Are long trips worth it?

The simple answer is yes. If a short trip is worth driving for, why not a long trip? You are getting the same per mile and per minute rate anyways.

So how do you cherry pick long trips?

The only way you will get a notification is if the ride is 45+ minutes (at the airport this is 30+ minutes). Sure, you can call the rider and ask where they are going, but if you cancel often, Lyft will not hesitate to deactivate you. However, you can ignore pings all you want. (just don’t accept)

*If you want to see where they are going, you have to maintain that 90% acceptance rate, so you can only miss 1 out of 10 rides and that kind of defeats the purpose right?

Basically: If you live 45 minutes from downtown, Hobby or IAH, you can easily sit at home and just cherry pick those rides.

If you ever get a city to city ride, like Houston to Austin, your average will be about $20/hr (including gas and round trip) on regular Lyft. (assuming you come back right away and do not accept any other rides) – Your best bet is to use the destination filter at this point, but $20 ain’t too shabby — most drivers are lucky to average $15 consistently in the city of Houston

Yes, there are drivers who claim long trips are not worth it, but honestly, they are getting the same per mile and per minute rate as you are on a long trip.

There is one time that these long trips are not worth it, and that is if you see one of those bonus boxes because you are getting a flat rate bonus no matter the distance of the ride. However, if it is only $1.50, it is probably not worth going back and forth for smaller trips After all, these bonus boxes only show up when there is a huge request for rides that outweighs the number of drives online. If it is $5-$10+ (pretty rare now, but they do happen) those are worth trying to get as many as you can. After 10 rides you can hit $100 extra, compared to one “long trip” for $10 extra.

Sure short trips (less than 3 miles) have a higher profit margin per mile but are they truly worth it once you factor in time in between riders, the increased number of times your doors get open and riders sit on your seats, and of course this means city driving, which really is harder on your car than highway driving.

The only hard part about long trips is finding a way home with a rider to maximize your profit. Overall, it is better in my opinion then taking short trips all day long. After all, we do not get paid if there is not a rider in the car.