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Have you ever wondered how many vehicles Uber has on the road in South Africa? Have you ever used Uber?
Many people criticise Uber without fully understanding the impact on the economy and the quality of the service. Recently Alon Litz made a statement that Uber has done more than 2m rides this year in South Africa. I am personally involved with four Uber drivers who are running their own Uber businesses and using their average rides per week of 85 rides per week, one can deduct that in South Africa, Uber have been running on average more than 900 vehicles this year.
This means that through their systems a minimum 900 people have directly been given jobs by Uber, then there are the people working at Uber SA, the car washes, the people servicing the cars, supplying the cars, checking the roadworthiness, there are lots of spin off jobs. I think the figure of 2,000 jobs quoted by Uber is a fair claim. What other company can claim to have such an awesome track record with respect to Job creation? These are good jobs and lots of these vehicles are owned by the drivers, being real empowerment.
As Pace Car Rental we provide vehicles to Uber drivers as part of our enterprise development program, it’s real easy path from start-up entrepreneurs who are willing to work hard. It’s a shame about all the bad press, South Africa should be rolling out the red carpet for Uber. The obstructions that Cape Town and Durban are putting in the way of Uber are crushing jobs.
Negative press is Unfounded
Uber is an impressive organisation, they have clever system with incentives to get the best value for their customers. All drivers go through a background check before they are allowed to drive for Uber. This includes a criminal check. You would be surprised how many drivers currently working for other cab companies have criminal records. All of their drivers are put through testing and training before they are allowed to drive vehicles on the Uber Network. One of the drivers that I was helping, quit Uber this week after being given bad ratings.
After each trip the person using the service gets to rate the driver. If the driver gets bad ratings, he is immediately “deactivated” meaning he can’t drive until he has attended a retraining session. This time off the network has a huge negative financial impact on the driver, so essentially bad ratings means no money.
Before a vehicle can be accepted to be used on the Uber network, the vehicle must go for a roadworthy, and a secondary vehicle inspection to ensure that it is Uber quality. The vehicles must be less than three years and less than 100,000kms. I would challenge any other cab company (other than Avis P2P) to beat the quality of the vehicles.
This rigorous process of ensuring the customers safety, means that people are getting to their destinations safely more often now.
Obviously the big issue for the existing taxi companies is that Uber is eating their pie. My initial reaction was to wonder why don’t these people who are complaining just join Uber? Well the simple fact is that their cars are not up to the Uber standard, and many of their drivers would not pass the Uber training and background tests. All these people can do is fight Uber and try to create bad press. Uber is also charging customers less, because their system of allocating rides to drivers is more efficient, meaning that their vehicles do less empty trips.
Another point to note about Uber is that just like Kulula opened up domestic travel with cheap flights, Uber is creating a new market for cabs with their efficient service and cheap fares, it’s not just taking away from existing operators.
South Africa needs more companies like Uber, companies that empower staff to have their own businesses, companies that insist on safety and quality, provide value for money services and most importantly Uber is a company that creates jobs.
This article is written by Grenville Salmon, managing director of Pace Car Rental.
