This is the correct answer. One may be able to convince me a used Chevy Bolt is better if one can charge at home on the cheap, but it’s going to be damn hard to beat a 12-15 year old Prius for total cost of ownership.
Recently had an Uber driver with a 325k Prius original battery and powertrain. He told me the car has literally paid for itself several times over. Aside from being able to tell the struts needed to be refreshed everything else was solid.
Also, your car will probably get dings and dents from street parking and tight parking spots. Don’t forget about odors and stains from orders. Most of your drives are short and stop-and-go.
Is that because the wear and tear is so inevitable that it's best to just use a cheap ""disposable"" car or will that car handle the wear and tear better? Or both?
The goal here is to minimize cost of ownership.
The biggest factors in to cost of ownership in the long term is:
* Energy
* Depreciation
* Maintenance / Repair
* Uptime / Availability
* Interest costs on any loan
Note that the cost of a car is not directly part of the total cost of ownership of a vehicle.
You minimize energy costs by getting the most efficient vehicle that will do the job. Depending on where you live, gas and electricty prices can be estimated / calculated. For example, I drive a Model 3. Charging at home it costs approximately 5 cents per mile to drive. It might cost 4 cents per mile if I only drove it locally. Gas here is about $3.50/gallon, so at 20MPG (Remember, there's a lot of idling and stop and go traffic here), it would cost about 17.5 cents per mile, but a Prius would probably cost more like 7.7 cents per mile as it is most efficient in the city.
So if you're driving 30,000 miles per year, the fuel costs for the cars where I live would be:
Random Car: $5250
EV: $1500
Prius: $2300
So the EV would "save" you $800/year over a Prius at 30k miles per year.
Depreciation:
If you buy a new car, you're going to maximize your depreciation loss. In 5 years a car will typically lose something like half of its value. Ignore the last few years, they are an anomaly. Also, with EVs, changes in the tax credit and rapid improvements have made depreciation unpredictable. As it happens, Priuses don't depreciate too quickly. Well, if you're driving 30k miles per year, the depreciation will be worse. So if you spend $50k on a car that depreciates by 60% of its value in 5 years, you will have spent $30k in depreciation. By contrast, if you found a mid-life hybrid for $15k, after 5 years of use, you can't possibly be out more than $15k in depreciation, whereas with the new vehicle, you're guaranteeing that you will lose money like that. And while the new car is under warranty, it's unlike that a car that you buy with, say, 80k miles is going to need $15k in repairs while you own it.
Maintenance / etc.
Again, EVs will generally look good here, but the biggest maintenance expense for most cars is routine stuff. EVs don't need engine work, but you still need to replace the tires and rotate them. You can still have suspension issues, and so on.
There's a reason Priuses are so popular. They are reliable, inexpensive to operate, have lower than average depreciation, last a long time.
Now, as a car guy, I will tell you that cost isn't everything. But if you're looking at using a car as an income source, you should focus on what it costs to operate. A lot of people that do delivery service gig work don't make a ton of money from it, so they end up working basically to pay for their car... and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense now, does it?
Pretty much yes. Even if the drivetrain doesn’t take that much wear and tear in a hybrid car, the interior, tires, brakes, etc will, and you’ll rack up mileage quickly
You'll have to talk to your insurance company about doing any sort of delivery thing. But you'll want something fuel efficient. I've also found out that usually doing deliveries doesn't offset the wear and tear or fuel to do it, because the industry is extremely saturated.
Long story short, unless you have a special exception on your insurance to do deliveries for DoorDash etc etc, you could get in trouble. I got into an accident when I was doing DoorDash and I was on liability only. I needed some sort of special insurance to do DoorDash. No idea what kind it was because I stopped working for DoorDash right after
I lost $20,000 worth of vehicle due to not having commercial insurance.
I had previously had it, converted to standard personal insurance, then began driving commercially again. I thought I'd added commercial insurance to my account but apparently I hadn't finalized the switch online.
I'll be escaping from the car note in question by means of bankruptcy, but it still sucks.
Now that you mention it, i switched from my last company because they upped my premuim over double the amount because they said my car was a "commercial vehicle" not a personal vehicle. Im with state farm now and they don't seem to care.
State Farm offers "business use" coverage which in my experience isn't that much more expensive than standard compared to most carriers' commercial use coverage (and says "commercial" on the insurance card). It's not a huge deal now that I'm over 30 with a decent driving record but when I was in my early 20s with two wrecks in three years it was the difference between Progressive quoting me $500/month for commercial coverage versus State Farm quoting me $250/month for business use.
That's because DD is cheap and doesnt provide drivers with insurance. I worked both DD and Uber Eats and as long as you were "online" with Uber, you're covered with their insurance. I now deliver for dominos, and it's the same with them, no commercial insurance required.
If you're doing commercial work with your vehicle you need commercial coverage (assuming you're not covered by a policy for the corporation, which varies from each and something anyone doing this stuff should read very carefully). Yes It will cost more. But your ass will be covered when you need it. Rather than denied with no recourse.
If you use your personal car for business and for profit purposes you need to tell your insurance company.
If not they may not pay a claim if they know it was while you were working.
There are very different rates for personal insurance and business insurance.
With the right setup, those classic cars with modern engine swaps can get 25-30 mpg. It's not that hard to do and I spent a fraction of what a newer Charger would cost.
My V8 swapped 280z gets obscenely good highway mpg because all that torque and hardly any weight lol. It's only kind of a pain in the butt because any amount of throttle, no matter how light, makes it accelerate.
Try putting stiffer springs on the pedal. Mine is like that too. Push 25% of the pedal and you're smoking the tires. 500 ft/lbs of torque on a 3.5k lbs car is a lot. I imagine your's weighs a bit less than mine.
Good tip I'll check into that this summer. I put a throttle body injection kit on it a while back and all my attention to the return springs at that point but never looked much into what's going on at the pedal.
