This is my typical blog post that goes along with the podcast episode. We're talking with Kevin Ha, blogger with FinancialPanther.com.
Kevin has some great stuff out there on his blog about the wise use of money, saving, and side hustles. He paid off over $80,000 over about two and a half months by working the gig economy on top of his job as a lawyer.
I'd love to get him back on the podcast again sometime to talk about all the financial stuff.
But the reason I wanted to pick his brain today was to find out, HOW IS HE MAKING $40 PER HOUR ON DELIVERIES JUST USING HIS BIKE? Kevin uses an eBike in the Minneapolis area. It's a fantastic hourly rate, and doubly fantastic when he doesn't have all the long term vehicle costs related to using one's car.
Scroll down a little for the transcript of today's interview.
And Now…. On with the Transcript
EntreCourier
Well, Courier Nation. I'm excited to introduce our guests here this week. I've got Kevin Ha from the Financial Panther, at financialpanther.com is joining us.
I've been thinking, you know, I gotta get him on. And he actually reached out to me and said, Hey, you know, let's talk about a couple of things there.
Because Kevin's got a great story. He has knocked out a ton of debt just by doing side hustles on top of his other work and everything and, and he started writing about it. He's got some great information on finances and and all sorts of good stuff there.
I tell you what, one of the reasons I was excited to get him on is he's knocking out five or six deliveries an hour doing deliveries on an E bike, and I got to pick his brain about that. So glad to have Kevin on Kevin. Welcome. And thanks for joining us here on the Deliver on Your Business podcast.
Kevin
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
EntreCourier
It's awesome having you come on. Kevin, tell us a little bit about the financial Panther. And just just your backstory and how you got started with that blog.
Kevin
Yeah, for sure. Well, so I started the blog back in 2016. At the time, I had just paid off $87,000 worth of student loans from law school, which was actually which wasn't so bad actually had a 50% scholarship to law school. So yeah. And and so it could have been a lot worse,
Entrecourier
Yeah, it could have been ! I can tell you after my master's degree.
Kevin
Right? So yeah, so I, at that time, I just paid off my student loans, I had left my job in a big law firm, which is, you know, one of these firms where I was making a lot of money working, you know, 6070 hours a week, that kind of thing.
And I want a job in state government. And I had a little bit more, a little bit more time on my hands. And I had been wanting to do this blog, because I've been doing these kind of like side hustles over the past year, so and these are all like gig economy side hustles, mainly the food delivery ones.
And I've been doing that on my bike at the time, and people were kind of interested about what I was doing. And so I thought, well, maybe I could write about it and kind of share like, how I'm doing it.
You know, it's kind of a funny thing, because I was, I'm a lawyer, and I always like delivering food on a bike. So it's kind of a weird thing like why the lawyer doing this, you know?
I was doing because it was fun. And it was really working out well, and I was like, fitting it into like my daily routine. And so I just kind of wanted to share about what I was doing. And so along the way, I started writing about that I kind of discovered financial independence, which is kind of like this whole movement of, you know, saving money so that youdon't necessarily have to work if you don't want to.
And so I start reading about that, and I start reading about like FinTech apps and just kind of the whole gamut of like, money and side hustling.
EntreCourier
That's the thing. What I love about your story there is you're a lawyer, but you're still willing to go out and do this thing that you know, a lot of people are embarrassed about doing their delivery work. And here you're you're choosing to do this, but you kind of carry I think some of that professional attitude with you with with that.
And $87,000 How long did that take you to do that?
Kevin
Yeah, so I paid that off in Two and a half years.
Entrecourier
That's amazing
Kevin
Right, which was, you know, what happened was when I started my first job, I kind of knew right off the bat that, Oh, I'm not gonna like doing this job very long. You know, it's like a lot of office politics, you know, tough work. And it just instantly, I kind of knew it wasn't a good fit for me.
And so my goal was, well, I need to pay off the student loans. And then I'll have a whole lot more flexibility and I need to make and, you know, you know what my kind of monthly outgo is going to be? So, that was my plan was just buckle down, get these paid off as fast as possible. give myself a little more choices.
EntreCourier
Tell me a little bit about your thoughts. You know, how would you compare between what do you enjoy more about doing delivery compared to being a lawyer? What do you like the least about it if you try and compare the two or something like that, give me a little bit of comparison, which you think between being a lawyer on one side and a delivery pro the other?
Kevin
Yeah, so these are totally two totally different things.
You know, for me, the delivery stuff is just always been so fun because it's like, it kind of gamified my life. Like, it turns everything I'm out doing kind of little missions. I like how it's a really task based. So you know, it's like, you know, exactly you do get this done. And then you're done with that.
And, you know, compared to like, practicing law were basically it never ended, it was just always going going. And you know, you finish one thing, there's always more to do. And that always bothered me, because I just liked being able to finish something and be done with it.
