Greta CrossSpringfield News-Leader
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Missouri State professor David Mitchell.
Grace Willis began working as an Amazon Flex delivery driver in November 2022. She was knee-deep in graduate school and looking to earn some extra money. For a little over a month, Willis drove throughout the Ozarks, delivering Amazon packages as an independent contractor. While Willis enjoyed the job's flexibility, it brought with it a unique set of challenges that ended up making the gigging job not worth continuing.
This type of independent contract work, specifically completed through applications like Amazon Flex, falls under what economists call the platform gig economy. Other popular delivery-based gig economy platforms are Uber and Lyft, DoorDash and Grubhub, and Shipt and Instacart. Since the pandemic, interest in the platform gig economy has accelerated due to its flexibility and independence.
In a 2023 report, researchers at The University of Chicago shared that nearly 4.5 million people were signed up to work through transportation and delivery platforms in 2021. This was up from about 2.5 million people in 2020 and less than 2 million people in 2019.
Taking on a side hustle or juggling a handful of different oddball jobs isn't a new trend, but in recent years, this type of work has become more mainstream. The News-Leader took an in-depth look at local driving gigs as part of a new, occasional series on the side hustles that Ozarkers pursue, either for fun or out of necessity.
Why is the platform gig economy popular?
For Willis, working as a delivery driver for Amazon Flex felt like a convenient way to make extra money.
According to the Amazon Flex website, delivery drivers make between $18 and $25 per hour. Amazon Regional PR Lead Andy DiOrio told the News-Leader that this price point is "consistent across all markets."
At the start of each week, Willis would log on to the Amazon Flex mobile app to see what shifts were available. Each shift, or what Amazon Flex calls a "block," indicates a timeframe that a driver can select for delivering packages. Willis often worked two to three shifts a week. Willis said she usually made about $20 per hour, working between two-and-a-half to four hours.
When it came to working a shift she selected, Willis would drive to the Amazon Flex warehouse on the northwest side of Springfield. There, she would learn where she would be delivering packages to. Willis said she frequently delivered packages to residential homes in Republic and Branson. She never worked inside Springfield city limits.
Twenty-three-year-old Springfield resident Destanie Watson has also worked for Amazon Flex; she was a delivery driver in 2020. Watson said she worked for about four hours each shift, delivering between 30-40 packages and making between $100-200. At this rate, Watson was making about $37.50 per hour. Like Willis, she delivered outside of Springfield city limits.
In addition to Amazon Flex, Watson has worked for food delivery platforms DoorDash and Uber Eats. She began working for both platforms in 2020 and continues to work for DoorDash occasionally. She worked for all three platforms while holding another job.
As a "consistent" Dasher (the title given to DoorDash drivers), Watson said she made between $200-300 on slower weeks and $500-600 on busier ones.
"When you just start out, pretty much you can't just do DoorDash whenever. You have to wait for a busy time," Watson explained. "Those busy times would be like lunch or dinner, anywhere between ... 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then it may pick back up around 5 p.m. until like 7-8 p.m. As you continue to do DoorDash pretty consistently for weeks or a month on end, you might be able to pretty much schedule your DoorDash whenever. For example, if I wanted to go out to do DoorDash right now (9 a.m. on a Monday), based on how much I have done in the past, it would be available to me. But for someone who may not have been as busy with it, they would just have to wait for a busier schedule."
What Watson described is known as the Top Dasher program, an incentive for high-performing Dashers. In order to qualify for the program, a Dasher must have a customer rating of at least 4.7, an acceptance rate of at least 70% and a completion rate of at least 95%, according to the DoorDash website. A Dasher must also have completed at least 100 deliveries in the past month and at least 200 deliveries in total.
In addition to this flexible schedule, Watson said because she delivered regularly for DoorDash, she was able to apply for DasherDirect, a prepaid Visa card. Dashers are able to direct their earnings to a DasherDirect card instead of their banks accounts.
Flexibility appears to be one of the most common reasons people work within the platform gig economy.
According to a Harvard Business School study published in 2021, 30% of Dashers said they would stop working for the platform if they couldn't choose their own hours. And 10% of the platform's Top Dashers said they would take a 17% pay cut in order to retain schedule flexibility.
And because more folks are interested in working for these platforms, the industry as a whole is maturing, according to David Mitchell, an economics professor at Missouri State University.
"For example, when I go to a restaurant now, I see the little area for DoorDash people to pick up their stuff," Mitchell said. "It used to be that the DoorDash people would come in and say, 'Hey, I've got an order for Suzie,' and they would ... just hand it to (them) and then, of course, people would get this idea of, 'Hey, are people eating my fries or drinking out of my soda?' And now you're seeing ... more of a dedicated space, bags are sealed. That's a sign that people have started to work out some of the bugs."
Accessibility of rideshare platforms has positive effect on economy
Tim Rogers, a business faculty member at Ozarks Technical Community College, cited positive changes when asked how the platform gig industry is affecting the larger economy.
When it comes to rideshare platforms like Uber and Lyft, specifically, Rogers said these platforms are generating more money for the transportation industry.
