A gig shift's pay looks simple until you count the hours nobody pays you for — waiting for the next job, sitting between deliveries, and driving back empty after a drop-off.
Most drivers count only the paid time, or the time spent on the job itself. That makes the hourly rate look higher than it really is. The honest hourly rate is different: take the shift's net profit — pay minus fuel, tolls, parking, food, and other work costs — and divide it by all the hours the shift actually took, including waiting time and the unpaid return trip.
Here is an illustrative example, not a real person's earnings: a shift pays $70 and costs $16 in fuel and tolls, so the net is $54. The paid time was 3 hours, but waiting and the empty return added 1.5 hours, so the shift really took 4.5 hours. $54 divided by 3 hours looks like $18 an hour. $54 divided by 4.5 hours is $12 an hour. Same shift, honest number.
A practical habit helps: for a week, note the start time, the end time, and the waiting gaps for each shift, even roughly. Then compare shifts by net profit per real hour, not by headline pay. The shift that looked best on pay alone may not be the one that paid best for the time it actually took.
ShiftLog is the free, offline, no-account-needed Android tool that does this math per shift: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shiftlog.app
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