Many Dashers are convinced that Doordash gives their Top Dashers better delivery offers. However, Doordash themselves don't even promise that.
I decided to test the theory. I started out in February not having Top Dasher status. I accepted 100 straight deliveries in February so that I could not onlly make Top Dasher for March, but also have a record of every delivery.
Then in March, I took another 100 straight delvieries. I kept track of everything: Offer details, how long deliveries took, how far I drove, all of it. Then I could compare.
I talk about my experience taking 200 straight deliveries on Doordash and the comparison of deliveries as a non-Top Dasher and as a Top Dasher.
Many Dashers are convinced that Doordash gives their Top Dashers better delivery offers. However, Doordash themselves don't even promise that.
I decided to test the theory. I started out in February not having Top Dasher status. I accepted 100 straight deliveries in February so that I could not onlly make Top Dasher for March, but also have a record of every delivery.
Then in March, I took another 100 straight delvieries. I kept track of everything: Offer details, how long deliveries took, how far I drove, all of it. Then I could compare.
I talk about my experience taking 200 straight deliveries on Doordash and the comparison of deliveries as a non-Top Dasher and as a Top Dasher.
Does Doordash reward top dashers with better deliveries will Doordash give you better delivery offers because you have a high acceptance rate? That's what I wanted to find out. I'll tell you the story of what I did to see if things got better if I made top Dasher and it involves accepting 200 straight deliveries in February and March of this year. And if you know me, that is a miserable thing to do, but we'll get into that in just a moment. First of all, I want to thank you for joining me on the deliver on your business podcast. If you have been listening before you notice a couple of things, no music starting out. And if you notice me kind of stopping and starting I'm also trying to do this non-scripted without a whole bunch of retakes or anything like that, which is something very new for me, but I wanted to kind of make it more of a, I guess, of a conversation or something. If you're not a previous listener, you may be new to the deliver on your business podcast. And let me just tell you real quick, what I'm all about here. The thing is this podcast is intended for independent contractors in the on demand delivery space and the gig economy. And we're talking, especially for platforms like Doordash Instacart, Uber Eats, Grubhub Shipt Curri Roadie, just any of these places where you do deliveries as an independent contractor and, and the thing about it is, and, and the thing that I think I try and do a little bit differently is it all comes down to what you agree to by calling yourself an independent contractor or agreeing to the terms of service that says, I agree that I'm an independent contractor what's you're doing is you're saying I agree that I am providing these services as a business and not as an employee. And that's what deliver on your business is all about. That's what Entrecourier.com is all about is it is all about. The business side of being an independent contractor, because here's the thing I think that we can do our best when we actually embrace that role. And we claim those rights, you know what? We take them at their word and we've got to hold them to their word when they're going to say that we're running as a business. And so. That's what this is all about trying to do that. And this is one of the reasons that doing 200 straight deliveries for me was just pure torture because I've never done anything like that. I have never been the type to just take everything that they give. And it all has to do with this whole idea of being, you know, running a business. The thing is, is like if you run a. Somebody can't just walk in. They could, but you'd never stay in business. If somebody just walks in and says, here, I'll give you a nickel for this widget that you're selling for$10. Right. You know, I can't, I can't walk into a restaurant and say, Hey, I'll give you two bucks for this prime rib, you know? Most of them are not probably all of them are not going to do that. And a lot of them are probably going to throw me out of my ear. You know, the idea being that if you're running a business, you have a right to make your decisions. And in fact, these companies actually explicitly say, you've got the right to do this. Let me read this from the Doordash independent contractor agreement. Contractor understands that they are free to select the times they wish to be available in the platform to receive delivery opportunities. But here's the important part here. They are free to negotiate their compensation by among other things accepting or rejecting. The opportunity is transmitted through the Doordash platform by consumers. And can make such decisions to maximize their opportunity to profit. So Doordash even says, I mean, they say it themselves, you know, and, and here's this, this is the philosophy that I take as, as a business owner, thus being an independent contractor is that I set my price by accepting and rejecting delivery offers. And if a delivery offer, doesn't meet my price. I say, And that's all there is to it. And so I have a very low acceptance rate most of the time, but, you know, here's, here's where we get to the story because I decided I wanted to do this experiment. I've thought of doing this before. But honestly I felt like I couldn't afford to in the past, you know, I'm, I'm out here to make a living and I've been doing delivery for, you know, four