An Exeter Deliveroo rider has posted a shift they did before Christmas to Reddit, asking if the £294.66 they pulled in is “some sort of record.” A bigger question for us is how they managed to deliver the 56 orders by e-bike.
It’s not that e-bikes aren’t good for deliveries – quite the opposite – it’s just that 56 deliveries will unavoidably take a while and e-bike batteries don’t have infinite capacity.
The rider said they worked from 8.30am to midnight, with a “few breaks.” This goes a long way towards explaining the day’s income, because it was basically two full days’ work, back-to-back. How do you manage those hours on an e-bike though?
Deliveroo treats its drivers and riders as independent contractors and pays them by the number of jobs they do, rather than taking them on as employees with all the benefits that would bring. The incentive, therefore, is to keep on working when the going’s good. An e-bike helps with this, in that it’ll keep your legs fresher, but there must be some sort of battery juggling involved.
The rider estimated they did “well over” 100 miles. While that would actually be within the range of the new triple-battery Cake Aik, it’s a good whack more than the average e-bikes will cover on a single charge.
Writing on Reddit, the rider explained that they simply switched bikes – although there was unfortunately a cost attached to that.
“Started off with my E-bike then switched to hired E-bike for around 10 hours (£18) while my bike was charging. Finished off with my bike again for the final few hours.”
