- Hello! Oh, how strange - we have been trying to order a car for 10 minutes, and you have been standing right here all this time! - The fact is that I just pressed the green button in the application. It was not easy to figure out what is here and how. You see, I just started working :). An extremely polite woman sits in the front seat, and her pretty daughter sits back. We are going to enter RUDN University. The daughter never took her eyes off her iPhone all the way, and her mother behaves as if she is not paying me, but I am paying her. Quite typical behavior of a Soviet person. Well, my first working day at Yandex Taxi started well. I wish all passengers were the same!

How was it before? If a man has at least some kind of car, then he definitely will not die of hunger. I ran out of money - well, I went to the city, bombed, there was enough for bread and butter. You can earn a couple of thousand per evening in various ways. Yes, I did it myself. But those days have passed, like gasoline at 6 rubles and a dollar at 25. Now meeting a person voting on the side of the road is the same as a girl without makeup. You can still, but it is already considered a great success. Residents of megacities have switched to ordering a taxi from a smartphone. It is convenient, reliable, cheap, safe - well, you yourself know. What should a person who wants to work as a taxi driver do? To be on the other side of the Uber or Yandex application. It's not that hard - I tried it myself.

Let's say an unpleasant thing right away: I have always treated taxi drivers in much the same way as prostitutes. In the sense that these are people, of course, necessary and important, but there seems to be nothing to respect them for. If a person is engaged in such work, then this indicates one thing - he has not learned anything in his life, has not received any profession. After all, driving a car is not a professional skill, any self-respecting man can do it. Actually, the contingent of taxi drivers eloquently confirms this thesis - all over the world the profession is occupied by low-skilled guest workers. And then the question arises - if a smart person with a higher education becomes a taxi driver, can he earn more than others? Looking ahead - yes, it can. But there are nuances. In general, I connected to Yandex.Taxi. In order to do this, you need to get a job at a taxi company, because Yandex only works with taxi companies. You can become an Uber driver without intermediaries (this is, in fact, the main feature of Uber). But for this you need to have your own IP and your car, suitable for working in a taxi - inexpensive, practical, roomy, new. And economical, of course. Experienced bombers at one time believed that the margin of profitability was a gasoline consumption of 9 liters per 100 km. If the car is more gluttonous, then you will spend more than you earn. Since then, gasoline has risen in price, and taxis have fallen in price! In short, I don't have my own Uber taxi car. However, I still submitted an application - this is done on this page. By the way, there is a training video for drivers - look, it's interesting. After the application, the Uber operators left FIVE messages on my answering machine and sent three SMS. I did not ignore them on purpose - it happened. But the fact is typical. There is currently a huge shortage of good drivers in Moscow. So you think that taxi services are fighting for customers, but in fact they are chasing drivers, luring them with various bonuses, and are ready to offer the most chocolate conditions. If you don't have your own car, you can rent a car. Another option is to get a job in a taxi company. Here, earnings, at first glance, are less - you need to pay for the services of a taxi company. But if you honestly calculate the depreciation of your personal car, all the expenses for insurance, maintenance, tires, registration of an individual entrepreneur and a taxi driver's license ... It turns out that the benefit is not so big. But more on that later.

So, I came to get a job in a taxi "Bouquet". They work with Yandex and are among the four largest taxi companies in Moscow - there are 700 cars on the line! There are also companies that work with Uber, Gett, and other services. Differences, by and large, at the level of sensations. Let's say Yandex works closely with Sheremetyevo, and Gett works closely with Domodedovo. But the main thing is that the conditions for services are constantly changing. In six months, a good half of this article will be irrelevant! I get to the right address. The deaf industrial area is densely crowded with yellow taxis, gloomy pot-bellied men are smoking at the gates. The Bouquet base looks like a taxi-mafia from different GTA and John Wick 2 series - you just expect the gates to slam behind your back and the men will get the bits. However, I am greeted by very friendly ladies. They are ready to carry good taxi drivers in their arms, kissing them regularly.