years. And most of that has been full-time and. You know, the thing is, is there's a certain amount of money that I need to make, and I want to make it within a certain amount of time. You know, I don't want to be that guy that is working 80 hours a week. I've got a family, I've got other things that are very important to me. And so I'm not going to knock myself out to deliver food, just to bring in enough money. So I've got to run my business in a way that is profitable. And so I use what I call a 50 cent rule. I got to believe that a delivery is going to pay 50 cents a minute or better. If I'm going to take that offer and. And that's basically a$30 an hour rate. And it's like, if you're taking, if, if the deliveries I'm on are running at a$30 an hour run rate, then you know, there's, there's going to be some downtime. There's going to be a little bit of time between the offers or something. But in the end, I'm going to be making as much as I feel like I need to make for the amount of time that I'm going to put into it. And some people will say, oh,$30 an hour. That's way too high to expect. You know what you can claim, you can ask for whatever you want. But the thing is, is if you're going to make me a business owner, you gave me the right to set my price, you know? So taking every delivery. Just goes against every fiber of my being and it was not easy, but here's the reason I decided to try this. I kept hearing everybody saying, oh, I get so much better deliveries because I'm a top Dasher. You know, if you go into the Facebook groups, if you go onto Reddit and you've got all these. Kind of bragging that, oh, I never get those low pay delivery offers. I get a lot better offers when I'm top Dasher than if I'm not, which most of them are lying because they've never been Non-top Dasher. You know, they've always been that employee want to be, and I'm not saying every top Dasher is that. I've I've had, you know, I've heard, I've had discussions with some where they say, well, I cherry pick all through the month. And then the last three days, I just buckle down and accept everything for about three days or something so that I can get my acceptance rate up to 70% and make that top dash so that I can get the better offers. And I'm, you know, that always baffled me because Doordash never promised that you get better deliver. They did not promise that we'll get into that. They said some things that make it sound like it, but they never promised that they're going to give you better deliveries. And so. It's like, why do people believe that? And I'll tell you the truth. I've had a couple of times that I have made top Dasher in the past. And usually those are times where I'm doing, you know, very high concentration of bike deliveries and in the right areas of town, DoorDash is fantastic with the way that they dispatch the delivery offers to me because they're always sending just very short, very quick deliveries that I can do with. And so my acceptance rate tends to go a lot higher than, but the thing is, is when I've made top dash or I've always believed that the offers actually got worse and not better, but there's an important word. I said, I've always believed. And, and the thing is, is all those top dashers that tell you that they get better offers. They believe it. And there's a word here it's called confirmation or a term called confirmation bias. You're going to notice the things that you want to notice, and if you want to be Top Dasher or, or whatever, you're going to believe that you're getting better offers. I don't believe that top dashers any better than you're going to believe that the offers are actually worse. And so I, you know, I just, I keep hearing that, but it's like, nobody has the data you don't, nobody has that actual information. Everybody that I've ever heard say it one way or the other, nobody has ever been able to say, and this is how I can tell that it was better. It's just, it's just a feeling. And I'm sorry, but feelings don't help a whole lot. They don't really answer that question. And so that's why I decided, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to, I'm going to get top Dasher. And the only way that I could really think of to really compare all of the delivery offers is to actually accept the delivery and complete the deliveries. And, you know, I think I said this already, but in the past, I don't think I could have afforded to do this because The pay is an awful lot less when you do it that way I can tell you, and even I can especially tell you that now that I've done this and you know, the problem is that it was. I didn't want to spend so many hours being out there and not bring home as much as I should make. And, you know, fortunately now that the website has grown at entecourier.com and I get some revenue from advertising and things like that. And so it kind of took some of the pressure off and it allowed me to say, okay, you know what? I can afford to have a couple of crappy months on delivery you know? And so I could go out there and not worry about what I'm making and maybe have a little more of an objective view of what is it like? So I did in, I started in February and I started when my acceptance rate was like at 28% and I took a hundred straight delivery offers in February. And that of course would get me up to where then beginning of March, I'd be topped Asher, and then. In March, I took a hundred deliveries and that way I could compare the numbers and I tracked everything I tracked how much time every single delivery. I tracked how far I was going. I kept a record of all of the different things that a Doordash, you know, said that it was going to be that it's going to be 3.1 