As I mentioned in previous posts, delivering for Uber Eats on a bicycle isn’t something I’d recommend if the primary purpose is earning additional income. The revenue generated per hour isn’t high enough to make this worthwhile. However, if you’re doing it for exercise first and foremost, then, and only then, is the income acceptable – because anything over 0$ is obviously a welcome addition.

That is – until we factor in promotions. The Uber Driver app has a section where time-limited promotions appear. As you can imagine, they utilize this to provide incentives for their drivers to return. The first time I did Shop & Deliver trips – where you grocery shop for someone and then deliver it to them, Uber Eats offered a $60 bonus (if I remember correctly) for doing three in about a week. I was naturally curious how these jobs would differ from the classic food delivery I had done before, within their app. I figured hey, I could see what it’s like, exercise, and get paid an easy $60 – why not? And so I did it.

But that was the exception, not the rule. Weeks would pass where I didn’t do much, and there was one week where I noticed that Uber was testing a new promotion – a multi-tiered “quest” where, in a week, if I did 5 deliveries, I’d earn a $10 bonus. Then, for the next 5, I’d earn $11 bonus. Then, for the last tier, if I did 10, I’d get $21 bonus… all in the same week. These amounts were low and the idea of doing 20 over the period of a week seemed a little silly. I did, however, notice that at the end of this week, the same promotion appeared with a one day overlap – delivering on that day would count towards both – the promotions stacked – I thought that was interesting.

More weeks passed and I continued to live my life without doing many deliveries. Then, out of nowhere, I spotted a new promotion within the app:

$50 for the first 5 deliveries, $60 for the next 5, then $70 for the next 5, not 10. $180 total available up for grabs on top of whatever I would earn from each delivery. These cash bonuses were actually enough to get my attention – if Uber was this interested to pay for me to exercise, perhaps I could make it work. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call the $50/$60/$70 promotion the “greater quest.”

There happened to be another “lesser quest” active at the same time – the same type of multi-tier promotion, but this one awarded $10/$11/$21, by itself, not worth doing. But I knew that if I progressed on one, they stacked – I would be progressing on the other as well. I wondered if I could time my approach in such a way where the greater quest would be fulfilled, locking in those non-trivial bonuses, and where I could also get at least some of the lesser quest done as a side-effect.

When I looked at the greater quest, I noticed two very important words:

After Unlocked

Unlike the lesser quest, with the greater, I would have X days to complete each subsequent tier after I unlocked it. Which meant – the timing of when I completed tier 1 would dictate when my deadline would be to complete the next tier. This meant I could be strategic – I could choose when I completed each tier to maximize my chances of success.

When the weekend arrived, I took stock of my two deadlines:

• I had until Tuesday at 3pm to finish the first tier of the greater quest.
• I had until Thursday at 11:59pm to finish as much of the lesser quest as I wanted – there was no timing per tier.

So on Saturday, I went on a bit of a delivery spree. However, I made a mistake by accepting a trip that involved a sketchy company name like “835 INC” and three packages. I navigated to my objective and found no clean signage, only to realize that this was the curbside pick-up door at a major retailer. When the employee came out, he explained that one package had been picked up already – so I notified Uber, and left to deliver the two remaining packages. Well, unfortunately, both of those customers were completely unresponsive. In one case, this forced me to safe drop the package in the lobby of the apartment complex where the client lived (the door number was not provided). Since I had been falsely reported before in almost exactly the same circumstance, I took extra video to prove I had delivered to the correct apartment complex and that the package was in an identifiable location. These two orders ultimately were classified as food deliveries, even though they contained no food – it didn’t count towards my quest. And, as I had feared, the safe drop customer reported me for non-delivery – but thankfully, soon after, they apparently found their package and reversed their report.

By the end of Saturday, I had done 4 eligible deliveries. I would have needed to do one more on Sunday to finish tier 1 of the greater quest. However, given that I would have “5 days to complete after unlocked”, that meant a Sunday unlock would have given me to Friday to finish the tier. Given I had a full time job, this wouldn’t fly – I didn’t want to bet that I’d have enough time to finish the second tier during the week. And so there was only one logical conclusion:

My 5th delivery had to occur Monday after work

That would push the tier 2 deadline until Saturday, which, if everything went wrong during my work week and I had zero progress towards the quest, I could still technically do 5 deliveries on the Saturday and wrap it up then. And so, on Monday after work, I made one super boring and simple delivery, rewarding me the tier 1 bonus:

Tier 1 of the lesser quest completed as well:

So that was a $60 bonus payout so far. I then spent the week doing what I normally did, helping people solve IT problems during the day, and of course, not totally weird at all, going for one grocery run per day for some random stranger after work on my bicycle.

My goal for the week was to complete my 5 deliveries before Saturday, as tier 3 would give me two additional days once unlocked, which needed to span the weekend, and not further, as I was very much employed and had plenty to do on Monday. And so it was clear:

The 5th tier 2 delivery had to occur Friday after work

And so that’s what I did. And here was the result:

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday… they appear normal earning-wise. Monday and Friday? Monstrous. But all I did was complete one super casual delivery and get a large bonus because of the promotion. Also, I should mention that the $10 from the lesser quest was factored in on Monday, but since it expired Thursday, it had no effect on Friday’s earnings.

The final tier

Next up was tier 3, the final tier of the greater quest, where I intended to get 2-3 of the required deliveries done on the Saturday, and wrap up the rest on Sunday. Saturday started off normally – I did one delivery, then went home for lunch, and then later, popped back out to do one more. That second delivery was something to behold – when I got to the store, it had the largest amount of items I had ever seen in an order so far, including multiple bottles of detergent, a carpet, and rocks – yes, literally rocks – decorative ones, three packs of them. By the time I had paid and checked out, my delivery backpack was bulging in a way I had never seen before. Check it out:

That bag generally looks horizontal on my back – instead, you can see it dramatically drooping towards the ground. That was probably the heaviest load I had to handle – but thankfully, the customer lived a short ride away, which simplified my task.

With two deliveries complete, I figured hey, maybe I’ll do one more and call it a day. So I accept one – it’s to a grocery store, okay, no problem. Then, as I’m on my way there… I get another offer – and instead of a specific store, it says, verbatim, “same store” – so I’m like sure, I’m already going there, why not? I accept. And then, a few moments later, I kid you not, another offer, which said…

Same Store

Sure, why not? I accept, it’s efficient! Besides, that would count for 3 deliveries – if I actually completed them all, that would make 5 deliveries in tier 3, ending the promotion right then and there on Saturday.

When I got to the store, I realized that I had quite the task ahead of me – since there were 3 different orders, the app lists the items in one master list so that I can go from section to section and grab things in a logical order, regardless of who ordered it. However, it assigned a letter and color to each item, making it clear how things should be grouped. To make this feasible and to not get confused later on, I decided to split my cart and designate certain parts of the cart to certain clients.

It took a while, but I eventually acquired all the items and proceeded to the checkout process – where there too, I needed to carefully scan and check out items from three different orders, bag them, and for each, take a photo of the receipt and transmit it to Uber. Then I loaded them all in my bag and embarked on my final three deliveries… and after all that, I did it… I completed the final tier:

By paying attention to the wording, I planned things out so that I could take advantage of the promotion in addition to the exercise, which I generally considered payment enough. By Monday, I would be right back to helping users with their password reset issues without them realizing I had been zipping around delivering groceries on my free time, just to take advantage of stacked promotions.