London Private Hire Model

Submitted 2 years ago

So I have been doing private hire in London, chauffeur in London, Uber in the US for the past 30 Years, my father did the same as well as office controller / dispatcher for 40 years before me, for many different companies in London including Addison Lee, Mastercars, GLH, Fleet etc.
That said, the system they used to have was the office would charge the drivers "rent" for their radio or access, but would waive that rent if you did a certain amount of shifts / trips. So Uber could charge drivers an access fee (to get new drivers, waive the fee for the 1st week).
Also there used be a dead mileage pay of 50% if a driver had to "run" for a pickup.
The other thing I would recommend would be package and passenger double up, if you had a package and a passenger going in the same direction, I would pickup the package, pickup the passenger, drop the passenger, drop the package, we would get paid for both as separate jobs.
However driving for Uber here in the US, I feel that the people running this show, are not people experienced in what is essentially the London style private hire model, or minicabbing model that has been used in London since the 60's.
What I feel is that Uber are focusing on the wrong ideas, which is alienating drivers by not paying for things such as dead mileage, and alienating customers by increasing the trip prices exorbitantly, the doubly alienating drivers by not passing that on to drivers either. This idea would also go a long way to solving the independent contractor / employee issue here!