I got a job without any problems. A workbook is not needed here. The most difficult thing was to do without alcohol for two days - knowledgeable people scared me that otherwise I would not have to pass a medical examination before leaving for the line. For the rest, you need to have a passport and driving license (only Russian ones are accepted in the Bouquet), know Moscow and be attentive. The device process begins with watching a package of training videos from Yandex - how to use the application, how to communicate with passengers, and so on. Then - exams from "Bouquet" and from "Yandex". The taxi company asks to fill out a detailed questionnaire indicating past places of work, education, etc., as well as answer questions like “where is the Botkin hospital” and “Which highway should I go to Ivanteevka”.

The Yandex Taxi exam is automatic. In the corner of the personnel department is a special yellow device with checkers and a camera hanging above it. You press the “Ready” button and then you go through a long test with questions like “what can I call the passenger for.”

I successfully pass all the tests, pass a medical examination, sign the necessary contracts and receive the keys to the Octavia with yellow numbers and a tablet with the application installed. Not what you have on your iPhone, but a special driver's one, it exists only for Android, since taxi drivers usually do not have iPhones. The tablet does not want to stay in a special holder, tightly screwed to the instrument panel. You have to keep him on your knees. By the middle of the day, I can beat the holder by jamming the tablet in it with Snickers wrappers. Before you start driving, you need to go through the rite of passage from Yandex - the application consistently asks you to take a picture of the car from all sides, interior, trunk, your face with rights, and so on. Such a rite then will have to be held every few days. So in "Yandex" they make sure that the cars are clean and not wrinkled. My car is not just wrinkled - the odometer is less than 100 kilometers. Bouquet employs only Octavias and the park is constantly updated. Here it is appropriate to recall an absolutely wonderful story about the dying Volga from the New Yellow Taxi - feel the difference!

It took about five hours from my arrival at the taxi depot to the exit to the line. In fairness, it could have been done twice as fast if not for my journalistic curiosity and my own innate gouging. Follow in my footsteps - stock up on an android tablet with a working Internet in advance and don't ask a million unnecessary questions. Finally, all the formalities are over. I press the green button. Nothing happens for the next 10 minutes. I call the taxi company. “Everything is fine, it’s just that your rating is still low and the system is not giving you orders.” A new driver is assigned a default rating of 4.6. In the future, with the advent of passenger ratings, the rating of a taxi driver increases or decreases. Grades are taken into account only for the last two months, plus "fireproof" grades obtained in exams and during Yandex checks. And the service constantly checks drivers - it can suddenly ask to take a photo, send a "mystery shopper", and so on. In the first hour, I only get two orders. But after a while, life gets better - new orders begin to appear more and more often. The wallet is gradually getting fatter, money is also dripping “on bank transfer”. Yes, it's incredible, but half of the passengers prefer to pay in cash! It's hard for me to explain why these people they can’t link their card to the application, but for a taxi driver it’s good - although it takes some time to calculate the “cash”, almost no one requires change, and many even leave a tip on purpose. Among the cashless people there are none at all.

- Bro! Come on, we’ll get to that McDuck, we’ll buy something to eat there, and you’ll take us back, let’s go? - two cheerful types climb onto the back sofa and the salon is filled with a thick smell of marijuana. At McDonald's, guys buy food for 2,000 rubles and treat me with a hamburger. And they leave a hundred tips. I think I was lucky to come across a demo version of Drunken Major. A mythical character, about which legends are told in the smoking rooms of taxi companies and on Internet forums. You will meet the Drunken Major - and he will ensure your earnings for the week ahead. A hundred bucks for a 5-minute trip or a couple of thousand for delivery from Pushkin home to Rublyovka - A drunken major is capable of anything!