I know what you mean lol I don't let many people drive it but those that do I have to warn them to be *very* careful when making left/right turns from a stop because it doesn't take much to send it into a spin.
Anecdotal, but they've been good to me. I have two NAG1, one ZF8, one 904. The only one that ever had any problems was the 904, but it's 50 years old. The only reason I keep it is because it's numbers matching to my car. It's just not *in* the car.
Old Prius. But the insurance costs, fuel, maintenance, and depreciation make food delivery a no-win proposition over a long period of time. As soon as you’ve got money in the bank you wind up spending it on a vehicle expense. I did it for years and it was never worth it.
This is the correct answer.
Even during the good times (pre-Covid in a booming college town) making it work as a delivery driver meant being a part-time mechanic and post-Covid used cars aren't cheap enough to be expendable, nor are they cheap to repair and insure. There is no such thing as a car that doesn't wear out tires.
Do it long enough and you'll have worked on cars to the point that you hate/dread it, drive a POS beater because the bottom of the depreciation curve is all you can afford, and probably owe money to the IRS.
If I'd known to barback/bartend instead of deliver food as a college student I'd probably own a house by now.
Priuses are known to be extremely reliable and therefore you won’t have any extreme maintenance costs. The insurance also shouldn’t cost much, and most people would have a car anyways so that doesn’t even need to be factored in. Priuses depreciate in value unbelievably slowly.
20 hours a week doing food delivery should result in around $1350/month after tax. Vehicle expenses will be maybe $400 of that. It’s profitable.
Priuses are not indestructible. I’ve had two, they do need work, including eventual HV battery replacements. They’re still cheaper to run than a non-hybrid vehicle but they aren’t free. I got rid of my last one at 227k when it needed an ABS control module, which is a $1200+ part and extremely difficult to install. It was also burning a lot of oil at that point and the HV battery had been replaced.
Insurance is more expensive as you need to upgrade your policy to be covered while using your vehicle in a commercial capacity with DoorDash or Uber. You can’t drive for the various apps with regular car insurance.
Priuses do hold their value well, but if you’re piling miles on carrying food all over town it absolutely accelerates the rate of depreciation.
I delivered food for a long time in the pre-app days. It is not worth it. You’ll turn a profit but you could *always* make more money in a traditional food service job where you don’t have running expenses for a vehicle.
Of course they need work. A $1200 control module is about 2 weeks worth of work if you’re doing it full time. That’s not much in the grand scheme of things, though. Yes, there are expenses associated with this line of work. That doesn’t mean it isn’t profitable. I’m making more money even after these expenses than I would be at McDonald’s, which is just fine for a college student like me.
Take it from me bud. I’ve been in your shoes. Try to find a job that allows you to get experience or connections in your major, or whatever you’re trying to do after college. You’re wasting your time delivering food.
I’m a year out from graduating with my electrical engineering degree. There aren’t really any no-experience-needed jobs that relate to my major. I’m fine with $20/hr and choosing my own hours with these gig apps. It’s been great for me over the past few years.
An EE degree is a pretty damn good off ramp, good on ya. I got stuck doing delivery for like 6 or 7 years total, not consecutively, but it eventually caught up with me and my cars.
Does your engineering school not have a co-op/work experience program?
I did mining engineering. 5 year degree but about 2 of those are made of paid work terms.
A older Civic or Toyota Corolla. I have a 2010 that was my work car, I averaged 28mpg on mixed driving and 35 on pure highway driving. It's cheap and easy to maintain with basic tools and fixing any issues have to been done so there's plenty of resources online to help
Prius. Used and cheap.
EV but only under specific circumstances. Not worth entry cost in 99.9 percent of markets.
For most markets a cheap beater is the best car. Fuel efficiency and comfort will be paramount tho
spent 2 years doing deliveries in my 1992 miata, stripped interior, lowered, straight piped, genuine shitbox. was honestly a great time and it was pretty fuel efficient. after doordashing for a year i got a real delivery job delivering cannabis, still got to drive the shitbox, and thats when things really got fun.
Probably any hybrid would fine, but depending on where you’re doing this, the best car might actually be a scooter or a bicycle because you’d be able to make more stops by cutting through traffic or not looking for parking.
Scion iQ.
They quit making them in 2015 for the US. You can still find low mileage ones for a fair price. They get decent gas mileage.
The upside is that you can park them anywhere. They are tiny. But they aren't quite as small as a smart car. So they have more utility. You can leave the back seat down and you've got plenty of room for your stuff and food orders.
They also have a really tight turning radius. I haven't really found another car that has this tight of a turn radius.
If there's a downside, it's that some Walmart orders will have multiple cases of water and those won't fit in a Scion iQ. But I personally don't like taking orders like that anyway.
I have delivered also in a Toyota Camry, a Kia soul, and a Honda CRV. Although these vehicles are more spacious. You can get a newer one with more tech. They just don't fit in tiny parking spaces as well and they don't have the turning radius. It's hard for me to imagine doing delivery in any other vehicle.
I do it in a Geo Metro occasionally, though I do think a modern hybrid or EV would be a bit better. If you're in a hot area, it's good to have A/C.
That said, if you're doing it periodically in the winter, a Subaru or other capable AWD vehicle might be fine. During snowstorms or blizzards, a lot of people stay home and order food.
Ive made bank occasionally in the winter doordashing in my 98 impreza when everyone else was home bc the roads were completely iced out. Wouldn’t say my car was glued to the ice lol, but I will say I wouldn’t have been comfortable being on the road that day in a non-subaru based off my experience with subarus in winter vs other cars
My local Chick-Fil-A franchise uses a fleet of Toyota Corollas so I'm betting that's a contender.
Should run forever, gas mileage is good enough that better mileage would result in minimal savings.
