this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Fuck Cars

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 130 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (10 children)

A lot of these are delivered by bike nowadays, no?

Edit: since people keep asking without reading below, I mean specifically in NYC.

[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (11 children)

there's no way to make delivery worth it for small items like this, be it by foot / bike / electric scooter / carrier pigeon

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 71 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well apparently there is considering it’s a popular service. I’m not sure what you mean by this.

[–] the_q@lemmy.zip 38 points 1 week ago (7 children)

It's popular because the companies that run it are profiting enough to keep doing it. The actually drivers, however, don't realize how much they're being screwed over.

[–] SippyCup@feddit.nl 39 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I doubt we'll ever get data to support this but I suspect most drivers aren't drivers for very long. A few, who are otherwise entirely unemployable, may stick it out. It sounds like a much better deal than it is, I think most people realize that after a relatively short time.

My experience with doing deliveries was the only people who had been doing it for a while were a: broke as fuck and 2, exactly the opposite of the type of person you might want handling your food.

[–] erin@piefed.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I did delivery for long term at one point (doordash). Once you reach their highest rating and learn which orders to take/deny, it is actually quite profitable. Still massively exploitative, of course, but at the time I was making $18 an hour (high for my area), and that's also factoring in breaks and commute. I had a very fuel efficient hybrid which added to the value proposition. I was broke as fuck at the time, but it wasn't the job's fault, more the fact that I only worked exactly the amount of hours I needed each month to pay for my basic necessities and rent, and spent the rest with my friends and fiancee.

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[–] erin@piefed.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I drove down doordash for a while. Trust me, every driver knows how much they're getting screwed. You'll never be more class-conscious than having 30+ interactions with people as broke as you every day, and seeing every possible angle of fellow working class jobs. You do it for one of several reasons: you want some tiny modicum of control in your life through your schedule, you desperately need the money and it's easy as fuck to get a delivery job, or you started it for one of those reasons or something similar, got good enough to be ahead of the curve, and it's now more appealing than finding something else. The last one was where I was at.

I had done the job enough that I was making $18 an hour, well above the average in my area, and despite needing to pay for gas and taxes on a 1099a, it was still more appealing to keep control and flexibility over my life than to do something else. I could take days off whenever I wanted, see friends during the week, and coordinate my schedule with my fiancee easily. You're very aware that you're getting screwed, but you choose the devil you know, as they say.

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[–] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Varies. In Oslo Foodora started as bike deliveries; the cyclists unionised and got better pay and working conditions, and nooow it seems to be a lot of Romanians in beaters that don't look like they'd pass their next EU inspections, don't pay tolls or for parking, and apparently there seems to be something like trafficking going on.

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[–] TheCleric@lemmy.org 90 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just fyi, like 99% of food delivery via gig workers in nyc is done via e-bike

[–] Wolf@lemmy.today 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (16 children)

Even if done in a car in areas where a e-bike isn't really feasible, they usually take several orders at at time. I think 1 car picking up and delivering 3 orders is probably slightly more efficient than each person driving to the restaurant.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 54 points 1 week ago (2 children)

More people need to learn about and think about externalized costs.

"This plastic cup is free! ... if I ignore the fact that it's going into a landfill or worse"

"This delivery is free! ... if I ignore the fact that the delivery guy is getting fucked by capital"

[–] grue@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

More governments need to tax externalized costs.

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago (7 children)

other countries deliver most things using motorbikes, it always sounded ridiculous to me to use a car to deliver food

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 25 points 1 week ago

OOP has no idea what they're talking about, in NYC too all food deliveries come by bike, and in the large majority of cases it's an ebike

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[–] blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 39 points 1 week ago (19 children)

I've lived several places. In some, I could walk to get food, and I gladly did so. In others, I could not.

Should I have starved?

If your argument is "you should have driven," then you are depending on cars. Whether it's the buyer or an employee doing the driving has little effect on how much a car is being used. The environment doesn't care who's burning the gas.

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[–] DigDoug@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago (5 children)

...if you think delivery is too expensive, maybe don't get your food delivered, then? Just a thought.

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[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility

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[–] Don_alForno@feddit.org 32 points 1 week ago (23 children)

What's more ridiculous? 10 people each driving to the fast food joint individually or one delivery driver making a round trip to 10 people?

We pay other people to do the things we can't or don't want to do all the time, this isn't different.

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[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

It was always obvious that the shared delivery model would result in massive delivery fees. Store employees doing deliveries were always at least partially subsidized by sales. Going third party means another company needs to suck more profit out of each delivery.

[–] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Why does OP think every delivery is made by car? Often times they are made by bike.

[–] mister_flibble@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Especially in NYC. Bike delivery has been a thing there long before uberdashhub. Hell, it was a fucking plot point in Spiderman 2 back in 2004:

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[–] koper@feddit.nl 31 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Do delivery drivers in NYC really use cars? 🤨

[–] Ledivin@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago

No, or at least not the majority of the time. Big city deliveries are mostly bike, NYC or not

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[–] BigPotato@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (11 children)

I don't disagree that it's stupid but my problem is the stacking - Delivery fee and Service fee? The service is delivery! Why are they two fees? Either the cost of the delivery is being itemized in real time ($1.99 for gas, the rest for the human) or the delivery isn't $1.99! If the cost to deliver an item is $20 and I make $50/hr working a project, maybe having food delivered makes sense.