Yeah. You know, and then, of course, for me, I am a huge biker. I like biking a lot. And so the fact that I could do all my deliveries on a bike really worked out very well for me, and made me enjoy it a lot because essentially, it was like, I was getting paid to do something that I was already doing anything anyway, you know, I was already biking around getting exercise and this is like, I'm getting paid to do this. So that's why I really liked about doing these deliveries.
EntreCourier
Yeah, I think you know, I went from being a business manager for a nonprofit, it was actually a bicycle based nonprofit, no place that they did. They were all about getting kids out on bikes. And so they worked with different nonprofits around the community, get kids out on mountain bike trips and things like that. And then we had a little used bike shop. And that's how I got in with them to begin with, because they were opened up not too far from where I lived, and started doing some volunteer stuff out there is fun to walk in, you could just you could go Tinker on a bike for free, and have all the tools right there and it was awesome.
And then, you know, they needed some help with business. So I did that for a while. But you know, when I left that and and just decided to go full time on delivery, mainly because of the flexibility.
You know, it was amazing the difference from kind of more of a business career to doing this. And a lot of it was that freedom. It was and especially that, you know, like you said, you know, you get the task done and you're done.
I could go home and I could just leave it behind. And I don't know that I've ever had a job like that, that, you know, I go home at the end of the day and something about the job isn't following the home, you know?
Kevin
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, same goes for me as a lawyer is like no matter what, it's always coming home with me.
EntreCourier
You've been writing lately, though, that you've been doing? Gosh, what is it five or six deliveries in an hour now on on an E bike. So I kind of want to pick your brain a little bit about that. Because, you know, that's, that's a a great metric, I think compared to you know, what I can do in a car. But it's also maybe a little bit different approach because you run into a lot of people that are in this delivery world, and they kind of talk about, you know, the way to make good money is you just kind of hang around and you grab all the $20 deliveries, but what you're doing is going out knocking out these six $7 deliveries but you're getting so many of them done, but you're making some real good money.
Kevin
Right, yeah, you know, though, so the way I'm doing is I'm doing that. So in the in the before I was doing it with the E bike, I was doing the regular bike, and I probably should still start going back to the regular bike because I do feel like I'm getting a little more out of shape now on the e-bike.
But you know, the thing about when you're doing a bike like that is that because I'm able, you know, I'm very picky with the orders I accept, and I'm working during prime hours, there's enough demand that I can reject and keep getting more orders.
And since these distances I'm taking it really short, and I'm like working multiple apps at once, I'm basically able to just like pile a whole bunch of deliveries all together and you know, when you're doing a bike you don't have to worry about parking you just like pull up to the right in front of the door. I walk in, it's ready. I take it I go and then it's very easy to drop off multiple orders at once again, cuz I'm not worried about parking. So I'm just like pulling up into front of people's doors and just dropping the food off.
And you know, if you think about it, just kind of like from a math standpoint, and you know, this is something I kind of started thinking about more is like, so, you know, this is like a crazy thing. And it's not like sustainable long term, I'm sure. But like, you know, I've been breaking $40 an hour, consistently for the past like, two, three months now doing, right?
And you think, well, how is that possible, right? But if you think about like, well, if you do, you know, five, five deliveries an hour, you make $8 a delivery, that's $40. You know, if you do 6 deliveries an hour, make $6 67 cents a delivery, you're hitting 40 an hour.
And when you think about during peak times, that's not a crazy to do on a bike, because if I get one delivery from each app, that's you know, that I'm which I think I should be to get one delivery from each app per hour. And then, and I just have to add, you know, one or two extra deliveries along the way, if that's how it hits that number.
EntreCourier
That's great. You know, I know when the pandemic hit, there for awhile I took some time off just, it gave me a chance to kind of work on some stuff with my website and with the podcast, but it also just had a safety thing.
I think after a while I decided I think I'm okay. And I went back out. And all of a sudden, it was just crazy. I was hitting these different while I was hitting 35 or $40 an hour, which is like really good. I'm nothitting that now, traffic's back to normal, a lot of things like that.
But the one thing that I noticed about it, when I started looking at the numbers was I looked at how many deliveries per hour I was getting knocked out. And all of a sudden, I was hitting four, something like that consistently. Where, before things really started changing. I think I was probably hitting about two and a half.
And when you start looking at those numbers, it was kind of like, you know, it wasn't the people were tipping more, or anything like that, but it was just now all of a sudden there's no traffic. There's there's no waiting for the customer to come out like, you know, because the contact free deliveries, the restaurants were doing delivery only. So there was no competing with people who were trying to get dining and different things like that. And so everything was faster.
And it was like when I took the same ratio or something like that and that it was the number of deliveries per hour that made the difference. And that that totally changed. I think that helps start to change my approach. And some of my thinking, going from paying as much attention to the dollar amount on the delivery and shifting to more of an efficiency focus.
But man, I tell you, I still can't, you know six, six an hour is good. Now where, what what area Do you deliver? What is your market and where do you focus then on for your deliveries when you're when you're out to going out?