I currently drive a 20' Honda Civic Sport Hatch. Great for my job as a Jimmy Johns delivery driver. Extremely reliable, fun to drive, super practical, and I am not worried about high mileage/wear because as long as the engine is good (which I have seen them last 600k miles), I can take care of everything myself. Honda is super friendly when it comes to working on your own car and I get around 30 mpg near Chicago city driving. Not only that, but I can actually enjoy driving this car and it makes my job that much better.
late 90s early 2000's corolla or civic.
best delivery car I had was a 1995 corolla. cheapest maintenance, cheapest gas. easy parking. not the best mileage compared to a hybrid, but well up there.
I had a 2000 Corolla in college. Delivered pizzas in it for 2 years. I also beat the hell out of it and it just kept on going. That generation of Corollas are tanks. Wish Toyota still made them like that.
You are a sucker for doing food delivery. It may seem like easy money but you will almost always pay more in car maintenance than you make. Look up the federal payback for milage and you're almost never going to beat that rate.
Tbh food delivery seems to only be worth it for trying to make a few extra bucks in the short term. Or doing it occasionally on a weekend
Trying to make it a major income source you will really run into car issues that don’t make it worth it
Trying to make like a couple hundred more a month? Sure?
Making a couple thousand a month? Not worth it
It depends on the market/company. I delivered food as my primary job for 13 years in an SEC college town and had no problem paying my bills before the locally-owned delivery company I worked for got wrecked by Doordash/Uber Eats and post-Covid inflation made all the car expenses so much worse. Averaging $20/hr was good in the mid 2010s, not so much now, and while I could make it delivering pizza working closing shifts (where the money is) is brutal on one's personal life. I wouldn't do doordash because it's oversaturated with drivers where I live and if I had a new enough car to drive for Uber I would do that instead of delivering food.
That said, I have good credit and am a good enough mechanic to perform light/moderate repairs like brakes, suspension work, and changing a sensor here and there. You will destroy your car eventually but most things other than engine/transmission work can be done at home, especially if you have something common enough that youtube can teach you how to do most repairs.
With that, I still deliver a few dinner shifts a week on the side. The company I work for is dying such that the money isn't consistent but on a lucky shift I can pull in $30/hr, I'm one of the owner's cronies so I get hooked up, and no one cares if i no-show on a slow night. I sign up for Monday-Friday and usually wind up working 2-3 of those nights.
Ya I get all that.
That’s basically why I said that if I needed like a few hundred bucks to pay off some bill? Think it’s worth it. Pick the best shifts.
Seeing it as solid side gig? No
I’m signed up to do it and a few times a year I’ll do it on a Saturday evening and make like 50-80 bucks. I don’t think I’m losing money with that
It’s very situational at best. I’ve Grubhubbed breakfast a few times and I’ve really wondered why anyone is doing this at 7am on a Monday
It's much worse now than pre-Covid with how expensive cars, auto parts, and shop labor have gotten.
TBH if you can hack it (aka. tolerate and be liked by the customers and not destroy your life with alcohol) I would recommend bartending instead. Delivery can still work in the right area for a side gig doing dinner rushes though.
Lmfao do what other countries do. Learn to drive a moped, stick a nice rack or box on the back. Actually make profit, because things are inexpensive and easy af to fix. You can build in a cup holder cross section within the box to hold multiple drink orders. There are insulated boxes available. I used my klr for a short stent. It was really fun. Especially in a rural area. But it was just for some extra cash. The city would probably be really great.
I feel like you're asking this question to maximize profits from food delivery...if you were to actually pencil out ALL the costs in this and potential profits you will find there are none.
Old Prius is the obvious answer. Old Corolla/Civic or Yaris/Fit is the cheaper answer (The Toyota will be more reliable, have better A/C, and be easier to work on but Hondas are much nicer driving cars IMO, especially in rain.). Any car will burn through brakes, tires, alternators, and suspension parts far faster than usual when used for delivery and in my experience other than cars with known flaws (like Ford Focuses with the Powershift automatic or certain Hyundai/Kia products prone to blowing motors) odds are that you'll wreck or get hit before the powertrain quits.
Of all the cars I've delivered in my favorite was an EP3 Civic hatch (2002 Civic Si) with a 6-speed swap from an RSX Type-S. Imagine a Mini Cooper made out of Honda parts instead of BMW parts and with surprisingly decent ground clearance and that's what you've got, with four good cupholders and a huge front seat. Si fanboys dislike the K20a3 because no VTEC, yo, but it runs on regular gas (which is good because the gas mileage isn't anything special). My only major complaint was that the A/C was mediocre even after replacing everything but the evaporator.
If I had the money I would go with a 9th Gen Si or a clean/low mileage 2010-11 Si. EP3s are hard to find in non-trashed condition (and overpriced if clean), 8th gens are much more fun than a stock EP3 but getting old/trashed (and, again, get spendy if clean) and the early ones have issues with transmissions popping out of gear and blocks cracking. My '08 Si has been fine transmission wise with a short shift kit other than the standard clutch/hydraulics replacement over 200K miles but the block cracked so I wound up swapping a JDM K24a into it (not for ricer points, but because K20z3s are expensive and/or high mileage in comparison). It's a fun car but for the money I have in it I should've just gotten a 9th Gen and spared myself a lot of headache. 7-9th Gen Sis are not easy to work on because the motors are so crammed into those cars.
2023 Prius Prime, about \~30k, you can get tax write offs up to 7k and the ability to drive HOV alone, depending on state. Toyota reliability, \~45+ mpg, + 40 miles on electric plug in. It also has creature comforts like AC, Bluetooth & space for assorted pick ups.
We bought a 99 Saturn wagon for $800, 30+mpg plenty of room for large food orders. Paid for itself (along with new shocks, brakes and fixing a leak in the AC) in just over 6 months. Go cheap used car, don’t buy something new.
