I’m deadset on getting this Speedboard, hopefully before Esk8con 2026. I keep my charger and electronic air pump inside my backpack travel bag along with my steamdeck. I’m riding an Acedeck Nyx z1 and other than having to replace the same tire tube 3 times and a rim from random wear and tear and a little bit of neglect, I seem to be making decent money. Any advice on what not to do since Im interacting with the general public and traffic more
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Good knee pads and gear, ive only skated Vegas for eskate con and the whole place is full of tourists and ride shares who don’t know the place and make dumb mistakes. Gear up.
Also coat your inner tubes with spray flex seal - nice and thick. Then baby powder the crap out of them when you put them in - i hate all that slime crap and it never works for me.
If you’re gearing up like a motorcycle rider you will fall or crash and just pop up and be on your way. If you don’t when you do fall, and everyone falls, you’ll have to take time to recover
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@Evwan did this for a while, any tips?
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Don’t give out test rides to overly confident drunk tourists
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Could just be internet bs but my brother was doing pretty ok just dashing and Uber Eats for a while until t the floor fell out on him. Money dried up and only once in a while after taking a break did it come back. Any time he would be in a pinch and try to get ahead tips disappeared and his dollars per hour dropped off a cliff. Saw this and thought it kinda fit but i have no actual evidence beyond vibes
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The only tip I could give would be the milk crate trick, which can’t be done since his board is top box.
@boardeats on tiktok I made some content a few years back.
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I would have an ebike as backup. Figure out which streets are causing the most wear. Doordash is is great for easy cash but sometimes they send you a bit far. Not sure about your market though
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When it was busy and gave a steady wage I didn’t mind using my car to do deliveries, nowadays I exclusively do it on my EUC and it saves so much on gas, not to mention maintenance. It seems like the chances of the algorithm blessing me with an order is the same no matter if I’m home or right next to the restaurant, so whenever it’s quiet I always go home after I finish a delivery and wait there, especially now in winter conditions. Also, if I get the same order from farther, it does pay more. Here in Europe it’s flat base pay + distance fee on top. Being on the move does seem to help the system giving you an order. But at the same time, you can’t just ride /drive around all the time you don’t have an order because of gas costs or running out of battery.
Counting the time I spend away from home only, I average around 25-30€ an hour like this which is decent. But counting the time at home also when I’m ready to deliver but don’t have orders, is maybe a 0.5x multiplier on the hourly rate.
I find the unusual periods like after 9-10pm when most people check out to be the best. the usual 5-8pm for dinner orders is also decent. Around 11-14 for lunch orders can work sometimes but I don’t seem to find any consistency in that, though during weekends it’s worth staying checked in for that. I always make sure to start the dinner period from around 4:30-5pm with a full battery and have a full battery also for the 9-10pm evening orders.
The 2.2kwh battery I have in the S22 lasts around 1.5-3 hours of work depending on the distance the orders take, and I usually ride between 40-55 km/h so 25-35mph. I only charge at home (only started the EUC deliveries in the winter), a car charger adapter would probably be a must if I were to charge outside mid shift. Plus a very quick charger is appreciated. I tend to get the best earnings for midrange orders around 3-5km (2-3 mi). Longer than that and the battery goes flat too quick, shorter and I’m at the mercy of restaurants not being 15 minutes late which happens way too often. A second vehicle to swap to while one is charging would be great for busier periods, I only have one viable EUC though.
I prefer an EUC over a skateboard for deliveries, it’s more comfortable keeping it at high speeds, generally more range too, better weather resistance, and not having to switch a remote on/off, is a big plus. And it’s just more convient to move around if you have to, and places mind it less if you bring it in. That said when the weather starts being decent I might run a turny 2in1 style esk8 as a secondary vehicle.
Yeah I was averaging like 30€ an hour from ‘24 october to ‘25 april, during the busiest hours up to 40€ an hour. Then around May I just stopped getting orders, and was averaging like 12€ in the “busy” hours, some days pretty much no orders at all. The reddit post you linked to talks about some desperation index, and while the post might be fake, I can very much see something like that being used to decide who a job is given to. Sitting 2 hours in my car in the mcdonalds parking lot while seeing like 5-6 different couriers pickup orders there in the meantime sure feels like it. Then the almighty algorithm blesses me with an order and tells me I was supposed to pick it up 30 minutes ago while I didn’t have any orders in that time… Bruh. And it happens way too often. Talk about efficiency and the constant notifications about how much they care about their couriers is just the icing on the cake.
Recently it’s not as bad as summer but far from as good as last winter, and it’s wildly different day to day, some days I only get like 2-3 orders under 12 hours while showing at least medium demand throughout most of it, some days it’s a steady 25-30€ an hour while it’s saying low demand all day… It’s incredibly inconsistent.
It’s one of the worst jobs to be reliant on in terms of income. That said, if I wasn’t doing it primarily for the money, but to get out and ride, it would be quite enjoyable in decent weather.
Bulletpoint tips:
- Don’t take shitty orders in a busy period, if you take them expect to receive more of them
- Learn the places that are late all the time and factor the potential delay into your calculation when you decide to take it or not, often better to just decline during busy times. Getting there and then canceling because they tell you to wait another 20 minutes is worse. If the systems says like -20 minutes for them to finish the order instead of a positive time or “ready” then always decline. You’d get there and they’d will tell you they need to remake it.