Kevin
Yeah, so I am in Minneapolis and my neighborhood is around the University of Minnesota.
So most of my deliveries are done, these are dense areas with a lot of students and stuff. So most of my deliveries are done University Minnesota or downtown Minneapolis. And so that's very conducive for doing deliveries on a bike or, you know, electric scooter or something like that. Because you're able to kind of run between buildings real fast, I don't wait at lights, you know, if it's clear, I can just jump through a light I can cut through traffic.
And so that's really, you know, it's faster, for sure in a bike, or especially a bike compared to a car in that area.
EntreCourier
Yeah, and especially when you compare that to trying to find traffic, especially downtown or congested areas like that, you know.
You know, the crazy thing was with the pandemic, it got to the point where traffic wasn't a problem at the restaurant, but it was at the customers because everybody's home. In some of the denser areas that I tried to work. Just for that reason, you can be a lot more efficient. I think. All of a sudden there's nowhere to park in the neighborhoods and
So, you do work mostly it's kinda like a downtown area and sounds like you've got a lot of your restaurants and customers are all fairly close to each other. What would you say your average length of delivery is as far as distance, everything like that.
Kevin
Yeah. So you know, most of my deliveries are within a mile, you know, from restaurant to customer. You know, I rarely do any of their more than like, they're like in the three mile range. It's just that those Take me out to place I don't want to go.
So usually I'm sticking around a mile, mile and a half. So you know, if I could do deliveries for like, an hour and a half, I've usually only traveled about 15 miles, 12, 15 miles, something that I started tracking myself a lot better recently, I got this, I found this app that's like, good tracking app that was free. And it's really helped me to figure out like, my zone that I'm in and what I'm doing and where I'm going. And so it's kind of nice to kind of see that data.
EntreCourier
What are you using t track?
Yeah, it's this app I found called Gridwise. Yeah, it's I think it's available in like, every big city, but it's like not available in every city for some reason. Okay, but it's free. And it's pretty cool tracking app, you know, when you turn it on, you can see like, it shows you like where you went from, you know, when you turn it on when you turn it off.
And so it's kind of a nice way to kind of look at your zone of like, where are you going during this and so, you know, I look at mine, my zone is really tight. It's like, all around campus. You know, sometimes I zoom off of one direction, come back, but generally, it's like, in one part of campus, I go to another, I get deliveries over that other part of campus. I'm going back and just like back and forth.
That's, that's awesome. I'll have to check that out check that out. I kind of wondered because I know, and it's interesting, you know, and when I'm doing bike, you know, biking just by itself and everything course and I'm turning on Strava. And that's, that's kind of the popular one, I think out there for, for doing that and running.
And then of course, when you're out driving and a lot of people are using stride or mile IQ or some different things like that for tracking their miles on their cars, and I think tracking your miles on your cars is a good thing. I don't like to rely on those things because usually there's a glitch I've ever I've had too many times where it's like it stopped recording and then it cost me money.
But one thing you now tell me about Gridwise, I guess one thing I like about Strava in some of those is you can kind of follow your path and see what time it was and where you were at those different times. And sometimes that's good for documentation. Can you do that with Gridwise?
Kevin
Yeah, no, it just goes from when you start it to when you turn it off, but but when you look at the map, you can see like where you went during that time. So you know if I go out for an hour I turn it on. I can see where I was and it shows me the mileage that I like went during that hour.
So yeah, I mean, obviously for me, I'm on a bike. So I'm, I don't care too much. I don't actually care about the mileage I just, that's just my own data purposes.
But you know, that app is helpful too, because it actually, you can like input what you made on each app on each food delivery app. And so it's kind of like a nice little way to kind of look and compare, like, how much you're making per delivery with each app. And how many are you doing? So you know, when you when
I look at my app, it's like, I'm always doing the most doordash and then we're eating the second one and then grub hub, and then post mates is always like, you know, I do a handful of them. We can talk about the different apps if you'd like
EntreCourier
Yeah, let's do that. What do you like and dislike about each one of them? And when you're doing especially for bike delivery?
Kevin
Yeah, um, so the one that's here in Minneapolis and I know you've talked about in yours is grubhub is the best one. Grubhub here is definitely the highest paying one as I think it probably is, in most markets, it seems like, but it's definitely not as high demand here, I would put it third
EntreCourier
Yeah, it's dropping here, which amazes me. Yeah, I think they've just shot themselves in the foot too many times.
Kevin
Right, right. So so with grubhub What I like about is obviously the the high pay for each delivery. I don't think I think here never pays less than $8 a delivery. So even if the customer tips to zero, you still get $8 Yeah.
EntreCourier
Are you on grubhub? Are you on a like a bicycle mode or anything like that? Or do they have that there?
Kevin
Right. So here, I don't think they do. And I can't remember how I signed up for Grubhub. Grubhub was a weird one because they had like a waiting list. Why sign up for it originally. And I literally had to send an email every month for like a year before I got on there.