"Prior to Uber being around, you really would (rely) on taxi cabs and the number of people who used taxi cabs prior to Uber is a much lower number than people who are using Uber and Lyft now that those are available," Rogers said. "More money is being spent in those (rideshare) services compared to rental cars or taxi cab services. There's a growth of the overall industry. It's not just a shifting of money from taxi cabs to the other."
Not only is the transportation industry generating more money, but the individuals who are working for platforms like Uber and Lyft appear to be more motivated than some of their counterparts.
In a 2020 study, the MIT Sloan School of Management found that eligible car owners were 3.8% less likely to rely on unemployment insurance programs following job loss in areas where rideshare was present.
"Regardless of the reason, if we just look at the numbers, we know that the people who are engaged in this (platform gig economy), which is an increasing number of people, they are less likely to be a drain on the economy," Rogers said.
It's not just the consumers who are benefiting from this work, Mitchell explained.
"If you move more toward a (to-go)-type of industry, that can actually, in a way, increase the restaurant's sales, if they are smart about it and cut down their costs, because now they can have a smaller footprint, the restaurant doesn't need to be as big ... that means they don't need as many waiters, they don't need as many dishwashers," Mitchell said.
"The problem is, of course, that a lot of these restaurants that built these buildings built them before the pandemic, so they still have all the tables, they still have to heat and cool that building. So it may not be today's restaurants that are doing that, but tomorrow's restaurants that are built three, four, five years down the road that are able to say, 'Hey, we don't need 40 tables anymore. We can get a way with 10 tables and a much bigger takeout portion."
'Not feeling worth the cost'
While Mitchell recognizes the benefits of the platform gig economy, he is skeptical about how much money workers actually pocket.
"I'm not necessarily convinced people make as much extra money with it as they think they are," he said.
During the month Willis worked for Amazon Flex, she said it felt as if she was not making enough money to cover other necessary costs, like the gas it took to drive outside of Springfield to deliver packages.
"Any wear or tear on the car or any accident I would get into, anything like that, nothing was protected by Amazon," Willis said. "I was putting a lot of miles on it and I have an old car and spending a lot of gas money. It ended up not feeling worth the cost to me in the end to pocket a little money now."
All Amazon Flex delivery drivers are required to have auto insurance. According to the Amazon Flex website, the company also provides "commercial auto insurance at no cost" in addition to personal coverage, which includes auto liability coverage, uninsured motorist and underinsured motorist coverage, and contingent comprehensive and collision coverage. This policy is only applicable while a driver is on the clock for Amazon Flex.
Amazon Flex also offers a rewards program for its drivers. All drivers are eligible for discounts on Shell gasoline, 20% off services and parts at Pep Boy, 15% off oil changes and other select services at Jiffy Lube, 15-18% off tires at Good Year, discounts off tires, services and parts at Firestone, and 20% off slip-resistant footwear from Shoes For Crews, according to the Amazon Flex website.
Drivers who accumulate at least 650 points (one delivery equals one point and one shift or "block" equals 10 points) are eligible for the Amazon Flex Debit Card, which offers cash back on gas and EV charging, 2% cash back on the Amazon website and at Whole Foods Market, and 1% cash back on "every other purchase," according to the Amazon Flex website. The Amazon Flex Rewards program also offers "preferred scheduling" to drivers with at least 650 points, allowing them to schedule shifts ahead of when others can.
Willis recalled receiving rewards after earning enough points, but she said she never redeemed them. Watson also noted receiving rewards but did not remember if she redeemed them.
Springfield resident Jimmy Jaime began working for DoorDash in June 2021. For the first few months, he averaged 30-35 hours per week. In May 2022, he cut down his hours to about 10-15 hours a week. Jaime said he still has the DoorDash app on his phone, in case of a financial emergency, but he hasn't worked for the platform since 2023.
On average, Jaime said he made about $15 an hour, after calculating in the price of gas. While working 30-35 hours a week, this was a payout between $530-570. When he cut down his hours, his payout was closer to $140-180 a week.
Like Willis, Jaime said one of the reasons he quit working as a Dasher was because of vehicle upkeep. But another reason was actually because of the Top Dasher program.
"I didn't know that until you meet the requirements to hit Top Dasher, you can only (work) at peak hours," Jaime said. "So you hope it's busy or else there's no work or the second too many Dashers are active, it'll stop the app. Once I stopped working 15 hours or more, I couldn't maintain the requirements to hit Top Dasher and couldn't Dash when I wanted."
What is the future of the platform gig economy?
While Uber People forum and Reddit users often comment that the platform gig economy is becoming oversaturated with workers, Rogers said it hasn't reached its threshold yet.
"I think there is absolutely a limit to it, but I don't think we're anywhere near it yet," he said.
What Rogers is particularly interested in, he said, is what platform or service will come next.
"Will it be traveling nurses, almost like Uber Nurses?" Rogers asked hypothetically. "Will we revert back to doctors making house calls again because of a platform gig economy? That's what I find interesting, how we might come full circle to 100 years ago based of this technology."
Greta Cross is the trending topicsreporter for the SpringfieldNews-Leader. Follow her onX and Instagram @gretacrossphoto. Story idea? Email her at gcross@gannett.com.
