Does it pay to be an UBER driver?

I keep getting emails to become an UBER diver saying that I can make $600 on the weekend or $1000 a week. And those numbers sound pretty good on the surface, but lets look a little closer. So lets go with the claimed $1000 per week and assume a 40 hour work week. This is probably unlikely but I need to go with something and that is the norm. So, that adds up to $52,000 a year. Wow, that sounds pretty good right... or does it? Remember that you are not an employee, so you will be paying self employment taxes. Having been self employed I know that its about 1/3 of the total earnings, so lets take that right off the top... that leaves you with $34,666.67. Now out of that you have all your expenses Car, insurance, maintenance, and gas. Lets say that you expect 3 years out of your car and lets say that you bought a modest used car for about $12,000. Yearly that's going to break down to $4000 a year, and then you'll need to buy a new car. Realistically I don't think that you can expect it to last much longer than that. After we take out $4000 per year in car payments that leaves us with $30,666.67 per year. Maintenance will be more frequent since you're using your car more. Previously you were probably changing your old every 3 months, but I think its a safe bet that you will be doing that every month now. So the average oil change is about $40. Plus you were probably buying tires every 3 year, but that will probably be every year now so add that in at $400 and you have a cost of $880. There may be other maintenance too like cleaning, alignments, etc. but we wont go there. Now we are looking at $29,786.67 per year. Insurance will be going up, you are using your car for business now and those premiums will increase by about $8 per month according to USAA. So add $96 to your costs. That brings your income to $29,690.67 per year. And finally fuel, this will vary widely depending on your car, but lets say that you get an average of 25/mpg in your car. So, you will need 60 rides per week to make your 52k a year and lets say that your average ride is 5 miles. That's 300 miles a week. So that's 12 gallons of gas a week or 624 gallons per year. Nationwide the average gas price was about $3.50 per gallon. So fuel will cost you $2,184.00 a year. That leaves us with $27,506.67. So, your yearly salary is $27,506. That works out to be about $13.22 an hour that you will get to keep. Its not that bad, but you're not going to getrich either. Remember that you did not pay for health insurance, dental or vision yet. There are other incidentals too like if your car breaks down or you want to take some time off. I want to end with saying that I doubt that you are working 40 hours a week, so if you are working more like 60 it will cut into your hourly rate significantly and leave you making only $8.81 per hour.