miles. It's going to pay$2 25 cents or, you know, whatever it is, all of that I've got down on spreadsheet. I went so far as to even do screen recordings on my phone to record the progress on all of that. And I don't know that I'll ever do anything with most of those, but, you know, I'll tell you to be honest, part of the reason that I did that was that I think it was paranoia on my part, that I was worried that if I'm taking every offer and I'm taking all these deliveries now where somebody doesn't tip that those are the people that are more likely to say, you know, you know, claim, you didn't do the delivery or anything like that. So I ran a screen recorder the whole time, because if somebody did make a claim that I wanted to be able to back it up and say, yes, I actually did. You know, and it shows where I'm at on the GPS and it, it actually records the interactions, all that stuff. So it was like one more way of proving that, yes, I did complete that delivery in case anybody accuses me. And I had one person that I thought they were going to I'll tell you about that in a little bit, but it, you know, it was just a, it was an interesting thing. so, anyway, I wanted to kind of share just some of my thoughts and some of my experiences and tell you a little bit about what it was like. And, you know, the first thing to talk about is just some of the challenges of doing this, especially as somebody who is used to. Rejecting the crap, you know, that, that, that I'm not going to take this delivery and I'll tell you something four years of doing delivery and I've never felt burnt out on delivery, but I came real close to feeling that way with this. And the reason that I never felt that way before was I think a lot of it was because, you know, one I'm I'm in control. And two it's like if a delivery goes bad, it's my fault. You know? That that's the attitude that I've taken. That if something doesn't go right, if it doesn't pay well enough, it's my fault. And when I take that attitude, one, I'm not feeling bitter all the time. You know, I go onto Facebook and into Reddit and I just see this toxic bitterness all over the place that, that people just. You know, despise all of these companies. Now there's a lot of stuff that Doordash and Uber Eats and Grubhub, and all these companies do that are worthy of being despised. But you know, just like this total bitterness and it's like, everything that goes wrong with their day is Doordash has fault or Instacart's fault or whoever. It is hard to spend much time in there. Just, just that total bitterness, because I don't understand it. Honestly. I kind of got a little better feeling of how people feel after doing all this, because here's the thing. If a delivery doesn't pay well, That's my fault for making the wrong decision, you know, for, for not thinking about this or not thinking about that. But, you know, I made the decision when somebody throws a win-win DoorDash throws a you know, a$10 offer at me. And I say, yes, I have already decided that whatever I'm making on that delivery is good enough that I am satisfied with what I'm going to get. And honestly, I don't care whether or not I got tipped. You know, I don't care whether the customer didn't tip. I don't care whether it was$10. It was all from Doordash and, or I don't care if it was just$2 from Doordash and the customer tip to$8. Honestly, I already made that decision that this is good enough for me. And, and I stick with that. And so. I didn't feel like all that stress or all of that anger over the way that customers were tipping. Cause it was just essentially if Doordash isn't paying well enough and the customer's not paying well enough, then I'm not going to take that delivery. But if I accept that delivery and it was a crappy offer, that's my fault. That's not their fault. I'm the one that was stupid enough to take the offer. And so I've been able to kind of go through all these years of doing delivery without really feeling too stressed out or bummed out by the circumstances of the day. And then I go and I do all this where I'm accepting every offer and all of a sudden it's like, you know, 14.9 miles, are you kidding? You know, and, and it's like, or you know, that the very last delivery I got, it was just like Doordash was trying to challenge me. I don't know if they knew where I was at and I was on, you know, number 100. I D I don't think I matter at all to them at all. So honestly, I don't know that. It was like that, but it sure felt kind of weird because it was like this offer comes up to pick up from a donut place, 11.4 miles for$4 dollars. And you knew it that distance for$4. And that was an awful low amount for the DoorDash to pay for that distance. I thought supposedly they were paying more for a longer distance deliveries. Right. And Doordash lies about a lot of stuff, but, you know, you'd knew that the customer wasn't tipping anything and, and it was just like, you gotta be kidding me and. I don't know, I it's, it's a lot easier when all of a sudden you just kind of put yourself in that position where you got to take everything. It's a lot easier to start to get bitter about what the customer does or, or to get better about the orders themselves. And, and it was like, because I was now all of a sudden giving Doordash control, it really affected my mood and. You know, so I did that first month and actually it was like in a couple of weeks that I did the first hundred deliveries in February. Got that knocked out. And then in March, I couldn't keep going at that same pace. It took me the whole month to get that a hundred deliveries in. I just, you know, I took, I took some time off with my wife. We went out of town for a week and