Postmates Review | How it Works & What To Expect

What: Postmates offers delivery jobs, carting food and alcohol from grocery stores and restaurants, to clients in major cities.

Expected pay: $5 to $15 per hour

Husl $core: $$

Commissions & fees: NA

Where: Most major cities

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:

Postmates offers work delivering food and alcohol in major cities across the U.S., but is cagey about how much you’ll earn. This is probably because if you looked closely at the pay and the terms of the agreement, you’d pass on the opportunity.

Let’s look at Postmate’s pay formula to explain why. 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.

In other words, unless you make more than 3 deliveries in an hour, you’re earning less than minimum wage. And, you are responsible for paying for gasoline, parking, tolls, maintenance on your car and any other costs of driving. In addition, Postmates demands that you have at least a minimum amount of auto insurance coverage.

But that’s not all. Drivers also are responsible for checking I.D.s of clients purchasing alcohol and cigarettes. From Postmate’s terms: 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 the required age, and is not intoxicated.

But, drivers say that if they cancel a delivery because they discover the client is underage, Postmates penalizes them for not completing the delivery. In our opinion, Postmates shoves too much responsibility on its drivers, while sharing too little of the pay.

You may be better off working with Caviar, Grub Hub, Favor Delivery or Deliv.

What their drivers say:

(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.”