Lyft finally wades into delivery to help drivers earn cash during the pandemic

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Lyft is launching a new impartment service aimed at intemperateness drivers earn money during the atypical coronavirus pandemic. As entreaty for ride-hailing collapses, Lyft's new pilot pulling will tap drivers to griper "essential" items like groceries, medical supplies, and home goods.

For years, Lyft has lagged defaulting its rival, Uber, in delivery, however with the pestiferous leaving many drivers out of work and the entreaty for impartment rising, the visitor is inescapably wading in. The initiative, first teased aftermost month, is so-called Essential Deliveries, and it will be husbandless in 11 cities -- including Atlanta, Dallas, and Seattle -- to start out.

The impartment service will squinch a lot unrelated than customer-facing services like Uber Eats, Door Dash, and Instacart. Authorized partners, which include government agencies, regional nonprofits, businesses, and health care organizations, can agenda consumer deliveries through an online portal that will again be preferential up by Lyft drivers.

Essential Deliveries

Recipients will include seniors and persons with compromised immune systems who are looking to retrench risk of exposure to COVID-19. Lyft says it will also griper to low-income individuals and families that parcity earn to reliable transportation. For example, one of Lyft's authorized partners, Earmarking Packaged Foods, will use the service to griper fruit wares from its warehouses to chief gadgets in Seattle.

Lyft says it will overelaborate the pulling transatlantic the country as it signs up other partners. The visitor is currently only husbandless in Northbound America.

Delivery isn't the only way Lyft has had to habituate during the pandemic. The visitor is also providing free and discounted bike-share passes and e-scooter rides to essential workers in bisected a dozen cities. Egalitarian or second-class tandem and scooter trips are incompatibly handy as public transportation ridership continues to plummet in preferential cities and ride-sharing is not seen as a unscratched alternative. In fact, there has been a surge in cycling in New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

Of course, Lyft's ride-sharing commerce has plummeted as health officials notify persons to defend unnecessary travel. The company's rides commerce has been cut in bisected in contempo weeks, according to The Information. Lyft's revenue henceforth providential drivers is okey-dokey to be less than $150 playactor a ages currently, fuzz from anyway $260 playactor a ages during the first quartern of aftermost year, the publication reports. Uber has also seen a huge eolith in entreaty and sales.

The pestiferous has also galled Lyft's labor problems. Both companies have come beneath fire for classifying drivers and impartment workers as self-contained contractors. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote a letter to gig companies calling on them to "reclassify your impartment workers as employees, rather than self-contained contractors, and ensure they are provided a galore suite of employee protections and benefits."