These drivers may be among those that the two major car-sharing services say they will reward when the companies go public later this year.
They were the first 50 or so drivers who took a chance on what sounded like a crazy concept.
In San Francisco, the drivers who helped build these ride-sharing empires include a former personal caregiver, a former security guard, and a former Credit Suisse investment banker.The companies haven’t said how they’d select the lucky drivers, but they likely would focus on longtime, active drivers and, at Lyft, the plan is to award drivers who have logged at least 10,000 rides, according to the report. Lyft and Uber have not returned requests for comment.
The driver estimates he has given more than 20,000 Lyft and Uber rides . If given a chance, he would hold on to his shares, rather than cash them out, he said. “I’d have the shares for both companies as a security blanket long term,” he said. “Cash on hand is easy to spend.”Deco Carter was a security guard in the Mission district in San Francisco in 2013 when he decided on a career change. A friend had told him about Lyft.
The company gave him a giant pink mustache, a bag of candy for the passengers, and a phone charger, said Carter, a San Francisco resident who is regularly called a “Lyft legend” by fellow drivers and drives a hip hop-themed 2006 Toyota Scion XB for Lyft only. Keith Maddock, a self-described “car guy to the core,” started driving for Lyft and shortly after for Uber in 2013.
“It’s going to be a safe bet,” he said of the IPOs. Even if a driver needs the money immediately, they could hold on to half of it for a few weeks or months, sell it at a profit, and keep the other half as a long-term investment, Maddock said.
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