And I don't even remember. It must not be on a bike though. Because sometimes I'll get these crazy orders. It'll be like, way, way, way too far away. Honestly, I don't know why ayone would do those even in a car though, to be honest, they seem so far away.
But that's why I am rejecting a lot of orders. You know, my acceptance rate on grubhub is like 10% or something or 15%. I reject tons of them, but whenever I get ones that are in my area that are short, I grabbed them always.
EntreCourier
I wondered about that, because I did ask about that around here. And he said, No, no, we don't even have it. And so you don't get any kind of dispatching or anything based on you being on a bike.
Kevin
Right. But you know, you can still do so even though you're not like, technically you're not on a bike with those apps. You could still do them on a bike. You just have to reject more orders. Yeah. Yeah. So that's grubhub.
Doordash. They are they're definitely the busiest ones in my area, I think and they tend to have bonuses like peak pay a lot, which I like. I like that I see what I'm gonna make beforehand, although they do the thing where if the big order they'll try to trick you and tell you.
But I do like that information that they have there. So I tend to do doordash ones a lot here simply because of the volume of them.
Uber Eats has picked up a lot here, I find, um, before, they know how before, they didn't tell you where it was going. And so that basically made my multitasking strategy impossible for them. So I like rarely didUber Eats. Once they added that in which I think here they added the like, where they showed you where it was going, maybe sometime this year, I think so it was it was pretty recent. And so now Uber Eats is like a pretty big volume one for me.
Now. The annoying thing with them, of course, is that they aren't showing you what the tip is so right, which can be a pain because you know, you get these orders like $3 order and so I need like a $3 tip, you know, to make it worth my time otherwise it's kind of like I'm just kind of wasting my time there.
I found that like, 95% of people do tip on Uber Eats. I think it's because they tip beforehand. Most people if you're gonna handle their food, they're going to tip you just cuz they they're nervous about that.
EntreCourier
That's been a huge improvement with Uber Eats is tipping. I think between that and knowing where you're going, right? I was the same way I would not even I would hardly even touch him because you just didn't know where you're going. And when I'm trying to operate several different apps that just doesn't work that way.
Kevin
Yeah, it was a pain. You know, I I didn't do Uber Eats for a while. And then I discovered like, there was like a little hack you could do where you could see where you're going. It's kind of a thing where you had to turn on airplane mode and then swipe delivered. And it would show you where the order was going.
So since you were in airplane mode, it wouldn't like go out to anyone. So you could because the app knows where you're going. And so you see where it's going. And then you could just you had to restart the app a whole bunch of times. And then when you open it up again, turn back on data than it was just popped back up just like you would just accepted the order.
EntreCourier
And it wouldn't remember that you swiped?
Kevin
Right. then so that if it wasn't going where you want to go, you could just can't you just cancel the order and say you didn't want to deliver it.
EntreCourier
I wish I'd talked to you a few months ago.
Kevin
Right, right. So yeah, and then Uber Eats The thing I like about them as they keep at least in my market, they keep doing these quests, you know, do whatever deliveries and you get this and so I don't like think about the quest one doing them but it's basically like a bonus to me. So you know, on that like, it's like 10 deliveries and you get $16 or something.
I don't necessarily care about that. $16 but if I'm at eight deliveries and there's a day left, I'll just finish up those two and get myself that extra.
EntreCourier
Do you ever get those offers on Uber Eats where you just kind of look at them and say you guys are on drugs.
Kevin
I don't as much because since I'm on bike mode for that. I do get like all I get tons of $3 orders for them, but they're always short. And so I'm not like, crazy. I don't I don't think this is a crazy one. I know I imagine a car, you probably get ones that are like
EntreCourier
Well, that's the thing is I had I had to do two different accounts on UberEATS. They didn't have a way to toggle back and forth. And so you had to have one account for car. And then you had to sign up under a different email. I actually talked to somebody there that, I thought, Man, couldn't you get in trouble for doing that?
Because I know, I think doordash and Postmates will deactivate people for having multiple accounts. And Uber Eats did it just a little bit different that you had to do a different account if you wanted to have bike mode. And so you had to log in under whichever account you're on.
But this was back. I actually haven't tried doing much on bike yet since they kicked in showing where you're at, but they were still terrible at it.
I came very close, I think to being deactivated for canceling too many orders. After finding out where I'm going, because I'm here on my bike, and I am slow, I'm just I'm slow. And it's just a regular bike. And, you don't know where you're going until you pick up the food. And then the delivery is six miles away again, guys, I'm on a bike. Yeah, and I'm in bike mode. How can you do? So that's why I wondered if they kind of do that to you or not, and, and maybe they've gotten better at the dispatching there. But there were times where they weren't a whole lot better about, you know, being on a bike than they were with a car or something like that. So that's why I wondered about them.
