Driving an auto or taxi
Four things you can try this fortnight — what you really earn per hour, which hours are worth driving, what a trip is worth before you take it, and not losing a day to a breakdown.
Long hours and takings that look fine are not the same thing as earning well. Everything here is about telling those two apart.
Nothing here costs money. Everything here is done on the phone you already drive with.
1. Work out what you earn in an hour, after fuel
For two weeks, note three numbers at the end of every shift: hours driven, total taken, and what you spent on fuel or CNG that day.
Then, per day: takings minus fuel, divided by hours.
That number — not the day's total — is what you actually earn. For most people it is the first time they see that the fourteen-hour day was not a better day than the nine-hour one, just a longer one. Two weeks is enough to see it.
2. Find your good hours and your dead ones
Once you have the fortnight, type the notes into Claude — a free AI assistant you open in a phone browser — and ask:
Here are two weeks of shifts from an auto: hours, takings and fuel each day. Which hours and which days earned the most per hour? Which earned the least?
Nearly every driver finds two or three hours in the day that earn close to nothing. Knowing which ones lets you rest then instead of driving through them, or move to where the work actually is.
You know the roads, the police, the ground truth. Claude only knows your notes, and it can be wrong. It is there to do the sums, not to make the decision.
3. Know what a trip is worth before you accept it
The fare is not the earning. The earning is the fare, minus the fuel for the trip, minus the fuel and the time to get to the pickup, minus the odds of coming back empty from wherever it drops you.
A long fare into somewhere you will dead-run out of can pay less than two short ones where you are. You already sense this. Putting rough numbers on it — for the five or six routes you are offered most — turns a sense into a rule you can apply when you are tired at the end of a shift.
Work those out once, on paper, and keep them in your head.
4. Do not lose a day to something you could have heard coming
Keep a short service log: date, kilometres, what was done. And note a new noise, a change in the pull, or a warning light the day you first notice it, not the week it strands you.
If you are not sure what a noise or a light means, describe it to Claude and ask what it might be and what to have checked. Then get it looked at properly. This is a starting point for the conversation with your mechanic, not a diagnosis.
A day off the road costs more than any check it will suggest. That is the whole argument for this one.
Be careful about
- Loan offers that arrive by call or message, especially ones that need a fee up front. A real lender does not find you that way.
- Booking-app messages with links about your account, your incentive or a pending payment. Open the app itself instead. Always.
- An OTP. Nobody legitimate needs one from you.
- Urgency. Every one of these needs you to act before you think.
If you try one thing
Two weeks of three numbers. Hours, takings, fuel. It is the smallest thing on this page and it is the one that tends to change how people drive.