there were several days where it was just like, Nope, I'm not going out there. It really changed my whole perception of what delivery was like. And I think that was the biggest challenge, you know? And honestly, here's the other thing I think that I thought that, you know, maybe the. The three and$4 deliveries didn't bother me as much as the extra long distances. I was driving all over the Denver Metro area. I mean, everywhere. And it was just like Doordash was like, Hey, we're going to stick you way out in Aurora, which nothing against Aurora, but it's just so far away from where I'm at. And it was just, I I was not prepared for how much extra driving I would do. And normally I deliver it's about three tenths to four tenths of a mile per dollar that I earn is about what I average and all of a sudden it's more than a mile for every dollar that I've earned. And. And especially when gas prices are all of a sudden shooting up and I'm like, I'm an idiot for doing this right now. Maybe I should stop. But I said, okay, I'm just going to keep going. And so it was, it was, it was different. It was Yeah, I will never do that again. I don't think you know, and here's the thing and, and this is why I wonder if I was just kind of a fool to do this one because gas prices going up. But two, because I know that 200 deliveries isn't enough to get any kind of definitive information, you know, for one thing, it's 200 deliveries here in Denver and there's always. Different things that can kind of enter into whatever happens and stuff like that. So, so it's like, you know, am I really going to find out very much, but I decided I'm going to learn more than if I didn't do anything at all. And I had, I think, three deliveries that really come to mind. The first delivery was. Actually, there were four things that came to mind that just really kind of stood out. The first one was I didn't make a hundred percent and I was shot down on that almost right away. It was just like three or four deliveries in. And all of a sudden, you know, my, my text goes off, Hey, go pick up here. But it never popped up on the app and it's like, Crap. You know what it's like there with Doordash. If you deliver Doordash at much at all, you've had this happen. I'm almost sure that you have where all of a sudden you get paused for. Not responding to a delivery offer, even though the offer never popped up on your phone. You know, and I, I saw that text pop up and I'm like, oh no, you know, and I actually forced stopped the app and then started it back up to see if I could catch it before you know, that it would pop up maybe, and it's just not nothing happen. So, so I ended up missing delivery, but the funny thing is. Sometimes that seems to work against your acceptance rate. And sometimes it doesn't because I had a few times that that happened. I did have a couple of times that it was like cause I'm doing all this stuff to record everything. You know, I take a screenshot as soon as the offer pops up. And then I marked, you know what, my, you know, what time it is, all that stuff on a little spreadsheet. And I had a couple of times where I actually forgot to accept. So I ended up with a 97% acceptance rate, but every time that I actually. Had it pop up on my screen and everything like that. I did accept. And so, and I completed all of those except for this one delivery. And I don't know, you know, what, maybe I over responded, I got this double order. It was a double stack you know, two different orders. There were actually two different restaurants. I stopped pick up from the first restaurant and then go to the second one. And that second one, I knew I could see that it was a. It was a$3 delivery. And so then I walk in and, and right as I walk in, I get this text here and let me find that here. I want to read this and she texts. Hello, please text me. When you arrive, you will have to call the concierge to let you up to the ninth floor, and then they will key you up to the 42nd floor. And please ask the restaurant for cups and napkins and eating utensils. Thank you. I was like, I want you to jump through all these hoops and oh, by the way, I didn't leave you a tip. I'm already kind of like, oh, I'm so close. And then I, you know, I get to the restaurant and I walk in there and. Oh, this is going to take another 10 minutes. And so kind of between the nonsense with this one right here, and the fact that I've got the food in my hand from the first restaurant and it's gonna run late and, and in fact Doordash is not real good at updating the deliver by times. I, I tracked even that. And they're really bad at that. And I'm like, I'm not risking a contract violation over this. It was just all this stuff that is just part of the nonsense. That is Doordash. You know, so finally I just, you know what, I can't do this. I, I unassigned myself from that delivery. So that was one I didn't complete, but I didn't, at least I didn't include that delivery into the stats, but it was just, you know, kind of one of those things I. And as much as I tried, I couldn't get the perfect delivery numbers all the way across the board. And you know, I even tracked whether or not I was on time or not. And I will tell you that my on-time percentage that is on my app is way off and it never changes. I mean, it, it was like, I did bump up. For some reason, you know, it had been sitting at 70% and a bumped up to 72, over 200 deliveries where I had better than a 90% on time. And some of the stuff that Doordash does with the timer, I had one time that I got the order and I, and I've got it all recorded because of the screen recorder and the screenshots and the deliver by time was something like, you know, 10:20. And