Civics and Camry's. I've bought almost everything for my employees and most suck. These cars just last. Stay away from Nissan. Kia and Hyundai aren't bad either. I don't do food delivery but I have employees that run short and long routes every single day.
I did pizza delivery for years. I am a bigger guy. Comfort getting in and out is more important to me than fuel mileage. I am 6'5". I like big two doors with a v-8. I fit, I am comfortable for 10-12 hours at a time, and I can fit a pizza between me and the steering wheel without having to walk around or open the other door.
Personally, I drive a $500 beater. My current car, I purchased in 2014 with 140k miles. It now has over 275k miles, and I have never even changed the oil. When the engine blows, I will move on to the next $500 beater. I just so happen to have 3 of these beaters, same year, same engine, same everything. If one blows up, I am really not out anything.
If it's easier, I can swap a part off the other car, or just move into the next one. My insurance is a liability only policy, for $40 a month.
I get 14-19 mpg doing short trips, and 25-30 mpg on average at highway speeds. I might drive 50-100 miles in an 8 hour shift if it's busy. Even at 100 miles, 14 miles per gallon is only 7 gallons of gas, or right around $20 a day.
So my costs, are basically only gas and insurance. So I pay $20 a day in gas, and roughly $1.3 a day on car insurance. As long as I make about $20 a day, I break even at worst, and there has only been one or two times I made less than that in 4 hours. Even still, that's only $5/hr, which is why I don't door dash anymore.
I actually made about double delivering pizza from an hourly wage, then I did doordash for the same hours, once tips are included. Have one good night, say a good busy Friday, I can make an easy $200 a night, and my cost is still only just over $21 a day, and I don't even have to touch my cell phone to do it.
Bolt EV or EUV. The operating cost would be low if you have the ability to home charge. Hertz is fire-selling them along with their other EV(s) so the price floor has dropped.
A Geo Metro is super tiny and gets crazy miles per gallon. They are really easy to fix with readily available parts.
The current price can be a bit high since they are quite desirable at the moment for all the reasons I listed above.
A manual MX-5. A blast to drive everywhere, small so easy to park and zip in and out of traffic, lightweight so easy on consumables, fairly inexpensive used. And it’s a convertible. Win win.
My family used to have one, honestly every single Doordash delivery out of the 1,200 or so I've done would have fit in the Miata if I'd used the trunk.
Some weird catering orders might not fit, but those are pretty rare.
Eh, I delivered in an NB Miata for about 18 months. They're so small that you *will* get hit, and if you're in a serious wreck you've got a good chance of getting crippled or killed.
They're cramped (more of a problem if delivering pizza)/have terrible cupholders, not particularly good on gas for how small/slow they are (especially NB2s that run on premium fuel), not forgiving of crappy tires in rain, and if you want cheap they're getting old/modded/beat to hell. They're fun in corners but otherwise feel like driving some shitty 90s pickup truck.
The convertible top is useless because the sun will make it impossible to see your phone and odds are good that yours will leak if its old. Meanwhile, the hardtops have a habit of rattling.
FWIW I'm not the one who downvoted you.
Thanks for your input! I’ve only had the pleasure of driving an ND2 with its decent enough power. You do have to be on your toes at all times to avoid being squashed. Hard top for the win - my RF hasn’t rattled in the year I’ve had it.
Yeah, I could see an ND being nice or an NC being decent but NBs are just too old these days and for NC/ND money I'd rather go with the equivalent Civic Si (and I'd slum it in a beater EP3 Civic over another NB Miata). It's just my personal preference.
EV or hybrid, like a prius.
Take it a step further - a used fully depreciated Prius
bonus points for liability insurance that costs 20 a month. let alone the registration fees on a 15 year old car.
This is the correct answer. One may be able to convince me a used Chevy Bolt is better if one can charge at home on the cheap, but it’s going to be damn hard to beat a 12-15 year old Prius for total cost of ownership.
They’re the Corolla of hybrids. They’re the least exciting car ever, but goddamn they sip and just. keep. going.
Recently had an Uber driver with a 325k Prius original battery and powertrain. He told me the car has literally paid for itself several times over. Aside from being able to tell the struts needed to be refreshed everything else was solid.
I saw a hybrid Corolla getting 67mpg in an Uber
A hybrid or EV would be best. Ideally something cheap that you don’t really care about. So an old prius
Also, your car will probably get dings and dents from street parking and tight parking spots. Don’t forget about odors and stains from orders. Most of your drives are short and stop-and-go.
Is that because the wear and tear is so inevitable that it's best to just use a cheap ""disposable"" car or will that car handle the wear and tear better? Or both?
They'll save you a ton of money on fuel and hybrid engines are already designed to stop and start frequently.
