DoorDash Confidential with Charlie (another PennSilverTaco thread)!

Your ‘07 Tacoma is too old for what? Uber? Bullshit!

Uber Eats allows the use of anything 1998 or newer, and I believe 2007 is the earliest year permitted for use with regular Uber. In July 2016, while vacationing in Malibu, I used Uber and one of my drivers was in an ‘04 Prius. The oldest (and probably highest mileage) Uber I’ve ever been in was a 2003 Crown Vic with about 325K miles, right here in PA (I believe in 2017; Uber was forcing the guy to get a newer car) I’ve also been picked up in a 2005 Nissan Quest (again, probably in 2016 or 2017)...

 

If someone drives for Uber or any kind of ridesharing or delivery app, using their own vehicle, it is inevitable that the miles will add up...

I had probably a little over 90K (but less than 91K) miles on my 2010 Tacoma when I started doing Uber Eats in December 2018. I can tell you with the utmost certainty that I hit 90K the day before Thanksgiving 2018, as a result of driving slightly out of my way to drive a drunk friend home.

The summer isn’t even officially over yet and I am now a little over 200 miles away from hitting 105k, in nine months! Keep in mind that I also go to a lot of car shows and drive fairly long distances for vacation and to visit family, but delivering food no doubt played a roll in putting about 15K miles on my truck in just nine months!

From just after Labor Day in September 2018 to the very end of June 2019, I worked at dealership detailing cars. I probably had about 87-88K on my truck when I started working there, and I drove 400 miles a month just commuting to and from work. That’s about 18K miles in a little over a year!

 

One thing I’ve learned from talking to Uber and Lyft drivers is that it is generally a bad idea to buy a brand new vehicle (or a late model used vehicle) and use it to drive people around, especially if the vehicle is financed. I also know people use leased vehicles for Uber and Lyft.

Once in 2018, after a night of drinking with friends, I called an Uber and it was a guy in a 2017 Corolla that he bought brand new. The guy had financed the car, and after a year of ownership already had 70K miles on the damn thing! No, the Corolla was not paid off!

Another time in 2018, while running an errand for my boss, I encountered an Uber driver with a 2017 Hyundai Elantra in the supermarket parking lot. Again, he had bought the car brand new and financed it. This year-old Hyundai had 70K on the clock!

The aforementioned woman with the ‘05 Nissan Quest minivan did a smart thing; She bought the van for just $1,500 (in cash) with well over 100K for the sole purpose of using it for Uber.

Recently, I took an Uber home after drinking with friends, and it was a 2007 BMW 3-series with almost 240K on the clock! However, that driver was also a BMW mechanic by day, so and he not only had the know-how to fix the car himself if something broke, but the connections to get parts for super cheap.

 

While visiting family in Monterey (California) in October 2017, I went bar hopping in Carmel and took an Uber home. It was a 2012 or 2013 Volkswagen Passat that was about to hit 200K miles!

The ‘04 Prius that picked me up from Malibu and drove me out to Hollywood during the July 2016 family trip has about 240K.

A woman in an older (2008-2012?; may have been newer, like 2013-2014) Lincoln crossover (I forget the model; Whatever Lincoln’s overpriced rebadged version of the Ford Edge is) picked me up in Doylestown and drove me home one time in 2018 or 2019, and that Lincoln had over 200K miles.

 

Coolest most and most interesting Uber vehicles I’ve ever been picked up in...

Tesla Model S (during the 2016 Malibu vacation; took it from Malibu to Beverly Hills to photograph exotic cars)

2012-2014ish base model DCSB V6 4x4 Tacoma (home in PA)

Dodge Ram 1500 EcoDiesel (home in PA)

2012-2014ish Jeep Wrangler Unlimited (home in PA)

MazdaSpeed3 (home in PA)

2007 BMW 3-series stick shift with almost 240k miles (home in PA)

 

Going back to the Doordash map layout...

For some reason, this sizable section of Route 202 is not included in “Doylestown”. It’s almost as if some corporate lackey drew the area themselves! Wait a minute...

 

Let’s do a comparison; This area in Delaware actually seems to be smaller than the New Hope/Lambertville area, yet it is its own area and not slapped onto a larger area...

 

The phallic extension should be cut off from the rest of “Doylestown” either here...




Or here...




And New Hope should become its own area!

 

The glorified tourist trap known as Peddler’s Village can also cause a significant traffic problem, especially on weekends. Various festivals held throughout the year can cause traffic nightmares that make Philly or even NYC look like a vacation!




The approximate location of Peddler’s Village, marked with a black circle...

 

There are several restaurants in Peddler’s Village that do Doordash, and I refuse to pick up from there just because it can be such a nightmare, and orders from Peddler’s Village/Lahaska often end up going to New Hope...

 

Among other things, one of the reasons I refuse to go into Philly is because parking is scarce and I don’t want to end up with a $40 present from the group of nazis known as the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA).

 

One of the reasons Philly is awesome and shitty at the same time is because the police in the city have better things to do (like keeping people safe and solving actual crime) than pulling people over for petty traffic violations...

While this means that you can get away with almost anything short of driving under the influence, it also means that police don’t really care what other drivers do either, and police turn a blind eye.

The City of Brotherly Love is a jungle!

 

Also, on a side note, Pennsylvania has this ridiculous law that calls for a mandatory one-year license suspension for anyone caught driving on a suspended license for any reason! Arbitrary bureaucratic bullshit if you ask me, especially when you consider that Pennsylvania will suspend the license of a law-abiding citizen for six months if they have a seizure.

A former coworker of mine was a victim of the arbitrary one-year suspension rule once. He was driving a 2000ish Acura TL at the time, and he got pulled over in maybe 2014 or 2015 for an expired inspection sticker. He got a ticket, which he promptly forgot about. He got the car inspected, but the problem is that his license listed his mom’s address while he lived in an apartment elsewhere. Notify the DMV whenever you change your address, folks!