they get to the restaurant, pick up the food. And as I go to the store or as I head out to the customer, All of a sudden now the deliver by the time is 10:12. They backed it up by eight minutes and the customer was five minutes away. So I was late on that delivery, even though I got done earlier than they said on that. So Doordash has just does a lot of weird things. And I think that was maybe one of the fun things about doing this thing was you could actually see, especially what I'm tracking, every little thing, you could actually see some of the weird stuff they do. And so. And I think I already mentioned like that last trip, the 11.4 mile one that you know, 11.4 miles for$4, it took like 45 minutes. I track a stat that I call profit per hour. And what I've done is I figured out that my car actually costs about 35 cents a mile to operate. And it, it had been running about 30 and then with the gas increase in everything, it's up to about 35 and I mean, I've gone through, and I've kind of figured out all the maintenance costs, you know, how much does it cost to replace the tires and how often do I have to do that? And all of the other maintenance that you've got to do and all the, you know, all the different costs and how much value is my car losing when I drive and oh, by the way, Oil changes in gas and everything like that. And it adds up now to 35 cents a mile. If you've kind of been very in-depth looking into that. And so you know, the thing is if you've heard me before I call that a credit card on wheels, you know, there's a lot of costs beyond just the gas as well. I haven't gotten crazy about the gas prices because yeah, gas is up a lot and it sucks. It's still a small part of what it costs to run your car. And most people don't think about that stuff, you know, you'll have to replace the tires sooner because of all the driving you're going to have to replace the timing belt sooner because of all the driving, every mile you drive gets you closer to all of those things. And every mile you drive drops a little bit of value off your car. If you've got a. If you got a brand new car that mile is actually costing you more than what gas costs. You, it seriously, you go and run a Kelly blue book and on your car and, and then run it again, but add 20,000 miles to it and see the difference in what the value of your car is. That the only thing that is different is the miles. And how big of a difference it makes. And, and a lot of newer cars you're looking at 15 or 20 cents a mile that it costs you just in lost value on your car. And so, you know, all that stuff, I mean, add all that up. 35 cents a mile. I subtract that from whatever I drove and or from whatever I was paid and then divide that by the amount of time that it took well on that last delivery, 11.4 miles at 35 cents. I think I figured it out. And you do the math on this. I might be wrong here, but I think it was like three and a half cents that I made on that delivery for 45 minutes, three and a half cents. And it's just insane. I had one delivery that I honestly expected. There's going to be a contract violation. I honestly expected this. The lady gave me the, you know, the address was there and all that stuff. And I took it and I took it to that. And then after I dropped it off, And I was on my way to I, I was already on another delivery. In fact, I was at the restaurant when all of a sudden she's texting me left and right. Like a mad woman. And, and it's like, where'd you where'd you leave it off? Where'd you leave it off. And I told her exactly where it was. I said, this is where, you know, this is where it was. No, no, no, no. You went to the wrong building. You went to the wrong building. You've got to come back and you took it to the wrong place and. I had the screenshots and I had all this stuff and I said, here's what it says. I said, you need to be checking in with Doordash on this. You know, if, if if they've got the wrong information you need to get them to change that. And. And right after that, I think that's when kind of that connection ended because I was going to call her and say, I can come back and pick it up because the next delivery was going to go that way. And the car wouldn't go through or anything like that, but I was absolutely expecting that I was. Contract violation for that, or, you know, claiming she didn't get her food or anything like that, nothing popped up. So I don't know if that was one that Doordash just monitor the messaging that went on there or, or exactly what happened. Cause she sent it by text and not through the in-app messaging and you know, but you know, that was the one that was one of the reasons I do a screen recording because everything that happens. Shows up on the phone and I've got a record of it. And like I said, I was paranoid of that kind of thing happening. And I was to be fair, probably a little surprised that it only happened or possibly could have happened one time. So, you know, I probably, maybe some of my conceptions have been changed about what happens when you do that. So the question did DoorDash give better orders? Folks. I see. Absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the quality of delivery offers was better in any way, shape or form. There might've been one small advantage, but you know, here I'll talk about what happened with that. So like I said, I tracked every delivery. I figured out the averages. I figured out all this stuff. I I've got counts of how many, no tip orders and how many higher tip orders and just all sorts of different statistics. And I'm still kind of geeking out on all the numbers and everything, but here's, here's what it came down to. And this is just the delivery