Re:End of the Line for Uber
by sokoloff on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @09:26AM
(#28209574)
If a medallion owner can earn $75K per medallion per year, it seems there's a lot of possible value in trying to take $5-10K/year times the number of full-time medallion equivalents while avoiding the cost of buying the medallion and car [and maintaining the car] in the first place.
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Re:End of the Line for Uber
by JohnJamesRambo on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @09:28AM
(#28209603)
They are talking about the owner of the whole cab company making 75k.
No, I don’t think so. That’s earnings for a single medallion.
Cab companies might own hundreds if not thousands of medallions.
For example, a single private equity firm owns about 4,000 New York medallions [0].
Most medallions are owned in pools by private firms.
[0] https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2021/04/01/private...
Medallions sound like a truly bizarre and unfair system.
And if Uber operated exclusively in New York, we could accept they had a profitable-sounding business model: bypassing that system.
But given that Uber has expanded into many other cities and countries, 99% of which don't have medallions, it's pretty clear that merely bypassing the medallion system isn't their business model.