So, the failure to pay notice was sent to the mom’s house, stating that his license would be suspended if it wasn’t paid before a certain date. His mom told him about this, but he was busy with work and forgot about it again.

His license was suspended without him realizing, and he got pulled over on his way to work one morning when a cop pulled over after running his license plate and finding that it came back to someone with a suspended license.

**I think it is unconstitutional for police to arbitrarily run random license plates unless the driver has committed an obvious violation or matches the description of a vehicle used in a crime.**

So, my former coworker gets pulled over, and the cop issues him a ticket for driving on a suspended license, but lets him continue driving to work.

His license had been valid prior to the unpaid inspection sticker ticket, but he had enough points on his license that if he got suspended for any reason, he had to take a “special points examination” in order to get his license back. He went to the hearing, took the test, and was told his license had been reinstated. What nobody told him was that he still had to serve out the one-year suspension for unknowingly driving while suspended. He started driving again, thinking everything was fine, and ended up getting pulled over again. Because of PennDOT’s bureaucratic policies, he got another year of suspension tacked on.

His job, a job he loved, was located far from his home, so he had to leave that job due to being unable to drive.

His license was already suspended when he took the job at the bar where I was working. Between rent and other expenses, my coworker was unable to pay the reinstatement fee when his suspension finally ended, and was thus forced to rely on Uber and friends to get around. He once paid me forty bucks to drive him into Philly for a friend’s wedding because it was cheaper than Uber or a taxi...

He did eventually get enough money to pay the reinstatement fees, and finally for his license back after two and a half long years. He now has a great job and is driving a low mileage 2006 Audi A3 that he bought from a friend.

 

The aforementioned 2000 Acura TL was parked in a shopping center and sat from probably late 2014 until early 2017. Amazingly it was not towed, but the car was vandalized by hooligans. Luckily, the car was repairable. My coworker got it fixed upon getting his license back and drove it for several months before it died completely. He got a shitbox early 2000s Ford Taurus wagon with busted A/C and a plethora of other issues from a relative for free, and drove that until he was able to save up enough to pay cash for the Audi.

 

For some reason, my region includes parts of Delaware and Maryland, as well as areas of Pennsylvania that are more than two hours from my house. Why?

I will never go to Delaware unless I absolutely have to, because the state is full of small town cops and state troopers alike who prey on vehicles with out-of-state plates for going just a few MPH over the speed limit.

I’ve never done Doordash in New Jersey, but I do drive into Jersey a few times a year for car shows.

My window tint is totally legal in Pennsylvania, but apparently illegal in NJ. I’ve never been pulled over in Jersey, and quite frankly I don’t really give a shit whether or not my window tint is legal in NJ because I am a Pennsylvania resident.

 

Another thing I’d like to bring up is “No thru traffic”, No “U-turn”, and “No turnaround” signs. I encountered such a sign last night, at the very building where my dentist is located, and made an executive decision to ignore it because the light was red, there was a “NO TURN ON RED” sign, I had food to deliver, and I didn’t feel like waiting...

I am not talking about private residential properties with these signs out front. I respect them in that case.

Who is gonna care if I use the parking lot of a business complex, after hours, to avoid heavy traffic, and/or a tricky intersection, and/or a “No Turn On Red” sign. Apparently nobody, because I do it all the time!

 

One time in early 2019, I was doing Uber Eats and I picked up an order from a McDonald’s in Philly. This was one of those nicer, newer restaurants with redesigned exterior and automated kiosks, and it wasn’t in a bad neighborhood either. I picked up the food without issue, but there was a homeless woman in the restaurant who was either on drugs, had mental problems, or more than likely both.

This crackhead asked me, a perfect stranger, if she could have a ride. Even if I knew her well, which I obviously didn’t, I wouldn’t let this woman in my truck!

I politely declined and hustled out of the McDonald’s.

I resisted the urge to say “What do I look like? An Uber driver?”

 

I was also talking the other day about how much I loathed hotels and certain apartment buildings. Hotels/motels and apartment buildings where the customer’s front door can be reached from the outside are not an issue. It’s buildings where all of the rooms and apartments are located inside that can prove problematic.

I previously mentioned the former-nursing-home-turned-co-op in Doylestown, where back in 2015 a cop once followed me into the parking lot because he thought I was a drunk driver, and then kept driving when he saw me exit my Tacoma with a large warm bag containing two pizzas.

 

Unfortunately, most hotels are huge buildings where the rooms can only be accessed from inside. Until fairly recently, hotels were pretty cool. I’d say I was with Doordash or Uber Eats (whoever I was driving for at the time), and had a food delivery for so-and-so in room so-and-so, and they told me where the elevator was. I eventually got sick of having to go all the way into hotels and go all the way to the customer's room, which was never on the first floor and almost always on floors three, four, or five, depending on the size of the hotel.

The proverbial straw broke the camel’s back a month or two ago when I couldn’t reach the customer on my phone, and then the hotel made me wait at the front desk while they called the customer’s room. I had been willing to take the elevator up to the umpteenth floor, but they wouldn’t let me go up until they contacted that customer.

I now try to get customers at hotels to meet me in the lobby whenever possible.

 

To date, I’ve only delivered to one of the smaller motels with rooms accessible from the outside. It was a stereotypical fleabag, situated on a busy stretch of Route 309 in Hatfield, practically across the street from the dealer where we bought the Tacoma.

I forget whether this particular order was through Doordash or Uber Eats...

I found the room with no problem, but the guy was suspicious and asked who I was before opening the door, even though I was unlikely to be anyone but the guy delivering the food he’d just ordered. I do believe he tipped in cash, however!