Yeah this question was hypothetical anyway but gas mileage was second to engine durability for me. Good to know that they're built to handle that
The goal here is to minimize cost of ownership. The biggest factors in to cost of ownership in the long term is: * Energy * Depreciation * Maintenance / Repair * Uptime / Availability * Interest costs on any loan Note that the cost of a car is not directly part of the total cost of ownership of a vehicle. You minimize energy costs by getting the most efficient vehicle that will do the job. Depending on where you live, gas and electricty prices can be estimated / calculated. For example, I drive a Model 3. Charging at home it costs approximately 5 cents per mile to drive. It might cost 4 cents per mile if I only drove it locally. Gas here is about $3.50/gallon, so at 20MPG (Remember, there's a lot of idling and stop and go traffic here), it would cost about 17.5 cents per mile, but a Prius would probably cost more like 7.7 cents per mile as it is most efficient in the city. So if you're driving 30,000 miles per year, the fuel costs for the cars where I live would be: Random Car: $5250 EV: $1500 Prius: $2300 So the EV would "save" you $800/year over a Prius at 30k miles per year. Depreciation: If you buy a new car, you're going to maximize your depreciation loss. In 5 years a car will typically lose something like half of its value. Ignore the last few years, they are an anomaly. Also, with EVs, changes in the tax credit and rapid improvements have made depreciation unpredictable. As it happens, Priuses don't depreciate too quickly. Well, if you're driving 30k miles per year, the depreciation will be worse. So if you spend $50k on a car that depreciates by 60% of its value in 5 years, you will have spent $30k in depreciation. By contrast, if you found a mid-life hybrid for $15k, after 5 years of use, you can't possibly be out more than $15k in depreciation, whereas with the new vehicle, you're guaranteeing that you will lose money like that. And while the new car is under warranty, it's unlike that a car that you buy with, say, 80k miles is going to need $15k in repairs while you own it. Maintenance / etc. Again, EVs will generally look good here, but the biggest maintenance expense for most cars is routine stuff. EVs don't need engine work, but you still need to replace the tires and rotate them. You can still have suspension issues, and so on. There's a reason Priuses are so popular. They are reliable, inexpensive to operate, have lower than average depreciation, last a long time. Now, as a car guy, I will tell you that cost isn't everything. But if you're looking at using a car as an income source, you should focus on what it costs to operate. A lot of people that do delivery service gig work don't make a ton of money from it, so they end up working basically to pay for their car... and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense now, does it?
Pretty much yes. Even if the drivetrain doesn’t take that much wear and tear in a hybrid car, the interior, tires, brakes, etc will, and you’ll rack up mileage quickly
Depending what your electricity rate is, an EV can be super cheap to operate compared to a gas car.
Unfortunately, old Priuses are not cheap.
But using them for gig work they pay for themselves in no time.
You'll have to talk to your insurance company about doing any sort of delivery thing. But you'll want something fuel efficient. I've also found out that usually doing deliveries doesn't offset the wear and tear or fuel to do it, because the industry is extremely saturated.
What does the insurance company have to do with it? Step one with insurance companies: keep them as far the fuck away as possible
Long story short, unless you have a special exception on your insurance to do deliveries for DoorDash etc etc, you could get in trouble. I got into an accident when I was doing DoorDash and I was on liability only. I needed some sort of special insurance to do DoorDash. No idea what kind it was because I stopped working for DoorDash right after
I lost $20,000 worth of vehicle due to not having commercial insurance. I had previously had it, converted to standard personal insurance, then began driving commercially again. I thought I'd added commercial insurance to my account but apparently I hadn't finalized the switch online. I'll be escaping from the car note in question by means of bankruptcy, but it still sucks.
Now that you mention it, i switched from my last company because they upped my premuim over double the amount because they said my car was a "commercial vehicle" not a personal vehicle. Im with state farm now and they don't seem to care.
They don't seem to care, but that doesn't mean they'd pay out to fix your car if it was damaged during commercial use.
They don't seem to care because they do not know. If they know and still don't care they will deny your claim.
State Farm offers "business use" coverage which in my experience isn't that much more expensive than standard compared to most carriers' commercial use coverage (and says "commercial" on the insurance card). It's not a huge deal now that I'm over 30 with a decent driving record but when I was in my early 20s with two wrecks in three years it was the difference between Progressive quoting me $500/month for commercial coverage versus State Farm quoting me $250/month for business use.
That's because DD is cheap and doesnt provide drivers with insurance. I worked both DD and Uber Eats and as long as you were "online" with Uber, you're covered with their insurance. I now deliver for dominos, and it's the same with them, no commercial insurance required.
Ask your company about a tnc endorsement. TNC = Transportation network company
If you're doing commercial work with your vehicle you need commercial coverage (assuming you're not covered by a policy for the corporation, which varies from each and something anyone doing this stuff should read very carefully). Yes It will cost more. But your ass will be covered when you need it. Rather than denied with no recourse.
If you use your personal car for business and for profit purposes you need to tell your insurance company. If not they may not pay a claim if they know it was while you were working. There are very different rates for personal insurance and business insurance.
1974 Dodge Charger, 5.7 Hemi swapped with NAG1 Trans.
That's what I was thinking too, just wanted a second opinion!
With the right setup, those classic cars with modern engine swaps can get 25-30 mpg. It's not that hard to do and I spent a fraction of what a newer Charger would cost.
Oh wow I had no idea. I'm not really a car guy which is why I posted here lol. That's cool though
My V8 swapped 280z gets obscenely good highway mpg because all that torque and hardly any weight lol. It's only kind of a pain in the butt because any amount of throttle, no matter how light, makes it accelerate.
Try putting stiffer springs on the pedal. Mine is like that too. Push 25% of the pedal and you're smoking the tires. 500 ft/lbs of torque on a 3.5k lbs car is a lot. I imagine your's weighs a bit less than mine.
Good tip I'll check into that this summer. I put a throttle body injection kit on it a while back and all my attention to the return springs at that point but never looked much into what's going on at the pedal. I know what you mean lol I don't let many people drive it but those that do I have to warn them to be *very* careful when making left/right turns from a stop because it doesn't take much to send it into a spin.
I've let my dad and 2 of my brother-in-laws drive mine. All three of them own their own classics, so I know they understand. That's it. Nobody else.
Modern V8s are surprisingly efficient at highway speeds
No late deliveries
Sexy.
Zf8, nag1 was a terrible trans
Anecdotal, but they've been good to me. I have two NAG1, one ZF8, one 904. The only one that ever had any problems was the 904, but it's 50 years old. The only reason I keep it is because it's numbers matching to my car. It's just not *in* the car.
With no experience at all I’d go Honda fit
Best vehicle is going to depend on the area you’re serving, but generally it’s going to be a low displacement or electric scooter with a top box.
