Driving for pay? These are your best options

Matt Gillette, a 36 year-old Instacart shopper, makes a grocery delivery in Washington, D.C.

By Kathy Kristof

California Times

Feb. 6, 2022 5 AM PT

Driving for pay? The type of driving you do has a dramatic effect on how much you earn, according to a new analysis from Gridwise. Indeed, the best driving gigs in any given city can pay almost twice as much as the lowest-paying, a Gridwise analysis found.

Gridwise is a smartphone app that works with Android and Apple technology. It aims to help drivers earn more by aggregating statistics on pay, traffic and events in major cities. The app then directs drivers to the areas and times when they’re likely to earn the most. Gridwise also tracks mileage and expenses to help drivers claim tax deductions and has partnered with Avibra to provide some insurance benefits. With more than 300,000 users, the app aggregates anonymized data on millions of transactions completed with dozens of ride share, grocery, food and parcel delivery companies around the country.

For the record:

9:37 a.m. March 16, 2022An earlier version of this article misstated the name of Zum, a rideshare service for children, as RideZum.

A custom analysis done for SideHusl.com of driver pay by category found that grocery delivery is almost always the least profitable type of driving service to offer. Grocery deliveries paid less than all other types of driving services in 8 of the 10 major markets examined. In the two markets where grocery delivery didn’t rank as the lowest-paid service, it was close — second to last. And the differences in hourly pay were striking.

In Philadelphia, for example, people who deliver parcels earn 90% more than those who deliver groceries. In Los Angeles, people who drive kids earn 72% more.

There is no clear winner on the question of best-paid services. However, ride share and parcel delivery score high in each of the 10 cities.

Best apps when driving for pay

What driving and delivery apps are being tracked? Gridwise says its full list of covered apps is proprietary information. However, it does include the most popular apps in every city. Those include (by category):

Food apps, including UberEats, DoorDash and Grubhub.

Grocery apps, such as Instacart and Shipt.

Health driving apps, such as Veyo and Wingz.

Kid-driving apps, including Zum, Kango and HopSkipDrive.

Parcel delivery services, such as Amazon Flex and Roadie.

And ride share apps, including Uber, Lyft, and Via.

Best paying categories by city

What’s the most profitable type of driving to do, based on the city where you operate? Here’s the Gridwise data, listed alphabetically by city.

The services are listed from highest paid to most poorly paid. Only services that had a statistically valid amount of data are included. Thus, Los Angeles has a category for driving kids, whereas the other cities do not. And Phoenix is the only city that ranks for driving people to healthcare appointments.

Atlanta

Ride share: $19.45

Parcel: $18.18

Food: $14.22

Grocery: 13.52

Chicago

Ride share: $25.95

Parcel: $21.94

Food: $16.78

Grocery: $15.57

Dallas-Fort Worth

Ride share: $23.37