time. This was just the delivery time when I was on the delivery. So this is just tracking the delivery itself and wasn't taking into account like all the deadheading back and all the lost time that comes from some of those long distance deliveries that drop you off far away from being able to get any deliveries anywhere. You know, if you add those in, it gets a lot more. But in the first hundred deliveries when I was not a top Dasher, my hourly rate was$19 and 21 cents. After I made top Dasher, it was$18 and 76 cents. My profit per hour, the first hundred deliveries was$14 and 49 cents. Minimum wage here in Denver is over$15 by the way. So I was actually making less than that as a top dash. My profit per hours was$13 and 63 cents. The average amount of time for a delivery was 20.1 minutes as a non-top Dasher in February as the top dash or the average was 22 minutes. So it took a little bit longer. The average distance of the delivery was 4.5 miles per delivery. And the average distance as a top dash or port per delivery was five miles and the base pay was$3 and 3 cents compared to this was one where the base pay was a little bit higher, but I think it had more to do with the longer distances. And it also had to do, I think a little bit with. There weren't as many peak pay things. I could go down a rabbit hole about that peak pay, but the bottom line is when Doordash gives you peak pay, they don't give you as much base pay. I think, I think even in these 200 deliveries, I've got enough evidence to be able to prove that, but anyway$3 and 34 cents was the base pay. The average. Before I became top dash of that first hundred deliveries was$3 and 41 cents. The average tip as a top Dasher$3 and 41 cents. There were 12 deliveries that had no tip at all as a top Dasher and as a non-top Dasher. So that was about even the total number of deliveries where the tip was less than$3. There were 38 in the first hundred deliveries, there were 40 as a top Dasher, the number of tips trips, where there was more than a$5 tip. There were 15 as a non-top Dasher and 18 as a top Dasher. So three more deliveries as a top Dasher paid more than$5 in tips. And so here's the. You know and one thing I should tell you, I mentioned peak bay because in February there were a lot more T you know there, there were$61 in peak pay in February compared to$11 in peak bay in March. And if I were to include the peak pay into these numbers, It would actually be profit per hour, 1647 as a non-top Dasher compared to$13 and 96 cents as a top Dasher. So it actually kind of skews the numbers even more towards. Being able to conclude that the deliveries were worse. And, but it really wasn't a fair comparison because of the way peak pay works. You know, that it's like, you know, if you didn't get it as much, you shouldn't be able to come. So I, I calculated all of these things based on Based on, you know, I didn't add the peak pay into those deliveries. So that's, that's kinda what it came down to. I mean, here's, here's the thing. I think it's like the delivery. We're not. No, there are a couple of those, you know,$5 or more tips were some extra long distance. I mean, like, you know, closer to 15 miles, you know, so it's like, yeah, maybe they paid a little bit more on that delivery, but I was a long drive to do that. So it, you kind of lost that advantage of that extra pay. And the bottom line is I don't think that the deliveries were any better. As a top Dasher and they weren't any worse really, as a top Dasher, if they were anything like that, it might've been a little bit worse. I think there's reason to think that there might, you know, pay less actually, but you know, the thing is, is it's like, and the amazing thing is, is I broke it up into quarters. You know, I broke it up at one point into like, you know, blocks of 50 deliveries and the numbers were all so similar to each other. It was kind of fascinating how close they were to each other. And I expected a lot more variety, you know, it's a small sample size and, you know, here's, here's, I guess kind of my takeaways, my thoughts after doing this, you know, first of all, This is not scientific by any means. You know, this is not a scientific there there's, there were not very many, there there's nothing really in the way it controls. There's no way to really weed out the variations and things can vary a lot. But it was again amazing. I think kind of how much everything always kind of gravitated back to the same type of numbers, you know, no matter how you broke it up. You know, the thing is, is, and because these numbers happen to me, I can't make the conclusion that that's the way it is going to be for you. You know, I just can't, it's a. It's too small of a sample size for one thing, 200 deliveries. Just isn't enough to draw a conclusion that says that, Hey, yeah, you really do get paid less as top Dasher. Or you, you get worse deliveries as top Dasher than you do as the other. Honestly I think when it's all said and done it, it just, it doesn't seem like there is a difference one way or the other. And. No, that was my first thought with that. You could almost make the case that they were worse and you wonder why, why would top dashers have worst deliveries and. And I think it all kind of comes down to this premise that it's like, if Doordash is going to manipulate the deliveries that you got based on your acceptance rate, what makes you think they're not going to think of it this way. Here's the deal, you know that$4, 11 mile delivery that I got. Right. You know, Doordash sent that out to somebody I'm sure at one point for probably$3 and it got rejected and it probably got kicked around by a couple of dashers and. And