Evening rush hour, I successfully screeched, being at six in the evening in the suburbs. The fact is that when receiving an order, it is usually not clear where the passenger will go, so I just take everything in a row, hoping that the route will coincide with the direction I need. Hopes are not justified, and I find myself further and further from the Moscow Ring Road, bogged down in a chain of trips for 60 rubles - in towns near Moscow, the minimum trip is two times cheaper than in Moscow. Of course, such orders are unprofitable, so Yandex pays extra to the driver. For each trip, I receive at least 200 rubles, even if the passenger paid 75 or 100. In a good way, at six in the evening I had to be in the center, picking up office plankton going home. In the morning, respectively, you need to catch passengers on the outskirts. Saturday night - at nightclubs. You can also fish near airports - one trip from Sharik to Lyubertsy can give a good half of the daily income. In general, this is all a strategy that cunning taxi drivers come with experience. I have no experience yet, and I stupidly take all orders in a row. It's a little exhausting. Closer to the night I find myself at the airport for the first time. Finding a passenger on the way back to Moscow is no easy task. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of checkered cars in the parking lot. At the same time, yellow numbers do not give any priority - 15 free minutes, and you need to leave the airport. Getting up on the highway with an emergency gang is useless - orders will be received by the nearest taxi drivers who are already behind the barrier. I'm leaving for the city of Domodedovo, to catch passengers there. Later, the chain of orders will lead me back to the airport. This time I change my strategy: I found a place in the forest (but no further than 4 km, within which the application allows you to take an order), leaned back and decided to sleep a little, setting the tablet to maximum volume. The calculation turns out to be correct - in an hour the system gives me the passenger to the center, I wake up, I have time to take the order (and this must be done in 10 seconds, otherwise the order flies to another taxi driver!) And pick up a family with suitcases that arrived from Abakan.

- Young man, look at the road! - a disgruntled passenger suddenly makes a remark to me. I was stuck in traffic and took too long to get to his house, and now, as it seemed to the passenger, I looked at the tablet once again. However, the road to the airport turned out to be enough for the dissatisfied person to become kinder and give me a “five”. There was also a company of tipsy ladies in Mytishchi, who in unison demanded to turn in different directions, hinted that I was driving for the first time, argued loudly with me, each other and the navigator. All the other passengers that I drove turned out to be quite nice and polite - no comparison with the clients of a home master in the "Husband for an hour" format. Yes, yes, I also once did such work, and there are much more eccentrics among customers than normal people. And the ladies from Mytishchi also put five. Politeness is the main weapon of a thief! "Gentlemen of Fortune".

Later I was lucky to be at the airport again, now in Sheremetyevo. Everything is fine here - Yandex has an agreement under which you can officially be on duty "on the first line" of terminal D. I get the order even before I drop off vacationers flying to Cyprus at the neighboring terminal. Soon aunts from the taxi depot start calling me and urge me to quit - I've been on the line for 10 hours, and this is clearly a lot. After 12 hours, the shift can be closed by force - this is how the taxi company and the service are struggling with driver fatigue. I pick up a few more passengers and press the home button. The address "Bouquet" is set by the house. The system selects orders that can be completed along the way. A good button, but you can press it no more than three times per shift. I get to the taxi depot, rent the car to specially trained people, report to the accounting department for the money that the passengers transferred to me by bank transfer, and go home to sleep. I had enough impressions for the shift - I perfectly understood the operation of the application and learned a lot more. Gathered enough material for the article, and even earned money. Plus, I now have a working Yandex Taxi account, which will come in handy when senile dementia overtakes me and I can no longer write. By itself, the work of a taxi driver - do not beat the recumbent. Received an order - picked up a passenger - drove a passenger - received a new order. Complete relaxation of the mind. Compared to journalistic work, when you need to write four articles at the same time (now I’m just busy with this) and come up with excuses for five more customers when you pass the rest, it’s just a catharsis. But in order to earn a lot (and why else go in a taxi?), You still need to turn on the brain. Look here. I was on the line for a total of 12 hours. The official income during this time amounted to 8,670 rubles. Does this mean that in 30 days you can earn 260,000 thousand? Well… not really. We consider: first, 20% is deducted from this amount - this is the commission of Yandex and the taxi fleet. It remains 6,936 rubles. We subtract 2150 rubles, which cost the rental of a car and a tablet (this is the profit of "Bouquet"). It remains 4,786 rubles. About 1,100 rubles were spent on gasoline. In total, 3,686 rubles were left on hand. This is for 12 hours of work, count - for one and a half standard working days of office plankton. That is, in a month, having worked 15 shifts, I would have earned about 55 thousand. And now, attention, surprise! Average Moscow taxi drivers earn 30-40 thousand. Moreover, for me it was the first shift, on which, due to inexperience, I missed a lot of money. And besides, the motivation of professional taxi drivers should be much higher - for me, it was, consider, a game.