But also, I know the delivery guy isn't making all that and he's delivering five orders so don't charge me a service fee when I'm already subsidizing you paying him a shit wage.

Everything is shitty either way.

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[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Isn’t most delivery in NYC done by bicycle?

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

I don't get it either. That shit is so much more expensive. Not only are they charging you delivery fees and "convenience" fees, the base prices of what you're ordering at are also inflated through apps like Doordash and Uber Eats. Something that is only $5 if you went and got it yourself is now $8, plus a delivery fee, plus other fees. And then there is also a chance that the person delivering it is a piece of shit who just steals your food.

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[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

It's kind of wild how the standard fare of pizza and chinese food delivery was absorbed by gig work. They used to be employees of the restaurant.

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Technology should have made restaurant deliverer's lives easier and increased their efficiency. They should have made more money and worked less.

Instead we got gig workers who are basically impoverished wage slaves. They get no rights and no benefits. What is worse is whatever temporary profits they made have been sucked up by corporations by now.

This is a great case study for how to not use technology and how Tech Bros are not disrupters, they are destructors who profiteer, choke out, and then destroy markets.

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[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Obviously we can't pretend that VC funded services like Uber are sustainable nor are the environmental and economic costs. But this aren't new concepts. Pizza delivery has been a thing my entire life (I'm in my 40s) and services for the elderly, disabled, and needy like Meals on Wheels have also existed for a long time.

We should be having a lot of discussions about support for services like meals on wheels, or on sustainable means of making small courier businesses viable (via bikes or scooters maybe). Instead we constantly get sidelined into this "only the Treatler Youth use Uber Eats to feed your hamburger addictions, why can't you just cook healthfully for yourself for every meal?!" version of discourse that doesn't help anyone and doesn't advance the needle on any actual solutions.

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[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Of all the modern capitalistic irritations (to put it mildly), this one I really detest. And not least because of how ridiculously popular it is, wtf people? I watch folks I know, who can barely afford the food itself in the first place, then inflate the price by like 40%, just to eat the already (very!) mediocre food...cold. Solely so that they don't have to leave the house. Just completely unhinged from my POV, and honestly produces almost a sense of alienation in me, I find it so bizarre.

Disclaimer though - I will acknowledge both that I happily enjoy various different foolish things myself, so the point about glass houses is worth my keeping in mind, and also there are some great reasons to use it (limited mobility for one, as another user pointed out).

But sheesh folks. Restaurants largely hate it from my understanding, the drivers doing it hate it (cuz the job - oh excuse me, the preferred exploitation-hiding euphemism is "gig" - is utter shit, a literal minor improvement over straight up homelessness), the environment hates it, the wear-and-tear on a likely broke person's vehicle and the wear-and-tear on already struggling infrastructure...I mean what the fuckity fuck, seriously. How is this so popular, we're all insane and just conveniencing our way to oblivion. SMgoddamnH.

Aside from the aforementioned reasonable uses (largely edge cases, let's be honest), there is precisely one group of people who truly benefit in any serious way from this amazingly destructive nonsense - and wouldn't you know it, it's the exact same group fucking us in every other way! Weird!

Sorry. This one really gets me.

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[–] bigschnitz@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I assume that most deliveries in NYC are by push bike couriers and vesper type scooters. Thats more typical than yank tanks for this sort of thing in most densely populated cities I've seen.

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[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Afaict it's 22$, you tipped 8$. That's a pretty wide margin.

Regardless, still too much, I just pick stuff up with my bicycle when I can.

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[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

"I have to order Doordash because I live in a food desert"

"Can you taxi to the grocery store and back for about the same as the delivery fee?"

"No"

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

I use doordash because I'm tired AF and it's 9pm (stores are closed) and there is nothing in the fridge.

Paying an extra 10 bucks to get food delivered while I can relax for 30m an drink a beer is priceless.

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[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Americans are too lazy to travel to their lunch. However, for the vast majority of the people, you’re not 15 minutes of walk away from a healthy assortment of food. Even in NYC, depending on where you are, it may not be possible to always go to your food. The idea of your lunch being paid is also not common, and you’re expected to be back to working (not done eating) within 30 minutes or less. In many cases, your lunchtime is timed and unpaid. Nurses and hospital staff? Eat the shit downstairs in the cafeteria or nothing; if you’re late coming back from lunch, it’s almost as bad as being late to work itself.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 18 points 1 week ago (9 children)

It's not ridiculous. Time is the most precious resource.

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[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This cuts both ways actually. you can have 10 guys going through a drive thru or one 1 making 10 stops. The one guy making ten stops results in less traffic and fewer emissions.

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[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I only demand the raw ingredients to be grown halfway around the world, shipped by climate-controlled container in giant cargo boats, trucked from the port to the backstore, kept in refrigerated display cases, and sold in disposable containers.

But it's the last mile that's going to change the world, you see.

[–] 18107@aussie.zone 35 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It actually is the last mile that matters. When shipped half way around the world it's in bulk. The amount of fuel per unit of food is surprisingly low.

For the last mile you're not getting 100 meals delivered even though they would fit in the car. The fuel to food ratio is insane for 1 meal.

Of course buying local is better when you have the option, but it doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as last mile delivery.

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