Delivery driving is a great opportunity to make a living on your own terms, but you have to know what you’re doing.
New drivers are often naive about how this all works, so we’re going from 0-60 to help you become a savvy, successful delivery driver.
Let’s get started!
Quick tip: there’s a TON of info here. Bookmark this page so you can come back later and continue where you left off.
✕ The wrong way to deliver
The wrong way is to join one gig program and accept every job that comes your way.
You’ll make money doing this, but you’ll only reach a fraction of your potential earnings. Not to mention, you won’t take advantage of the greatest benefit of being a gig worker.
✓ The right way to deliver
The right way is to join multiple delivery platforms and cherry-pick the most profitable rides from each one. If you’re smart about this, you can make 2-3x what you’d make sticking to one platform.
New drivers always ask, “Is that allowed?”
Yes!
Gig companies are not allowed to prohibit you from working with other platforms because you’re not an employee of theirs. This would be like a client telling a business they can’t work with other clients.
As a gig worker, you don’t get the same benefits an employee would, like healthcare and a guaranteed salary, so it doesn’t make sense to work for one app and act like an employee while missing out on all the upside of being an employee.
Your power as a contractor is the ability to work with multiple companies. This allows you to take the most profitable rides and diversify your work so you don’t lose money when one platform starts paying less. You simply prioritize whichever is paying you the most.
And guess what?
It’s way easier to do than you might think.
Not only does it take just minutes to become a delivery driver on a new platform, but there are free tools that make multi-apping much easier.
Here’s a step-by-step checklist to get started.
The Smart Driver checklist
First, join a few programs available in your area.
You don’t have to start driving for all of them immediately, but while you’re here and feeling motivated, join them all, so you have an existing account when you’re ready to start driving.
Trial each program first
You don’t want to start multi-apping on day 1. You’ll get overwhelmed.
Instead, pick one delivery program and dedicate at least a full day to it, so you can learn the ropes. Complete as many rides as you need to feel comfortable.
Then, repeat for another app and another until you’ve tried them all.
You might find one you dislike or one you prefer. You won’t know until you give them all a shot.
Once you are comfortable with 2+ gig apps, you’re ready to start multi-apping.
Start multi-apping
Managing multiple apps sounds tough, but luckily, there’s Gridwise.
Gridwise is a free app and incredibly useful for multi-apping. It tracks your mileage, shows your earnings from each gig app, tells you the most profitable locations to drive, and even shows upcoming events that may need drivers
You’re probably thinking, “It’s free? What’s the catch?”
The catch is that the free version has ads, and they sell your data (don’t they all?). If you’re not comfortable with that, then you don’t have to use it.
Now that you know how to join and manage multiple gigs at once, let’s talk about what this actually looks like in your day-to-day delivery.
Multi-apping strategies
There are three ways you can multi-app, depending on how aggressively you want to monetize your time.
Casual: change apps based on the time and location
Using Gridwise and analytics provided by the delivery apps, you can learn a lot about the best times and places to drive and dedicate time to the app most likely to pay the most.
For instance, Gridwise might show you a concert ending at 8pm in a nearby neighborhood. Since apps like DoorDash use a fairly narrow delivery range, you might want to take some dinner-time deliveries in that neighborhood until the event ends. Then you can switch to Uber and make 2-3x for driving passengers during surge pricing.
Driving like this takes planning and awareness, but it’s not any more challenging than sticking with one app. By paying attention to the most profitable times and places to drive, you can increase your hourly rate significantly without taking on any additional risk.
Hardcore: change apps based on the pay
If you want to take things a step further, you can be active on multiple apps at once and pick the highest-paying delivery available at that moment.
This is more intensive as it requires you to actively switch between apps and turn your availability on and off. It’s not against the ToS, and you won’t be penalized for a low acceptance rate. However, it does require more effort to keep track of the apps and make sure you’re still delivering orders quickly.
There is a new app called Muver that can help you automate gig switching, but right now, it’s only available on Android, and it has mixed reviews because it can be buggy. It’s worth keeping an eye on as it could become more reliable in the future.
If you take this strategy, make sure you don’t lose track of the bigger picture. You should still implement the knowledge you gain from Gridwise to stick to the most profitable times and places to deliver, then take the most profitable job available across all your apps.
Risk-taker: stack your deliveries
This is the most profitable way to deliver but is also risky, so don’t attempt it until you know what you’re doing.
A big advantage of doing deliveries instead of rideshare is that, unlike human passengers, you can add multiple deliveries to your car at once. For obvious reasons, this can essentially double the amount you make per delivery, but it can go horribly wrong too.
If you see two orders for the same restaurant, both going in the same direction, that could be a good time to accept both jobs. You can drop off one order along the way and then deliver the next one.
However, if you pick up both orders and they’re in opposite directions, the second one is going to be late, and your account can be terminated if you repeatedly deliver orders too slowly.
You never know when there could be a holdup at the restaurant or surprise road closures along the way, so this is definitely a high-risk strategy.
Keep this in the back of your mind for later down the line. Once you know your region well and understand exactly how long it takes you to get from one place to another, it could be a handy trick to double your pay when the circumstances are right.
Taking control of your finances
So that’s how you can become a gig worker and maximize your earnings.
The big takeaway is that you should be using multiple delivery apps because you are a contractor, not an employee, and you should not feel bad for doing this.
Gig companies increase their profitability massively by not treating drivers as employees. They don’t have to pay benefits, and they offload a lot of risk on you. For example, increasing gas prices and car repairs are your burden to shoulder, not theirs.
These are big downsides for gig workers, but there is a big upside, and that’s your ability to work for multiple gig companies at once. You can and should play them off each other, making them compete for your time. There is no reason to be loyal to a gig company because they do not return that loyalty. If Lyft offers a bonus today, then today, you’re a Lyft driver. If DoorDash offers an incentive tomorrow, then tomorrow you’re a Dasher.
We’re not saying this to get you angry or worked up but to make it clear that you shouldn’t behave like a dedicated employee because you are not given the benefits of one. If you keep this in mind and see the job in this light, then you won’t be frustrated if an app starts paying less or becomes unreliable. You simply prioritize another one, and then it’s the company’s problem to solve.
If at any point there is only one delivery app, then things are going to get ugly, but for now, there is lots of competition, and that is a force for you to wield as a delivery driver to make more money and create better income stability.
Now, if you still have some questions about getting started, we have lots of guides that can help.
Your questions answered
Want to know how background checks work? Or maybe you only want to deliver if you can have your dog in the car — is that allowed?
We answer all these questions and many more in our Common Questions category
You can browse there to learn more about gig work, and there’s a search bar at the top of the site if there’s something, in particular, you’d like to find.
There’s just one more thing…
We have gear recommendations
In order to deliver comfortably and effectively, you might need some new gear.
For instance, you’ll probably need to buy an insulated bag, or maybe you need some bike accessories or a fast new e-scooter.
We have recommendations for it all in our Gear category.
Browse our gear recommendations.
Questions?
If you’re still unsure of how to get started, feel free to contact us, and we’ll do our best to help you out.
Thanks for checking out our site, and best of luck with your deliveries!
Resources
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Delivery Driver Apps