App to help drivers earn more during trips

If you're a cabbie and are keen to earn more during trips, there is now an app called 'SherpaShare' that helps ride-hailing drivers calculate their real incomes. With the help of SherpaShare, drivers can calculate out their daily incomes, number of fares, working hours, expenses and mileage to have a concrete information on their net pay apart from getting insights into the driving patterns that are most profitable for them.

"We realised the biggest challenge was that drivers did not understand how much they needed to pay for fuel, car maintenance, depreciation and tax," said Ryder Pearce, a co-founder of SherpaShare. SherpaShare has found that its users typically spend around half their on-call time waiting for the next fare or driving to a fare. This results in uncompensated minutes that substantially lower their net hourly pay.

"One of the things that, I think that workers, young and old, value is having some certainty and control over both hours and earnings," Thomas Kochan, a professor of work and employment research and engineering systems at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

The app collates the income reports drivers receive from ride-sharing apps -- along with expenses like gas -- and displays the data in pie charts and graphs, enabling people to compare their gross and net weekly pay. Drivers who use SherpaShare say they find it easier to predict their incomes and to compare the companies' public statements on driver pay with their own earnings, The New York Times reported.