Kevin
Right? And see, that was the thing that made no sense when they would like when they wouldn't show you where it's going. Because you're right, like if you get one that's going way out of where you're not going to go You have no choice but to cancel it and now you're like got the food already. Yeah. So
EntreCourier
And they didn't know what to do with that then right and and I can remember one time I went on my bike and they showed that to me, and I called in right away and said, Hey, I can't take this. You guys have me on a bike and this is seven miles away, this food is going to be freaking cold no matter how well I protect it. By the time I get there, and they didn't know what to do, they didn't know how to cancel it. They didn't know how to cancel it so that I could, you know, and I, I left the food with the restaurant, but they still took it as and basically they treat it
Kevin
Like you took the food,
EntreCourier
Like you took the food. Yeah. And that you didn't deliver to the customer. And so you, you know, it was kind of like I had to stop doing bike deliveries for a while because I was afraid of crossing that line. You know, wherever that invisible line is, or that unknown line is that they say, Okay, you've done it too many times. You're done.
Kevin
Yeah. So for a little while Postmates was doing that, too. So I could I could talk about post mates a little bit. Yeah, there's a little stretch where Postmates didn't show you where it's going either. It was like a really short stretch. They did this. I don't know what the deal is with that. And so I remember I would get these orders and you couldn't, so I would get an order. I'm like, Oh, this one is probably like close because it'd be like something that like, like a, like a chain restaurant.
So I'd be like, Oh, this is probably a close one, I could probably take a chance on this one. And then it'd be going way out, like somewhere. And so I'd have no choice but to cancel it right. And so I would just do out basically have to do that, you know, once every two weeks or three weeks, like just cancel an order, and I'll just have the food like, literally, the food is mine.
And that was just crazy when they did that, because there is no way you could there's nothing else you could do. It's like I've got the food and now it's going way too far. I'm not gonna do that delivery.
EntreCourier
Did you ever have Postmates just stacked deliveries onto you without you ever run into that.
Kevin
So Postmates doesn't do that. I know you've mentioned that. And I've never noticed that with mine. I know that there used to have a feature and maybe that might be something in the app because I remember there was a feature where was like auto stack orders. And I never turned that on.
Yeah, so sometimes I will get like a second order. They'll ask me to pick up a second order. And I always reject them unless it's literally like along the way, because post mates doesn't like pay more when you do the second order for some reason it's like it so, um, so I think it might, I'm not sure if it's a car thing?
Maybe it is, I don't know, And maybe you're because you're on a bike, they're a little more careful about trying to because a lot of people aren't really able to handle rmore than one delivery.
But yeah, I you know, and that that was one of the things that it just that that was my killer for I mean, and I was going through the app, I was doing all sorts of things. I was trying to contact support, which is a useless pursuit with Postmates
Kevin
They they don't even have support, I don't think
EntreCourier
They don't, and it was just because it was like, guys, you're you're just adding these orders on and the only option is to cancel all of them, or you know, opt out of out of all of them. And then they would go and knock me offline for an hour. because I canceled too many orders.
I finally just stopped because, you know, that's, that's even worse than not knowing where you're going. If, you know, okay, I picked up this grub hub and Oh, hey, here's a great little Postmates order they were they're beautiful for a short little on the way type of thing. And then all of a sudden, oh, you have three other orders. And it's like, okay, now now my poor customer from grubhub is screwed or, or whatever.
Do you run into any problems when you're operating so many deliveries at one time? Does it ever feel like it's really slowing you down at all or anything like that?
Kevin
Yeah, it can Yeah, if any customer is getting burned on it, it's typically the post mates customer.
The reason? The reason and I could talk about post mates cuz that's the last app I haven't discussed is I find that the tip rate on post mates is so low. I don't know what the deal is like maybe I'm doing bad service.
Or maybe people just don't tip because I know that that the app, it seems like the tips sometimes come like, months later. And so people, I think they don't tip until they like open the app again, basically. And so
EntreCourier
I think it's the psychology of tipping, because you're used to tipping when you pay, right? You go to a restaurant, you pay the bill, that's when you tip. And, you know, if you're doing cash sometimes then you'll do it otherwise, but it's just, and I think that the thing is that and it was this way with Uber for a long time, that if the customer couldn't tip until after the food's done, they're not thinking about, you know, they're thinking about eating their food.
And yeah, so I think that's what's happened because Postmates is still strictly I don't think you can or you can tip when you place the order even still.
Kevin
Yeah, you know, I haven't ordered food on Postmates a long time, so I don't actually remember how they do it, but like, the way I see it is I'll get like an order and I'll always be like, you know, it's like so low something or like $2 and 60 cents or something you get paid and so you don't get a tip. And then it's like, well, what's the point of that? So that's my beef with Postmates my load tipping.