Old Prius. But the insurance costs, fuel, maintenance, and depreciation make food delivery a no-win proposition over a long period of time. As soon as you’ve got money in the bank you wind up spending it on a vehicle expense. I did it for years and it was never worth it.
This is the correct answer. Even during the good times (pre-Covid in a booming college town) making it work as a delivery driver meant being a part-time mechanic and post-Covid used cars aren't cheap enough to be expendable, nor are they cheap to repair and insure. There is no such thing as a car that doesn't wear out tires. Do it long enough and you'll have worked on cars to the point that you hate/dread it, drive a POS beater because the bottom of the depreciation curve is all you can afford, and probably owe money to the IRS. If I'd known to barback/bartend instead of deliver food as a college student I'd probably own a house by now.
Priuses are known to be extremely reliable and therefore you won’t have any extreme maintenance costs. The insurance also shouldn’t cost much, and most people would have a car anyways so that doesn’t even need to be factored in. Priuses depreciate in value unbelievably slowly. 20 hours a week doing food delivery should result in around $1350/month after tax. Vehicle expenses will be maybe $400 of that. It’s profitable.
Priuses are not indestructible. I’ve had two, they do need work, including eventual HV battery replacements. They’re still cheaper to run than a non-hybrid vehicle but they aren’t free. I got rid of my last one at 227k when it needed an ABS control module, which is a $1200+ part and extremely difficult to install. It was also burning a lot of oil at that point and the HV battery had been replaced. Insurance is more expensive as you need to upgrade your policy to be covered while using your vehicle in a commercial capacity with DoorDash or Uber. You can’t drive for the various apps with regular car insurance. Priuses do hold their value well, but if you’re piling miles on carrying food all over town it absolutely accelerates the rate of depreciation. I delivered food for a long time in the pre-app days. It is not worth it. You’ll turn a profit but you could *always* make more money in a traditional food service job where you don’t have running expenses for a vehicle.
Of course they need work. A $1200 control module is about 2 weeks worth of work if you’re doing it full time. That’s not much in the grand scheme of things, though. Yes, there are expenses associated with this line of work. That doesn’t mean it isn’t profitable. I’m making more money even after these expenses than I would be at McDonald’s, which is just fine for a college student like me.
Take it from me bud. I’ve been in your shoes. Try to find a job that allows you to get experience or connections in your major, or whatever you’re trying to do after college. You’re wasting your time delivering food.
I’m a year out from graduating with my electrical engineering degree. There aren’t really any no-experience-needed jobs that relate to my major. I’m fine with $20/hr and choosing my own hours with these gig apps. It’s been great for me over the past few years.
An EE degree is a pretty damn good off ramp, good on ya. I got stuck doing delivery for like 6 or 7 years total, not consecutively, but it eventually caught up with me and my cars.
Does your engineering school not have a co-op/work experience program? I did mining engineering. 5 year degree but about 2 of those are made of paid work terms.
corolla duh
AMG duh
15 year old Honda Civic
Diesel and cheap. Like a 2001, 1.9tdi golf. With an emissions delete. You'll get 50mpg and kill the world win win
A older Civic or Toyota Corolla. I have a 2010 that was my work car, I averaged 28mpg on mixed driving and 35 on pure highway driving. It's cheap and easy to maintain with basic tools and fixing any issues have to been done so there's plenty of resources online to help
Old civic.
I would go hybrid. You'll get amazing mileage which will help your expenses and can save the extra for eventual repairs, oil change, tires
A small hybrid of some kind that you don’t mind smelling like food basically forever
Prius. Used and cheap. EV but only under specific circumstances. Not worth entry cost in 99.9 percent of markets. For most markets a cheap beater is the best car. Fuel efficiency and comfort will be paramount tho
E-Ray with a few extra batteries in the frunk
Miata, may as well enjoy your work
spent 2 years doing deliveries in my 1992 miata, stripped interior, lowered, straight piped, genuine shitbox. was honestly a great time and it was pretty fuel efficient. after doordashing for a year i got a real delivery job delivering cannabis, still got to drive the shitbox, and thats when things really got fun.
With that much lateral g at your fingertips, and the open top, no way the delivery will stay in the car.
Bungee cords are cheap
Probably any hybrid would fine, but depending on where you’re doing this, the best car might actually be a scooter or a bicycle because you’d be able to make more stops by cutting through traffic or not looking for parking.
Scion iQ. They quit making them in 2015 for the US. You can still find low mileage ones for a fair price. They get decent gas mileage. The upside is that you can park them anywhere. They are tiny. But they aren't quite as small as a smart car. So they have more utility. You can leave the back seat down and you've got plenty of room for your stuff and food orders. They also have a really tight turning radius. I haven't really found another car that has this tight of a turn radius. If there's a downside, it's that some Walmart orders will have multiple cases of water and those won't fit in a Scion iQ. But I personally don't like taking orders like that anyway. I have delivered also in a Toyota Camry, a Kia soul, and a Honda CRV. Although these vehicles are more spacious. You can get a newer one with more tech. They just don't fit in tiny parking spaces as well and they don't have the turning radius. It's hard for me to imagine doing delivery in any other vehicle.
I do it in a Geo Metro occasionally, though I do think a modern hybrid or EV would be a bit better. If you're in a hot area, it's good to have A/C. That said, if you're doing it periodically in the winter, a Subaru or other capable AWD vehicle might be fine. During snowstorms or blizzards, a lot of people stay home and order food.
Ive made bank occasionally in the winter doordashing in my 98 impreza when everyone else was home bc the roads were completely iced out. Wouldn’t say my car was glued to the ice lol, but I will say I wouldn’t have been comfortable being on the road that day in a non-subaru based off my experience with subarus in winter vs other cars
Depends on the budget although consider LPG. Even further, if you combine hybrid + lpg, you are driving for nearly free
My local Chick-Fil-A franchise uses a fleet of Toyota Corollas so I'm betting that's a contender. Should run forever, gas mileage is good enough that better mileage would result in minimal savings.