at some point Doordash has got to say, well, crap, what are we going to do here? We can, we can maybe add some money to it. We could make that a$7 delivery so that it gets, we've got to do something so that this order gets completed. Right. And, and especially by that time, I'm sure, you know, the restaurants already made the food. If they cancel too many offers, the restaurant gets pissed and all that stuff. And you know what the customer gets pissed and I'm. I'm not too worried about them. If they're not, if they're not going to tip, but here's the deal somehow they've got to get that delivery fulfilled, right? Well, hell here comes Ron. He's been accepting every single delivery. We're just going to send it to him right away because we know it's going to get accepted. I mean, if you believe that Doordash actually gives you better deliveries because your top deck. What about the way that DoorDash operates makes you think that they also don't feel like they can feed you crap more often because they know you're going to take it. And honestly, I think that's a lot more likely to happen then, you know, then, then the idea that I'm giving you better deliveries. But anyway, all of that to say is, honestly, I don't think that there was a difference one way or the other You know, the profit per hour was a fair bit lower as a top Dasher. But it's a small enough range of numbers that I think that, that could, you know, just be explained that I think Doordash just continues to send everything to you the way, you know, whatever way it does it. You said it's not scientific. I wrote down a few conclusions. I wanted to make sure I cover all of these, but I think, and here's the thing. And I said this earlier, though. And I've gotten into a few discussions with people about this. You know, I just, I keep, you know, keep hearing people say, I'm going to get better. Deliveries and Doordash has never promised that you're going to get better deliveries. They haven't. They've, they've never promised that top dash or gets better deliveries. Here's what they promised. And I'm going to read this right from their site here. Give me a second while I pull the. And I wrote an article about this as well, but here we go. Top dashers will now get priority access to high value orders. Those that are$30 or more in total cart value on top of being able to dash any time without having to scan. and basically what that means, you know? So you got, you got. You get priority on top or high value dollars. And what that means is that, I was looking for the exact wording where they said it this way, but I know they, they explained it this way. And, and it was, it is basically that it's like if you and another Dasher are kind of equally situated that you know, all things. And your top Dasher and the other person is not, they break the tie in your favor on a high value, not a high tip, not a high pay, a high value. In other words, if the customer has paid$30 or more, then you will win the tie over a non-top Dasher. Guess what if that tie is with another top deck? You don't get any priority there. And how often do you get a tie? You know, honestly, how often do you get a tie? And so it's just all of these things like that, but they worded in such a way that in the dashers mind, it sounds like I'm going to get better orders. No. No. They never said that. They've never said that. All they said is if there's a tie, but here's the thing they've already promised you that when they first introduced top dash or they said, you just win the tie over a non-top dash or on any delivery. So even on crappy deliveries, you win the tie. So it's like, it's just. This is the evil genius. That is Doordash. You know, this is the evil genius of Doordash in that they know how to say something in just such a way that they really don't offer you anything. They really don't promise you anything, but they've got dashers all over the place, believing that they're getting something special that they're not getting. I can't prove that some, nobody else was getting it because the numbers that I got were only the numbers on my deliveries. So I can't say for sure that, you know, top dash or a over in Eau Claire, is it O'Claire Wisconsin? I don't even know if there's Doordash and I'm sure there is. It's probably a big enough. I don't even know how I came up with that town, but you know, or, or Lincoln, Nebraska, or something like that, you know, that they don't get better offers. All I can do is I say I ran the numbers on what I did and I definitely didn't get better offers. And so, you know, but that's just it and it, but again, it goes back to that confirmation bias. Why did dashers want to believe so badly that they are getting better deliveries? And I think it's a couple of things. There is something inside of most of us, all of us where we want to believe that we're doing it just a little bit better than everybody else, you know? And I do that with my 50 cent rule,$30 an hour or 50 cents a minute rule in that. You know what I mean? If something that I feel like I do something that I don't know, very many people that are doing, you know, that I look at the time and how much I'm going to make for that time, rather than, you know, some very simplistic ideas that some people have out there. And. I probably have a little bit of a sense of superiority or that, because I feel like I'm doing it better. Right. And I feel good about the fact that I do really well when I'm doing deliveries, when I'm making decisions myself and, and we all want to feel that. And what this belief, that top Dasher getting better orders is, is it plays into that. That wanting to feel like you found a hack, wanting to feel like