Two Saturdays in Houston, back to back. By accident I was online twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes both nights — the same to the minute. On the second one I drove fourteen miles further and took home $43 less. After fuel and wear, $46 less.

I spent a week looking for my mistake. There wasn't one.

Three things, none of them mine

At half past ten on the 17th a venue emptied out near me and the board went mad for an hour. Short hops at five dollars a mile.

Every other hour that night ran between one and two dollars a mile. The 24th never had that hour.

I also drove an XL on the 17th. One came up on the 24th as well — a better one, $40, half a mile away — but it arrived at 11:03pm in a pile of four offers landing in the same minute. You take one.

And tips. Different people, different nights, no skill in it.

That's the whole $46. Surge, vehicle class, and strangers' generosity.

What the app is actually for

It can't predict any of that, and it isn't trying to.

What it does is settle the question in advance — at the kitchen table, with a coffee, when I'm thinking straight. It needs two things from me: what a mile costs me to drive, and what profit I want for an hour of my life. I decided both sitting still.

Then it does the arithmetic on every offer: the fare, the miles to the rider, the miles with the rider, the minutes of both, the speed that implies, and what that speed costs me in fuel and wear. All of it collapses into one number out of 100. DSI over 100, the job clears the bar I set. Under 100, it doesn't. I don't work anything out and I don't study the screen — I glance at where it's taking me, and that's the whole of my involvement.

Because here's what nobody says out loud: you cannot do that maths while you're driving. I'm changing lanes at the 610 and 59 interchange with ten seconds on the clock and a tired head, and I'm meant to weigh dollars-per-mile against dollars-per-hour against a pickup I can't see? Nobody can. Not safely, not at eleven at night, not on hour eleven.

The thinking was done hours ago, in the cold light of day. In the car I'm just hearing the answer.

Look at that table again. Two of the three best offers of the night — $19.04 and $13.04 — were under twenty dollars. The $13.04 paid $60.18 an hour: rider practically outside, done in eleven minutes. A flat price rule bins both.

Forty-five minutes earlier an $11.03 offer came in. Similar money. It scored 95 and I let it go — eighteen miles for eleven dollars.

Same price bracket, same hour, and one is three times the job the other is. The number on the card tells you nothing by itself. What matters is that fare against the time and the miles it costs to earn it, and that is not something you can eyeball at 70mph.

Everyone's strategy is their own. But a price floor is a blunt instrument — it bins good work and waves through bad.

Yes, you'll turn a lot down

On the 24th I declined thirty-six of the eighty-one offers I was shown. Close to sixteen hours of driving, on a twelve-hour shift.

That's not the app failing. That's the job. Flush the garbage, and what's left is work worth doing. If you're never declining you aren't choosing — you're taking whatever arrives, and a lot of what arrives is built to look fine.

I cleared about $25 an hour after the car on the better night. But dollars an hour isn't what I'm chasing. It's just what's left over when the decisions were right.

I'm chasing profit. Different thing — and it's the one that ends up in the bank.

The Beta

I'm opening PuddleJumper to a small group of drivers for closed beta
testing. I'm not looking for people to rubber-stamp the app — I want
drivers who will push it, break it, and tell me what's wrong.

In exchange, the first 20 drivers to complete beta testing get
lifetime access to PuddleJumper's core features. Free. Forever.

Not a trial. Not a discount. Free forever.

If you drive for Uber, run Android, and want to stop staring at your
phone every time a ping comes in — this was built for you.

I won't drive without it. You might feel the same way.

→ Claim your beta spot at puddlejumper.io