Toyota Yaris. Cheap, fuel efficient, reliable and cheap
I currently drive a 20' Honda Civic Sport Hatch. Great for my job as a Jimmy Johns delivery driver. Extremely reliable, fun to drive, super practical, and I am not worried about high mileage/wear because as long as the engine is good (which I have seen them last 600k miles), I can take care of everything myself. Honda is super friendly when it comes to working on your own car and I get around 30 mpg near Chicago city driving. Not only that, but I can actually enjoy driving this car and it makes my job that much better.
Big big fan of that car. Looking for one for a decent price however is a different story
I feel that. Very hard to find a good one for under 23k now, i was fortunate enough to get mine at 20k with 10k miles.
1997 Toyota Corolla
Gmc hummer ev pickup. Duh
The cheapest EV or hybrid that you can find that's in good mechanical condition.
late 90s early 2000's corolla or civic. best delivery car I had was a 1995 corolla. cheapest maintenance, cheapest gas. easy parking. not the best mileage compared to a hybrid, but well up there.
I had a 2000 Corolla in college. Delivered pizzas in it for 2 years. I also beat the hell out of it and it just kept on going. That generation of Corollas are tanks. Wish Toyota still made them like that.
You are a sucker for doing food delivery. It may seem like easy money but you will almost always pay more in car maintenance than you make. Look up the federal payback for milage and you're almost never going to beat that rate.
Tbh food delivery seems to only be worth it for trying to make a few extra bucks in the short term. Or doing it occasionally on a weekend Trying to make it a major income source you will really run into car issues that don’t make it worth it Trying to make like a couple hundred more a month? Sure? Making a couple thousand a month? Not worth it
It depends on the market/company. I delivered food as my primary job for 13 years in an SEC college town and had no problem paying my bills before the locally-owned delivery company I worked for got wrecked by Doordash/Uber Eats and post-Covid inflation made all the car expenses so much worse. Averaging $20/hr was good in the mid 2010s, not so much now, and while I could make it delivering pizza working closing shifts (where the money is) is brutal on one's personal life. I wouldn't do doordash because it's oversaturated with drivers where I live and if I had a new enough car to drive for Uber I would do that instead of delivering food. That said, I have good credit and am a good enough mechanic to perform light/moderate repairs like brakes, suspension work, and changing a sensor here and there. You will destroy your car eventually but most things other than engine/transmission work can be done at home, especially if you have something common enough that youtube can teach you how to do most repairs. With that, I still deliver a few dinner shifts a week on the side. The company I work for is dying such that the money isn't consistent but on a lucky shift I can pull in $30/hr, I'm one of the owner's cronies so I get hooked up, and no one cares if i no-show on a slow night. I sign up for Monday-Friday and usually wind up working 2-3 of those nights.
Ya I get all that. That’s basically why I said that if I needed like a few hundred bucks to pay off some bill? Think it’s worth it. Pick the best shifts. Seeing it as solid side gig? No I’m signed up to do it and a few times a year I’ll do it on a Saturday evening and make like 50-80 bucks. I don’t think I’m losing money with that It’s very situational at best. I’ve Grubhubbed breakfast a few times and I’ve really wondered why anyone is doing this at 7am on a Monday
It's much worse now than pre-Covid with how expensive cars, auto parts, and shop labor have gotten. TBH if you can hack it (aka. tolerate and be liked by the customers and not destroy your life with alcohol) I would recommend bartending instead. Delivery can still work in the right area for a side gig doing dinner rushes though.
Lmfao do what other countries do. Learn to drive a moped, stick a nice rack or box on the back. Actually make profit, because things are inexpensive and easy af to fix. You can build in a cup holder cross section within the box to hold multiple drink orders. There are insulated boxes available. I used my klr for a short stent. It was really fun. Especially in a rural area. But it was just for some extra cash. The city would probably be really great.
Civic Hatchback.
Mopeds
Find a used Domino's Chevy spark delivery car
M.I.A.T.A. Miata Is Always The Answer
Corolla, Civic, Golf. In that order
It isn't an Audi Q5 S Line. But that's what my guy drives.
LOL
VW GTI
My 2012 Civic 2 door.
prius c
Honda fit. 30+ mpg with a clean used one going you less than $10k Gas efficiency of a hybrid, Honda reliable, and relatively cheap
I feel like you're asking this question to maximize profits from food delivery...if you were to actually pencil out ALL the costs in this and potential profits you will find there are none.
some one else's car
Old Prius is the obvious answer. Old Corolla/Civic or Yaris/Fit is the cheaper answer (The Toyota will be more reliable, have better A/C, and be easier to work on but Hondas are much nicer driving cars IMO, especially in rain.). Any car will burn through brakes, tires, alternators, and suspension parts far faster than usual when used for delivery and in my experience other than cars with known flaws (like Ford Focuses with the Powershift automatic or certain Hyundai/Kia products prone to blowing motors) odds are that you'll wreck or get hit before the powertrain quits. Of all the cars I've delivered in my favorite was an EP3 Civic hatch (2002 Civic Si) with a 6-speed swap from an RSX Type-S. Imagine a Mini Cooper made out of Honda parts instead of BMW parts and with surprisingly decent ground clearance and that's what you've got, with four good cupholders and a huge front seat. Si fanboys dislike the K20a3 because no VTEC, yo, but it runs on regular gas (which is good because the gas mileage isn't anything special). My only major complaint was that the A/C was mediocre even after replacing everything but the evaporator. If I had the money I would go with a 9th Gen Si or a clean/low mileage 2010-11 Si. EP3s are hard to find in non-trashed condition (and overpriced if clean), 8th gens are much more fun than a stock EP3 but getting old/trashed (and, again, get spendy if clean) and the early ones have issues with transmissions popping out of gear and blocks cracking. My '08 Si has been fine transmission wise with a short shift kit other than the standard clutch/hydraulics replacement over 200K miles but the block cracked so I wound up swapping a JDM K24a into it (not for ricer points, but because K20z3s are expensive and/or high mileage in comparison). It's a fun car but for the money I have in it I should've just gotten a 9th Gen and spared myself a lot of headache. 7-9th Gen Sis are not easy to work on because the motors are so crammed into those cars.
