24 BCBusiness august 2015 illustrations by victoria park
effrey Casebolt is not your usual taxi driver.
The 23-year-old, making his way this Friday
afternoon through slow-moving downtown
traŠc as he pilots a customer from a bookstore
to a hotel, is an accountant getting his master's
in business administration. He plans to work
for Microsoft someday. And he's driving a car
that he's leased specially for the job: a Toyota
Prius with spotless, buttery-feeling taupe seats.
Casebolt is one of the world's new breed of taxi
drivers—he drives for Uber. Driving a cab is not
a job he likely would have considered before
Uber, the dominant app-based ride-hailing ser-
vice that now operates in more than 100 cities
around the world. His parents were a bit skepti-
cal at -rst about him taking on what has often
been seen as work dominated by immigrants
who can't break into the job market any other
way. But it's di"erent driving for Uber. "It's
more middle class. It's a little cooler. I have no
boss. That's kind of a cool feeling," says Case-
bolt, who usually works two full days a week to
pay his bills and save for a car. (No nights—he's
not a night person, he says; an experience with
a drunk who almost vomited in his car con-
-rmed that preference.) Five other people in
his
MBA class are also driving for Uber, making
as much as their colleagues working as bartend-
ers—an easy $230 a day, after expenses.
None of this is happening in Vancouver, of
J
none of this is happening in vancouver, of course, where uber is
still begging to be let in. ohio-born casebolt, his classmates and
dozens of others are doing this just 200 kilometres down the road in
seattle, where the city council voted to allow uber, along with other
ride-hailing operations like lyft and sidecar
SURGE OF ACTIVITY
During busy hours, Uber's
fare increases via "surge
pricing," intended to compel
more drivers to come out
"J" Character
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