Let's talk about how not to be an average taxi driver and earn a lot.

1. Ride around the clock

It sounds logical, because you rent a car just for 24 hours, so why should it be idle? Pros: you can earn a lot. Cons: this is highly discouraged or directly prohibited by aggregators and taxi companies, by the end of the work shift you will be dumb, rude, stink and get "deuces" from passengers, sooner or later this mode will lead to an accident, and, finally - it is possible to exist like this for a month - two, at most - three. No human body is enough for more. However, it is known that some characters do this - for example, when they need money very urgently, and then die anyway. Or shift workers - for a couple of months they plow around the clock in Moscow, then they return to Ust-Zazhopinsk.

2. Work with a changer

If the first option is for the most, uh, straightforward taxi drivers, then this one is for the smartest. We need to find a shift and share the car with him. That is, everyone should have their own Yandex account and an agreement with a taxi company, but there will be one car for two. Taxi companies have a special tariff for working with a shifter. So the car can drive most of the day, there will be less downtime. There may be several modes of operation, but the most popular is called “2 through 2”. This is when you rent a car for 48 hours and spend 32 of them driving and 16 sleeping. In this mode, you can exist for many years. Pros: a simple car is minimal, concentration at work is maximum (and when you have a car all week, you will constantly have to take your children to school, your mother-in-law to the dacha, your wife for a manicure and perform other duties of a person with a “tyzhsmashina”). Cons: you need to find a decent shift neighbor and clearly organize shifts.

3. Work well

The ratings given by passengers determine how quickly orders arrive to you. Losers can smoke bamboo for a long time while waiting for passengers, while excellent students receive orders instantly. For my 36 orders, I received 36 fives - by the end of the first shift, the effect became noticeable. Disclaimer: this mode works in Yandex.Taxi. In Uber, driver ratings are not taken into account when distributing orders - he simply flies to the nearest free taxi driver, but when the negative threshold is reached, the driver is turned off for a while, from the second time - forever. How to get "five"? This is a matter of psychology. A good taxi driver will understand what the passenger wants - to drive imposingly or quickly, to chat or be silent, and so on. Clean clothes and a car, careful driving, understanding conversations will be a plus (see “what the country has been brought to!”). At the same time, freaks still occur, without this in any way. A real case: the taxi driver rightly did not allow the passenger to smoke, and he put a deuce with the comment “the driver was pitched all the way like a steam locomotive.” Another case: the passenger wanted to take a huge Caucasian (in the sense of a dog), the taxi driver reasonably refused, the passenger left a deuce, accusing the taxi driver of drunkenness. However, practice shows: be a decent person, and rare freaks will not be able to drop your rating. “Yes, I immediately realized that you are not a real taxi driver,” a brunette who looks like Courteney Cox suddenly says from the back sofa. I'll take it as a compliment.

4. Choose the right route

Here is a very interesting point. On the one hand, standing in traffic jams is still paid by the passenger to the taxi driver. On the other hand, the passenger's mood worsens from this, and with it, your grades. I myself am happy to put deuces to taxi drivers who suddenly chose a strange path. In addition, more orders generate more revenue. And one more thing - passengers really do not like to wait for a taxi driver who drives around the area in circles, unable to find a house. Here navigation accuracy is very important. A fresh masterpiece from Hubert-Ahmed. To be fair, Uber revised the price of the ride based on my complaint. 75 rubles returned.