you found a way to beat the system. And so, and it's an easy way. All you gotta do is just accept a lot more. You know, you don't have to really do anything special. You don't really have to think that hard. All you gotta do is just take the offers that they give you. And oh yeah. Well, Doordash is going to reward me. You know, we want that pat on the back, we want to think that they're going to do that. And. And I think Doordash knows exactly what's happening here. And they know that as soon as, that's, that's why they worded this perk the way they did was because they want people to believe that they're getting something and Doordash doesn't have to really give anything. And it's sad, I think to a certain extent and, you know, here's, I guess kind of my final thoughts and doing all this. Now, the purpose for doing this for me was not to try and say whether or not top dash or itself is worth it. For me, There's absolutely, absolutely, absolutely nothing that top Dasher has to offer that I need, and that will make my business work better. Sorry. I was trying to find some numbers here, you know, there's, there's absolutely nothing about top dash or. That makes me want to be a top Dasher with that. You know, I think, I think it was very clear to me that no, the orders are not better. It didn't surprise me at all. But yeah, it's just, it was very clear that no, my deliveries were not any better because of being topped Asher, and none of the other perks really make a difference to me. And, and, and the problem is, is that the. When my profit per hour is down in the thirteens because of taken everything now, to be fair. If I had taken 70%, I even, you know, waited out the worst 30% of deliveries. And at that point, I think it would have brought me to about$18 an hour as profit per hour, which is okay. It's not nearly enough in, in my mind. It certainly doesn't meet my price. And so I'm not, you know, it, it doesn't pay enough for the benefits. Yeah. Or the benefits aren't really worth the drop in pay that happens when I accept a high percentage of deliveries, whether it's 13 and a half dollars an hour, as, you know, accepting everything, or whether it's maybe around closer to$18, if I just take, you know, 70% or whatever it would be, it just isn't worth it to me. But I also know that there are places where it's almost impossible to get on the schedule. It's almost impossible to grab a block or two to dash now, because there are so many dashers on there. And so there's one perk bear that being able to dash at any time, anywhere, no matter what the status is, that. If it means being able to go out and deliver, I could see it being worthwhile, but I also have to say that if I look at it that way, if there were other alternatives out there that cost of that high percentage of acceptance is so high, that at that point Grubhub or Uber Eats would just make that much more sense that much more often than it was. You know, Doordash, I would just be less likely to do Doordash more than anything else. That's kind of where I look at it. And you know, honestly, if you feel more comfortable taking a high percentage, that's your call, you know, that is absolutely totally up to you. But I think there's a real good possibility that you're honestly not getting better deliveries just based on what my experience has been. I can't say that for sure, because I don't have your numbers, you know? I would need to find some way to get a huge amount of data from dashers all over the country. And maybe I could, if I tried to bug it, but then, you know, you got to find out whether or not that collection method was reliable, all that stuff. I don't want to do a scientific study. And honestly, this thing was taxing enough, the way it was is top dash or worth it. That's only a question that you can answer. Did I get better orders? Because I was top Dasher. I did not. And. All right. I didn't get better orders as a top Dasher. I still can't say how Doordash ran their algorithm. I have no idea. Whether or not it would have been even worse if I were not top Dasher, I had no idea whether or not it would've actually been better if not for being top Dasher. I just, because I don't have that algorithm. I don't have. The details about how Doordash does things. All I can tell you is the numbers tell me it was not any better. And, and in the end it just brings us all back to this whole thing. You gotta be your own boss. And, and that's why I say, you know what, top dash or might be a good business decision for you. You're running your own business. You've got to make that decision yourself. But you gotta be able to say, I'm gonna make my own decisions. I'm going to set my own prices and I'm going to run things the way that makes sense to me. And so I hope that maybe my experience helped you understand that maybe some of what it sounds like they're promising. Isn't really one. They weren't really promising it, but to it, it definitely wasn't happening at least for me. And. And instead, just make your own decisions about when and where, and, and ultimately that's where you're responsible. And, and in the end you can't rely on Doordash. Maybe that's the biggest takeaway. You can't rely on Doordash to give you something you're running a business. It's not up to your customers. It's not up to Doordash to make you successful. It is up to you to be successful. That's all I got today. Folks. I want to thank you for coming back. And hopefully here season three, we will get a little bit more going on here than than we did in season two. I've got a couple of interviews coming up, but I'm really looking forward to, and, and folks for right now. Go out there and take control and be the boss.