The only formula that matters
Net hourly = (gross earnings − (total km × cost per km)) ÷ online hours.
Cost per km is your own number, not an average from a forum. Add up a full year of fuel, insurance, maintenance, tires, cleaning and depreciation, then divide by the kilometres you drove that year.
Costs Montreal drivers routinely under-count
- Winter tires and their seasonal swap
- Commercial or ride-hailing insurance rider on top of a personal policy
- Depreciation — the largest single cost on a newer vehicle
- Deadhead kilometres driven empty between trips and back home
- Parking, tolls on the A25/A30, and downtown cleaning after a busy weekend
Where the hourly rate is actually won
Two drivers on the same platform, same car, same city can differ by a wide margin in net hourly. The difference is almost always utilisation: the share of online time spent with a passenger in the car.
Cutting empty cruising means being where demand appears before it appears — around arena and venue exits, festival closing times, airport arrival banks, and weather-driven surges.
A simple weekly review
- Log gross, hours, km per shift — a note on your phone is enough
- Mark the two most profitable and two worst shifts each week
- Look for the pattern: it is usually a time slot and a zone, not a platform
- Repeat the good slot, drop the bad one, and re-measure the next week
Written by drivers, for drivers
This guide was created by the Pro À Quart team, including Claudel Métellus, an experienced Uber and Lyft driver and founder of SoluCité. Every recommendation comes from real shifts on Montreal streets — not a generic playbook.
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