But in terms of like the customers, when I'm multitasking I do, I try to be very picky and try and make sure I'm picking orders are all going the same direction. And so that's pretty easy to do on in my area like in this college campus area downtown area because you know, you'll get like, multiple orders all from like McDonald's or multiple orders all from Chipotle. And they're all going to like the same like three apartment buildings are all next to each other, you know. And so that makes it much easier for me,
I can just basically kind of run around the circle doing it and I've rarely get anyone who says like, hey, why did you like take this weird route because they don't know or they're not most people. I don't think even paying attention to the when the orders come in. Because a lot of times you call them and they are like, Oh wait, I ordered food?
EntreCourier
That amazes me too. That's a whole different subject. People order food and that there. It's like they don't realize is coming or something. Yeah. I spend too much money on that food not to be watching.
Kevin
I know, I'm ordering, I'm watching where it's going. But some people, some of you are living large.
EntreCourier
Yeah, I guess.
Tell me a little bit about your setup. What? What do you use? What kind of bike do you have? How are you set up on that? And what do you do to try and especially, I guess, kind of handle the food, you know, to be able to carry that many orders and keep it protected and all that stuff.
Kevin
Yep. So right now I'm currently using a e bike, a rad power e bike, a Radpower is kind of one of these direct to consumer electric bike companies like the biggest one right now. They really get big and this ebike is, the battery lasts, it can go about up to 25 miles per hour. Just like it's pedal assist, so it goes fast, and the battery can last about 25 to 45 miles, depending on terrain and stuff like that.
So that's the bike I use typically. For bag I've got this bag that I bought from like Uber Eats for 20 bucks. It was like really cheap backpack. Yeah, it's the backpack
EntreCourier
Does it have a fold out in the bottom so that you can stick a pizza into.
Kevin
So that's the thing is it does not get a pizza.
EntreCourier
I got one from them when I started. And yeah, it was cheap. It was amazingly cheap for backpack when you look at what some of the others were, but it had a little zipper compartment. And so you could put kind of a medium size, not a large one, but kind of a medium size pizza into kinda like a pop out or something. I'll send you a picture sometime or something.
Kevin
But yeah, yeah, so this one doesn't, it's just open the top, put the food into it. It's got like, like a thing that can make it like two levels. So I can like put some on the bottom so on top. So I do that and then I always carry like an extra like just like the regular bag that like these companies give you I use like a post mates one that's just like a shoulder bag.
In case it's too many stuff in there or something's too big to fit in there, I'll put in that one just hold on the side.
So that is my basic carrying setup. The bag also has like a cup holder inside like a couple cup holders so I can carry like fountain drinks in it and then there's like side pockets I can also put down to drinks in
So yeah, fountain drinks I can usually handle unless it's like a ton of them, which I find most people aren't ordering like, you know, 10 sodas these days. Um, but um, coffees I can't handle at home. And I've learned I keep pushing my luck trying to do coffee orders sometimes. And I've learned Don't ever do coffee ever again. Not even one coffee. Just don't do
EntreCourier
You ever get ice cream?
Kevin
Anytime I see an ice cream order, there's only one place that ever I ever see ice cream for order for and I always reject it. I'm not messing with that at all. No, unless it's a they do have here they have the doordash convenience store which is like a like a new thing. It's like
EntreCourier
I've heard of that I saw that they were coming out. They didn't introduce it here yet. I think we're supposed to be the second wave or something in Denver.
Kevin
Yeah, they introduced it here and you know, ease of fitting enough it's right by my house like, literally blocks from my house. And so sometimes I get those those like pints of ice cream and that I can handle like it's fine, but I won't handle like loose ice cream.
EntreCourier
Oh, yeah, yeah. I hardly ever see that. I've so far knock on wood never had an ice cream cone.
Kevin
Who would order that?
Entre
I know!
You know the thing that amazes me is, we've got like Coldstone Creamery, a place called Ice Cream Riot, there's about three or four places. And I'm actually surprised at how well people tip in relation to the value of the order
Kevin
For Ice Cream Orders?
Entre
Yeah. So, like, $10 of ice cream and you know there might be five dollars for the tip, a fifty percent tip, and they must really want that ice cream.
Kevin
I know! Why would you do that?
I actually delivered a McFlurry somewhere. And you know McDonalds seals everything up so I'm actually fine delivering anything from McDonalds. They ordered one McFlurry and that McFlurry must have cost them like $20.
Entre
I know, it's crazy some of that. I just had an ice coffee yesterday, that's all it was. And I didn't get a tip on it. The nice thing was, it was a ten minute delivery.
That's why I don't mind not knowing the tip on Uber Eats. I mean if they don't tip on Uber Eats it's pretty rare any more, and I always make sure it's such a short delivery that if they don't tip it doesn't hurt as bad
Kevin
Right. And that's how I think about for those apps as well. If I'm doing those deliveries it's gotta be short, on my way somewhere, or I'm desperate to hit the quest. That's the same way I think about Postmates.
Doordash and Grubhub, I'll let them take me places because I see what I'm making before hand. So I can make a decision whether that person deserves me to go out there. Not for Uber Eats and Postmates, they have to be along the way.
