I was very blown away by how much I made during lunch hours on the Postmates platform when their Blitz Pricing was active. However, there was some anxiety over parking space and having to navigate crowded area in order to complete deliveries to professionals. So this evening, I decided go see what the experience would be like with Postmates when there’s less traffic and parking space isn’t an issue. I figure the streets wouldn’t be too busy since it’s a Thursday night. People will be staying in to watch primetime television.

I went on duty with Postmates around 8:00 pm. Blitz Pricing was active.

Lengthy first order

At 8:11 pm I got my first dispatch. Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. There’s are three in Portland at the moment. All in North Portland. I was hesitant to accept this one because it was for the location farthest East and I was in between the Buckman and Ladd’s Addition (blue mark on the map below). But the Blitz was 1.25x so I decided to go for it.

This was an order in which I had to place the order at the location rather. Sometimes the San Francisco customer service team calls it in and couriers just pay and go. The customer live in an apartment behind Portland State University (red mark on the map). This order ended up being a very lengthy drive for me, both to the pickup location and to the customer. This means a large payout (more on this later).

Time consuming second order (9:14 pm)

After this order, an order for Sizzle Pie (a bar) on 10th and Burnside became available. This was really close to the first customer. Blitz pricing was still active. I accepted. I was not picky because of my positive experience with Blitz pricing eariler today.

As I suspected, parking downtown was not a problem on a Thursday night. There was plenty of parking spaces. I was able to park my car outside the bar. Again, this was an order where I had to place the order. The customer wanted to gormet pizza. The cashier told me “This will take about 20 minutes.”

This is not good. The customer was not that far away from the pick-up location so the delivery fee is going to be tiny. A 20 minute wait is going to kill my chances at a high dollar per hour rate for this evening. Even with Blitz Pricing. I had to get a tip for this order to make it worthwhile. So I communicated with the customer about the 20 minute way, hoping the they would appreciate the heads up. I ended up waiting 21 minutes. Once I got the pizza box in my hand, I texted the customer “Long wait, but I’m on my way”. Then I sped to the customer.

Curtain call third order (9:50 pm)

After the delivery, another job became available. The location was Santa Fe Taqueria on 23rd Ave. This order didn’t so much to lift my spirit about how this evening has been going. I don’t like driving around 23rd Ave in NW Portland. Regardless what time of day it is. A lot of popular places are located in this area. So naturally, it’s a very busy area with slow moving cars and people crossing steets creating traffic. Additionally, Blitz Pricing was not active. I decided to make this my last order of the night.

The place was packed with young people. I waited in line for about 5 minutes. Luckily for me, the order was placed by customer service so all I had to do was tell the cashier I’m with Postmates and pay for the two burritos.

It was around 10:34 pm when I got to the customer’s location. She lived in one of the newer apartments on the South Waterfront area. The moment I saw this gal, I realize something. I was starting to have a mental picture of who the Postmates customers are. It’s not the mother who is too tired to cook dinner after a long day of work so she decided to use Postmates. No, it’s a demographic I’m too familiar with, as I’m one of them. College students. Young professionals. Tech savvy and educated. Loves to leave ratings for services. In one word, Millennials.

Payout

I want to wrap up this post with some thoughts on my earning for this evening.

As you can see from the log above, I earned over $20 for that first order. Remember that Postmates deliveries are to be completed within an hour. So I made over $20 bucks an hour here. The long distance, plus the Blitz Pricing, and a tip all made this order worthwhile.

I did not get a tip for the second order. The long wait must have did it. That’s not something I could have controlled though.

The gal from the last order was really nice. She gave me a tip.

This evening didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. The momentum from eariler today didn’t carry over after dawn. I was dissappointed with how drawn out each order was even though parking and traffic wasn’t an issue. Long drives, getting lost, long waiting time at the pick-up, and low Blitz Pricing factor (for me 1.25 to 1.5x is low) made this a rather medicore outting. Also, there wasn’t as much demand where I could stack jobs. At this point, I’m really concern about my courier rating given the small hiccups this evening.