Yandex.Navigator is already built into the Yandex taximeter - for Moscow, obviously, the best choice. The Uber app now uses the Doublegis navigation system, and Uber taxi drivers use the Yandex navigator from their personal phones. I wonder what will happen after the merger of the two services (when it receives FAS approval in the end). In general, the work is built like this - you have a button "accept order". Within 10 seconds, you need to have time to click on it, after which the taximeter automatically builds a route to the client. And then - a route to the address named by the client. Sometimes passengers prefer to show the way on their own. More often - trust the taxi driver. And almost always the route from Yandex will be optimal. Do not forget that not a single navigator yet has a taxi mode, and therefore does not take into account bus lanes. But taxis with yellow numbers (unlike personal Uber cars) have a superpower - bypassing traffic jams along the A-lanes. This not only saves time wildly, but also has the most favorable effect on the mood of the passenger. Everyone is standing, and you are going - go bad? They say that Yandex will soon add a mode for taxi drivers to the maps.

5. Catch bonuses

Each taxi aggregator has its own tricks, and they are constantly changing. In some ways, this is similar to achievements in Civilization or side quests in Fallout. For example, during my work, such a bonus quest appeared: make five trips to Domodedovo per shift and you will receive 500 rubles. Bonuses are often associated with a minimum number of trips per week - this encourages taxi drivers not to be stupid, to get on the line more often, and also to cheat “let's divide your trip into two, and I will give you 50 rubles.” Many are chasing coefficients - they are shown on the map. During my shift, it was possible to earn 1.4-1.6 times more if you caught a client in Mytishchi or Kievskaya. And as a passenger, I recently got out of Rublyovka at a coefficient of 2.5! But here, as in RPGs, it is important not to lose your main quest while chasing achievements - you need to strike a balance!

6. Drive your own car

Pros: no need to pay rent, no need to rush to rent a car or adapt to a shift. Cons: firstly, a taxi can operate a car no older than three years (we, it turns out, have such a law); secondly, your car constantly loses a lot of value. Plus, you spend money on tires, maintenance, oil, OSAGO. You need to worry about the license. You don't have yellow numbers (very important!). In the event of an accident, you are on your own (and if I crashed the Bouquet car, I would only pay a small Casco deductible and take another car the next day). In a word, a car from a taxi depot turns out to be only a little more expensive, but it removes a lot of pain. But what exactly is worth doing is to have a personal tablet. Advertisements for the sale of used Googlephones hang on the bulletin board in the taxi depot. It's actually an interesting board.

7. Drive economically

Spend less gas, earn more. In the "Bouquet" only "Octavia" work on the "machine". This is beneficial for the taxi fleet: for 3-4 years, after which the car is sold, nothing happens with such a box. But the average consumption of gasoline by taxi drivers is 10 liters. I had a smaller one, about 8.5 (thanks to the roads to the airport). With mechanics it would be even less.

8. Reach the big leagues

Actually, Octavia is already a “comfort” class. Orders for "comfort" are more expensive than for "economy". There are also more expensive classes and more expensive aggregators like Wheely. There, cars are more expensive, more responsibility, higher requirements for driver qualifications, more demanding passengers, trips are more expensive. But the trips themselves, as a rule, are less. That is, it is not a fact that E-class drivers in the Commander taxi earn more. Most likely, they earn at best the same amount, they just travel less. The maximum earnings are for taxi drivers who: A) travel a lot B) build the right strategy.

And one more thing. Recently, the environmental police in Moscow have adopted the fashion of remotely issuing fines for parking on the lawn. It is worth leaving the car in the yard, driving a pair of wheels onto the ground - and you can get a fine for damaging green spaces. And if in the case of a personal car the fine will be an unpleasant 5,000 rubles, then in the case of a car standing on a legal entity (for example, Skoda from the Buket taxi company), it will already be an unrealistic 300,000 rubles. Yes, and more. When you call a taxi, please: 1. If there is even the slightest doubt that your entrance is difficult to find - call the taxi driver, save everyone's time. 2. Get out right at the moment the taxi arrives. I can’t express how infuriating it is - you arrived, pressed the “on the spot” button, and you are waiting. And the passenger went to the shower, put on makeup and dressed. And he leaves after 20 minutes, with self-respect - but what, Yandex has 10 minutes of waiting free for the passenger, and for another 10 he paid some three kopecks. And the taxi driver sits and thinks - that's a bastard! I would have made three other orders while I'm standing here.

Sorry, got out. Do not violate traffic rules, take care of yourself, choose a good job!

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