Entre
What do you do about locking your bike?
Kevin
I don't lock my bike. I just put it right out front. I can see it from the restaurant like if I'm in McDonalds it's just a big glass door, no ones ever gone up to it. Say I'm at Chipotle, I can see it.
I don't lock it at all. If it's a place I can't see it at all I'll usually wheel it into the restaurant. An example is a Five Guys for example, they have like two doors to go in, that inner foyer area. I just wheel it in there. No one's ever messed with my bike.
Entre
That's the part that I've always been like when I've done bike delivery I've got a big old Surly Disc Trucker. It's heavy as all get out because I've got racks on it and I use a bag, it's got a big basket on the front.
I built that thing from the ground up myself, and I'm kinda proud of that bike. I think no one's taking that bike, so that's the one thing that probably slows me down is locking it.
Kevin
You know, if you can see it from inside, usually, most these restaurants especially we're not waiting too long now, so if you're in there, you're just grabbing and going, you're just leaving it out there for like five seconds and you can see it. And you know, for apartments, if they do make you go in, I just bring it in with me.
Entre
Okay. I tell you, I can keep talking about this.
Any thoughts you can share with anyone thinking about trying bike delivery? What would you tell them?
Kevin
So, I think if you are in a dense area, and I think most of us tend to delvier in a dense area, so if you're in that position, biking is like a lot faster than you think it is. Like, not having to park,
Entre
Or look for parking
Kevin
Yeah, look for parking, park around the corner. I've a friend of mine, I finally convinced him. He lives in Madison Wisconsin. He has a scooter, he's got this Electric scooter. And he's like, you're right, this is way faster.
You have to drive to like Chipotle, and then park around the corner. And then he'd have to walk around the block. Now he just literally drives his scooter into the Chipotle and he picks it up.
So I think those time savings are like underestimated. And the other savings are like being able to hop on a sidewalk, and go the wrong way down a one way street. Or run a light.
I'm not one of those people who like, runs a light when a car is coming. But if I'm there and I don't see any cars, I'm gonna run it, whereas in a car, you don't do that. And this all saves a ton of time. If you think about that, it's like worth it.
The excercise aspect is something to think about. Even if you think you'll make less, and in my opinion I don't think you'll make less on bikes, I get a lot of people who see me on my ebike, they'll be delivery people. They'll ask, are you making more on that? You must make less, right?
And I'm like, no I make more than I would in a car. And I think that people don't realize that because of the speed and stuff, and the fact that I'm getting exercise and so that has to have like some financial benefit when you improve your health. I don't know how to quantify that but it's something.
And then the fact that the overhead is very low. You do a tune up and a couple tires, and it's way less than it costs to take care of your car.
And you know, a way you can do it is, there's a lot of…. what I used to do and sometimes I do it now is I use my city's bike share system to do deliveries.
Entre
I've thought about that
Kevin
Yeah, you're going to move slower on that because those bikes are not as fast, but it's like a way you can do it. I have a yearly subscription to my city's bike share which I always get. I would get it regardless of whether I was doing deliveries with it or not because that's what I use as a transport tool.
If you use that you're not even paying for any overehead really because I assume they already do it.
But being willing to try with different types of bikes and what's around you. Electric scooters is another thing. I've done deliveries on electric scooters. I still do it every once in awhile on electric scooters, it's fun.
Entre
That's another one I've thought about. It's like, for me, I figured out a long time ago that downtown was the best place to go because everything is close together. Even when driving, after awhile you figure out the places you can park, and you might have to walk a block or two but it was still faster doing that than the long haul drives in the suburbs.
I tell you, there've been a couple times I'll pull up and, a couple of times it's a block and a half and I'm looking at that Lime Scooter and thinking maybe I should.
Kevin
Or you can get your own scooter and try it out. You know scooters, my buddy he paid like $500 for his scooter. It's not very expensive.
Yeah, you know, if you got like an eBike, my eBike was like $1500. It's like it basically replaces a car. Because even your cheapest car is more than $1500.
Entre
Especially, most people don't understand how much it costs to operate that car. All they're thinking about is gas and maybe their oil changes. They forget about how they're killing the value of the car when they're doing deliveries.
I always use the term “credit card on wheels” because it's all that stuff you've got to pay later on.
Kevin
Right! Exactly. People don't realize hey, you know, you have to pay for a new transmission down the line. And that happened because you put all those miles on the car before. And it will happen.
Entre
It's not if, it's when.
Kevin
Absolutely. And you look at a bike, and it's like a bike is not very expensive. You know I tune my bike int he shop every year, it's like $80, reallly cheap.
Entre
What kind of things have you had to pay for on your bike, just to keep it up and everything?
Kevin
So the things I pay for are the annual maintenance. I do the maintenance very year. That's something I would do anyway, so it's sort of like I'm turning something I would do into a business expense. I treat that as a business expense even though it's something I would probably do every year because my bike gets a lot of abuse each year.
