favor Delivery or Deliv.
What their drivers are saying:
(These comments from Indeed.com are edited solely for grammar, clarity and space)
“I have done Postmates for 2 years now on and off. In the last 4 months it’s gotten horrible. No more blitz pricing at night which makes working after midnight pointless. Also more and more customers are not tipping. This is the main problem. Postmates literally pays an illegal wage for lots of jobs. $4.10. Even if you can do 2 in a hour that’s $8.20 a hour with no gas compensation and no guarantee people will tip. You are basically just getting your gas money back and literally not making any money at all!”
“You get from this job what you put in. Simple as that. You make your own schedule, and the pay is decent. The app is very easy to understand. As a driver it is a bit tough to make deliveries. Especially if you’re in New York City. The fear of a $115 double parking ticket every time you make a delivery on a crowded street sucks.”
“Postmates is a delivery service, to provide food and items and bringing joy to the people of NYC. Working at post mates helped me understand Manhattan and Brooklyn more while riding a bike. Discovering new shops and people during my work experience I became more attached to NYC. I had worked on my own schedule which was great with balancing school and work, I enjoyed just riding around new places going into shops and meeting the kind people who happily used the app. By far the hardest part of the job was the distance for the amount of money in return.”
Worthwhile links:
This is a great spread sheet, to show after-cost earnings from Postmates and other driving/delivery jobs:
The downloadable version is here.
More details about the job:
https://www.reddit.com/r/postmates/wiki/faq