Crashes can be disruptive to your livelihood if you work as a delivery or rideshare driver. In fact, one delivery-van collision (find out here now) can leave an entire week of unpaid deliveries hanging.
If you’re a delivery or rideshare driver, you need to save evidence of lost income following an accident, even if you don’t know the full extent of your loss yet. That means keeping your income records, scheduling, and other financial information intact in case you were unable to work that week because of your accident.
Monday: Document Your Income Records
Document all your records of income earned via the different gig apps, as explained at https://oecd.org/en. Take screenshots of your weekly totals, completed rides, tips received, incentives earned, and hours worked. Be sure to capture the entire date and time stamp at the top of your phone screen instead of just zooming in on one number.
If you’re a rideshare driver who usually works the morning commute, you’ll want to grab screenshots of the past four Mondays’ worth of data, including the airport runs, surge pricing, and your usual 6:30 AM start. Get your monthly statements as well. Finally, make sure to store those files somewhere other than your phone. A shattered screen in a repair shop shouldn’t mean your only documentation of lost income is gone, too.
Some examples of documents you may want to collect include:
- Weekly and monthly app statements
- Bank statements showing deposits from your work
- Tax documents
- Mileage records
- Screenshot of incentives
- Calendars showing your typical work hours
Tuesday: Document the Work You Couldn’t Do
It can be hard to explain lost income from the apps since there isn’t an established schedule like there would be for most other jobs. So create one. Document the hours you could have worked, where you would have driven, and why you couldn’t complete those shifts.
If you work as a food delivery driver, maybe you were scheduled to work 11:00 AM – lunchtime. But since your car was being repaired, you weren’t able to accept orders during that time. Screenshots of blocked out days, missed orders, and other opportunities that you lost because of your Amazon Delivery Accident will help establish a connection between your crash and your inability to earn. Try to be as specific as possible – write down -Friday, 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM, dinner orders- instead of -couldn’t work Friday.-
Wednesday: Read the Rental Agreement
Even though a rental car might seem like a solution to your lost income situation, the fine print in the back of the glove box can cause a lot of headaches later. Many rental contracts don’t allow for commercial use of the vehicle, while some gig platforms require that vehicles be registered, inspected, or approved before they can be used for the purpose.
Before you agree to take the rental, find out if you’re allowed to use the car for your gig work, and get that answer in writing. Snap a photo of the rental agreement itself, including those hard-to-read sections that are stapled together. Even if you can’t use the rental car for work due to a contractual restriction, it’s good to keep that with your documentation of lost income.
Thursday: Keep Notes on Vehicle Repairs
Many times, repair shops are unable to get the car fixed as quickly as you’d like. Even if you can tell the car’s going to look fine after it comes off the rack, the repair shop might still be waiting on parts. This might be a headlight unit, a wheel sensor, or a door panel. If the repair date changes, get written confirmation of that change.
Keep track of your phone calls, emails, visits, and delays in getting parts. Even a part-time driver who only works on weekends might have their work cut out for them on Friday and Saturday evenings, but if that goes on for three weekends, you could lose a lot of money. Be sure to save your towing bill, pictures of the car on the lift, and any documentation about delays in the repair process, particularly if there are issues preventing you from driving safely, such as an exposed wire or a loose body panel.
Friday: Differentiate Between Property Damage and Lost Income
Vehicle damage is usually documented differently from lost income. Your repair estimates, photos, and parts bills show what damage occurred. Your app records, bank statements, canceled blocks of time, and previous weeks’ totals are evidence of lost income.
Don’t try to account for things like gas savings or maintenance costs into your lost-income calculations without clarifying what you did and didn’t include. Create a spreadsheet that includes your projected income, your actual income, your maintenance costs, your rental fees, and exactly which days the vehicle was unavailable. Save your paper receipts in an envelope instead of leaving them in the car.
Before the Weekend
On Sunday evening, assemble your screenshots, repair updates, rental agreements, and notes about your lost shifts into a folder. They may look like a mess on the passenger seat, but between the phone charger, mileage notebook, and crumpled receipt, there is documentation of a disruption in the course of a typical week of gig work due to your accident.
Comments are closed.