So, that, tires and stuff, even though actually I haven't had a single flat tire yet, knock on wood, on my eBike. And it's got 3,000 miles on it, but it's got some good tires. My regular bike has more flat tires, but I just change those, it's not that expensive.
That's basically it, I don't have that many expenses on my bike.
Entre
Yeah, and a lot of people I know are listining thinking, but I can't write off that 58 cents a mile.
Kevin
It's true, you can't.
Entre
But you can write off, I've got something I wrote about that, but you can write off your bike expenses, you've got to treat it like actual expenses. Technically you've got to do it based on what percentage of your bike you're using for business, you want to have a pretty good idea how much you're doing.
You know, if you've got a bike that that's all you're doing on it is delivery, well that makes that a lot easier.
The other side of it is, people put too much into that write off. It still costs you 25, 30 cents, maybe 40 cents a mile to use your car. And if you get that write off you get maybe 9 cents. That's what it saves you on your taxes, maybe up to 15 cents depending on your tax bracket. So it's like you're going out and spending 40 cents to save ten. It doesn't make sense.
Kevin
You know one thing I'd point out, an interesting thing I've done. You're in Denver, right? I've actually done some food deliveries in Denver when I was visiting.
It's kind of a funny thing, people don't really think about this, but you can do deliveries for most of these apps in pretty much any city that you're in.
Entre
Especially Doordash, they're the most flexible I think
Kevin
Doordash works. I know Grubhub doesn't. Doordash Uber Eats and Postmates
Entre
I didn't know you could with Uber Eats.
Kevin
Yeah, it used to not be like that, but it's changed. Maybe it's a case where if you're in your car, but if you're on a bike it will let you.
So all of these cities have these bike share systems. So when I was in Denver, maybe two years ago, this is back when maybe they're still there but they had the jump electric bikes. And back then they were really cheap. They cost $4 an hour to operate, super cheap. I don't know if they raised the prices then, but back then I spent like an hour doing these deliveries downtown.
It's kind of like a fun way to explore a city you've never been to before because you're kinda like biking around neighborhoods, checking things out, checking out restaurants you've never heard of. This is like something you can do on a bike because if you go into another city you might not have your car with you but you can hop on a bike.
Entre
My wife and I went out to DC a year ago and we rented the shared bikes just to ride around at night. See all the monuments with lights lit up. I thought about it, that I wondered.
Kevin
You should have done it! Get out with the wife and it's kind of just a little mission, a little fun thing. You know my wife and I did, my wife doesn't do bike deliveries, but we actually did it a couple years ago there was a sign up bonus. I referred her, you just had to do a certain number. It was low, now a days it's high. Back then you had to do twenty, maybe fifteen delvieries in like a month.
And so my wife and when we were doing this we'd just go on a bike ride. She would deliver food, I would go with her, just so we could get the bonus, we were biking around, something we already wanted to do together. We did it so she could get her bonus, we did just enough and now she's done with it.
Entre
Of course now you've got a young one so now you'd have to find a child seat or something like that.
Kevin
I know, yeah. With the little one, probably won't risk anything scary like that.
Entre
Well, Kevin, this has been fun. I really enjoyed talking about bike deliveries. And I want to get you back on sometimes to talk about the money stuff, because you've just got a lot of good common sense stuff about the way you use your money.
Sometimes I think we get ourselves in trouble with the money. Folks, go check out FinancialPanther.com and just listen to everything that he tells you there because he's just got some good advice.
Kevin, I want to thank you for coming and being part of the podcast. Any parting shots you want to throw out?
Kevin
Yeah, this whole delivery game, it's fun. I mean in the history of work and the ability to do this kind of things, has not really existed where you could go and turn on an app and work for like ten minutes or work for like two or three hours. In the old days if you wanted to make like ten bucks you literally couldn't just go I'm going to make like ten bucks right now. You had to find a way to make ten bucks at a job or something.
Entre
You had to get hired, you had to go through the process, you had to wait three weeks for the paycheck.
Kevin
Right. And you couldn't work like ten minutes in a day. I had to work like a shift. This is like pretty new stuff. I graduated college in 2009 and this did not exist then. And so you just look at this and what you can do with it. Just a brief talk about money it's like five bucks a day, ten bucks a day, if you take that and save it over time it adds up over the long term.
Entre
And then if you do it right, it adds up more over time.
Kevin
We're in an interesting time where you can work in short bursts while you're doing something else and you can fit them into your day to day life. Take advantage of it if you can.
Entre
Good advice. Awesome advice.
And the beauty of it is like you said, we can go do this for a little bit and what I love about it is you can just have fun with it. How many times could you do that?
Kevin
Right. I would not do this if I did not think it was fun. I do it because I find it very fun. That's why I do it.
Entre
Love it!
Well, Kevin, thanks again for being our guest.
Kevin
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
