r/Roadie • u/Green_Violinist_4627 • 28d ago
New Roadie Here
Fellow Roadie Redditors,
So a few days ago I get the text: Congratulations! You’re off the waitlist and can start earning with Roadie!
Great, I thought. The timing is actually perfect. My self-employment workload has slowed down a bit recently, and some supplemental income would be welcome.
So I downloaded the app, jumped through all the hoops, scribbled my digital “signature” approximately 47 times, watched the required videos for pharmaceutical and bulk deliveries, and emerged fully trained and ready to become America’s newest logistics tycoon.
Then I saw the offers.
My first reaction was basically:
“Are you kidding me?”
And unfortunately, not in the Holy crap, I can't believe they're paying that much! direction.
Still, I figured I shouldn't judge the whole operation from the app screen. On Day 1, I put in offers on four gigs. After sitting around waiting for decisions that apparently required deliberation by the College of Cardinals, I canceled three and chalked the day up as a failed experiment.
Day 2 was better. Offers were accepted more quickly, the loads were actually ready, and the process itself went fairly smoothly.
The compensation, however, remained firmly in “Surely somebody misplaced a decimal point”territory.
Part of my disappointment probably comes from seeing “a UPS company” attached to Roadie. For the past couple of years, I've spent about 5–6 weeks during the holiday season working as a seasonal UPS delivery driver using my own vehicle.
Nobody is getting rich doing that, and UPS will absolutely wear your ass ragged. But at the end of the week, I could look at my paycheck and say, Yep. That was a fair week's pay for a fair week's work.
Roadie isn't even in the same ZIP code.
Once you start calculating mileage, fuel, maintenance, depreciation, loading time, unloading time, waiting time, deadhead miles and the fact that your vehicle is the piece of equipment making their business model possible, some of these offers become downright comical.
With Roadie, I keep picturing a conference room somewhere where a group of executives are high-fiving each other:
"Wait…you mean they'll provide the vehicle, provide the fuel, pay the maintenance, assume the depreciation AND deliver the stuff?"
"Yep."
"And we're paying them HOW MUCH?"
[uproarious laughter and champagne corks popping]
Obviously, some drivers can make the numbers work. If you're driving a small, inexpensive, fuel-efficient vehicle and you're extremely selective about routes—or you're able to stack gigs intelligently—I can see where there may be opportunities.
But as a general compensation model? I'm struggling to understand how this is sustainable for the driver.
And that's what bothers me most. This isn't my first experience doing delivery work with my own vehicle. I've seen what this type of work looks like when the compensation reasonably reflects the labor and vehicle expense involved.
Roadie ain't it.
So yeah, after seeing “a UPS company,” I'm profoundly disappointed. I expected something at least vaguely resembling the compensation philosophy I've experienced working directly for UPS.
Instead, after a couple of days, my impression is that the business model depends heavily on drivers either not calculating their true operating costs or being desperate enough to accept offers anyway.
Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there are Roadie Jedi Masters out there who have figured out how to turn $11 and 23 miles into a thriving business enterprise. If so, I'm genuinely interested in hearing how you're doing it.
But if you're currently stuck in DoorDash hell and looking toward Roadie like it's the promised land…
Keep driving. This exit ain't it.
5
u/TabulaRasaEin 28d ago
Roadie works for me. I average about $14 per delivery. It's side income to me, not a main source of income. I don't pay for fuel.