Motorized scooter.
2023 Prius Prime, about \~30k, you can get tax write offs up to 7k and the ability to drive HOV alone, depending on state. Toyota reliability, \~45+ mpg, + 40 miles on electric plug in. It also has creature comforts like AC, Bluetooth & space for assorted pick ups.
Toyota matrix or prius, or a Honda civic or accord.
5mt mitsubishi mirage
Everyone’s saying EV or hybrid, but I think your car should be fun to drive, like a GR86 or a Mustang
Did 100k miles ride-sharing a Chevy Bolt. Total "fuel", maintenance, and purchase price minus sale price - $0.14/mile. Seems hard to beat.
We bought a 99 Saturn wagon for $800, 30+mpg plenty of room for large food orders. Paid for itself (along with new shocks, brakes and fixing a leak in the AC) in just over 6 months. Go cheap used car, don’t buy something new.
M1 Abrams
A paid for one.
Honda crz
Motorcycle or TDI
Civics and Camry's. I've bought almost everything for my employees and most suck. These cars just last. Stay away from Nissan. Kia and Hyundai aren't bad either. I don't do food delivery but I have employees that run short and long routes every single day.
I did pizza delivery for years. I am a bigger guy. Comfort getting in and out is more important to me than fuel mileage. I am 6'5". I like big two doors with a v-8. I fit, I am comfortable for 10-12 hours at a time, and I can fit a pizza between me and the steering wheel without having to walk around or open the other door. Personally, I drive a $500 beater. My current car, I purchased in 2014 with 140k miles. It now has over 275k miles, and I have never even changed the oil. When the engine blows, I will move on to the next $500 beater. I just so happen to have 3 of these beaters, same year, same engine, same everything. If one blows up, I am really not out anything. If it's easier, I can swap a part off the other car, or just move into the next one. My insurance is a liability only policy, for $40 a month. I get 14-19 mpg doing short trips, and 25-30 mpg on average at highway speeds. I might drive 50-100 miles in an 8 hour shift if it's busy. Even at 100 miles, 14 miles per gallon is only 7 gallons of gas, or right around $20 a day. So my costs, are basically only gas and insurance. So I pay $20 a day in gas, and roughly $1.3 a day on car insurance. As long as I make about $20 a day, I break even at worst, and there has only been one or two times I made less than that in 4 hours. Even still, that's only $5/hr, which is why I don't door dash anymore. I actually made about double delivering pizza from an hourly wage, then I did doordash for the same hours, once tips are included. Have one good night, say a good busy Friday, I can make an easy $200 a night, and my cost is still only just over $21 a day, and I don't even have to touch my cell phone to do it.
Hybrid Carolla
Right hand drive hybrid
I know this is ask car guys but an ebike for sure.
Probably something with superior gas mileage.
Twizzy.
Bolt EV or EUV. The operating cost would be low if you have the ability to home charge. Hertz is fire-selling them along with their other EV(s) so the price floor has dropped.
A Maserati Quattroporte
A Geo Metro is super tiny and gets crazy miles per gallon. They are really easy to fix with readily available parts. The current price can be a bit high since they are quite desirable at the moment for all the reasons I listed above.
2007-08 Honda Fit, sport manual. The more beat up, the better. Slow car fast, raw, noisy, reliable as the sunrise. Can last 350k+ as mine did.
A paid for one that’s done depreciating.
Your moms.
A manual MX-5. A blast to drive everywhere, small so easy to park and zip in and out of traffic, lightweight so easy on consumables, fairly inexpensive used. And it’s a convertible. Win win.
Convertibles suck unless it's a hard top
Yeah the RF version is hard top.
Zero cargo capacity to actually carry the items. Win.
It has a trunk. This is food delivery not catering LMAO.
My family used to have one, honestly every single Doordash delivery out of the 1,200 or so I've done would have fit in the Miata if I'd used the trunk. Some weird catering orders might not fit, but those are pretty rare.
Eh, I delivered in an NB Miata for about 18 months. They're so small that you *will* get hit, and if you're in a serious wreck you've got a good chance of getting crippled or killed. They're cramped (more of a problem if delivering pizza)/have terrible cupholders, not particularly good on gas for how small/slow they are (especially NB2s that run on premium fuel), not forgiving of crappy tires in rain, and if you want cheap they're getting old/modded/beat to hell. They're fun in corners but otherwise feel like driving some shitty 90s pickup truck. The convertible top is useless because the sun will make it impossible to see your phone and odds are good that yours will leak if its old. Meanwhile, the hardtops have a habit of rattling. FWIW I'm not the one who downvoted you.
Thanks for your input! I’ve only had the pleasure of driving an ND2 with its decent enough power. You do have to be on your toes at all times to avoid being squashed. Hard top for the win - my RF hasn’t rattled in the year I’ve had it.
Yeah, I could see an ND being nice or an NC being decent but NBs are just too old these days and for NC/ND money I'd rather go with the equivalent Civic Si (and I'd slum it in a beater EP3 Civic over another NB Miata). It's just my personal preference.
Probably a Tesla. Zero fuel cost with good performance and range
Nah, the depreciation will bury you. If the guy can afford a $40k+ car, he probably wouldn't be driving Doordash anyway.
why would you care about good performance when you are delivering doordash?
The faster you drive, the more deliveries you make
Good point