- Being on the move / having moved in the last few minutes seems to help the algorithm give me tasks when it slows down
- Whatever vehicle you have selected will influence your earnings and what tasks it gives you, but not sure if you have options in the app for that since the US is so car centric. For pev deliveries the slower vehicle options (like scooter / bicycle) give more suitable orders. But taking the bike option will likely only give you closeby orders so you’d need to be close to the restaurant to begin with, can be good for a short range board working exclusively in the city centers. Scooter and car are much more forgiving in my experience regarding how far you can be to get the order. Scooter receives midrange orders also, not just short ones. Doesn’t really get long orders. Seems to work best for me.
- Around a 3-5km / 2-3mi distance per task seems to be the sweetspot on pev.
- In not so good periods I return home every time I’ve finished a task and wait there, much more pleasant than a mcdonalds parking lot especially on pev.
- 11-14 / 16:30-20 / 21:30-midnight are the busiest times, make sure you are charged up before these periods begin. Having a second vehicle to swap to while the main one charges is good.
- Conspiracy theory like comment but many (including me) feel like there’s truth behind it: if the system tags you as one of the full timers likely to stick around even for shit pay, it will prefer to give the most orders, especially the good ones, to the more casual people who don’t really rely on the money and hence have a lower threshold for leaving / taking a few weeks break. Don’t take every shitty order and don’t stay checked in from the mcdonalds parking lot if the orders slow down. Make the system think you are one of the casuals.
- Get a bluetooth intercom for your helmet and a magnetic armband for your phone, best investments.
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Lot more thoughtful than me haha. Just a note for some American differences
I find it to be almost completely dead off peak hours, like not worth being out. 10:30-1 and 4:30-7 were all good times in NYC. You have brunch / lunch and dinner rush.
Also if you have ebike selected don’t go above the low 20s. Apart from the battery drain, the apps get mad as that’s above how fast they want ebikes going. In NYC you get warnings for going fast.
Do not let your board out of your sight.
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I love my leather motorcycle jacket and full face 2 in 1 helmet cause it gives me that much more confidence for these crummy streets. I’ve lost track of the amount of times a stray bump or crevice would take me out on my Stinger, Tabor, or Pivot XD
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Im looking at my week to week budget and profits and trying my best to be hopeful without huffing copium. Just hard to stay focused on profits when I gotta make 2 last loan payments
My hope is to make enough profits with DoorDash to funnel most of it into my credit cards, the only thing stopping shop pay from trusting me with something as nice as a Speedboard. Racing against time for wear and tear and the weather warming up so I can do more than 2 hour 17 mile sessions
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This is gonna sound wild and incredibly unrealistic but I wanted to camp on the Nyx Z1 until I could afford a shop payment for a Speedboard (pay off several credit cards while paying rent) and maybe save up the scratch for a Funwheel long range so that the Nyx z1 would be the spare vehicle for this shit. My Pivot doesnt work right now, sold the Tabor ages ago and my Stinger stopped working early 2025.
I just hit 2,400 miles on the Nyx, bought it at 100 miles, haven’t had any battery or esc problems with this board but the Ares x3 I bought second hand has bms issues, throws me off the board after 11 miles and just doesnt feel good. I’m at a loss as to what to do other than greed for better equipment
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You should start a thread and let the group think attack the repair issues. Bound to get some help. I kinda wish more premade stuff would make it up here as there’s so much need out there and reddit and other forum type spots seem to get a wave of low quality responses without follow up. If it’s a matter of not worth the repair effort it’s understandable but likely there are some affordable approaches to keep even low budget prebuilt rolling as relatively reliably as possible
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My advice is to live in the very center of your delivery area, and have 3 skates that are very small and light, that can be carried up stairs and indoors if needed. Have two charging at any time and one under you. Have a nice handheld bag that can hold up to 16” size pizzas. In addition to that, have a backpack that can carry drinks. Frequently stop at your place and change to a different lightweight skate that is fully charged. If Uber Eats won’t allow you to register as a bicycle anymore, just send them fake insurance documents.
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Same. I got a flat 3 out of the 4 esk8con main group rides in the past several years, slime didn’t work and just made a mess, glass pieces were too large and plenty of that in Vegas streets.
Are you going to be able to carry the delivery and operate your remote? Also are you carrying the board with you when you need to go inside a building? The Speedboard doesn’t look like something that can be easily balanced and dragged behind while carrying a backpack and large food order. Might want to think about some sort of strap to carry the 35-40lb board when it can’t be locked.
Never been on a Speedboard or 2Swiftboard but they don’t look easy to ride slow on the sidewalks with pedestrian traffic. Is this going to be an issue?
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Haven’t heard of using flex seal on tires before - do you just liberally spray the outside of the inner tube, or do you spray some inside it?
Hang it by a wire or the valve stem cap. Dont get any on the threads or on anything covered by the valve stem cap but up onto the brass is fine and preferred. Coat the shit out of it. Brandon told me about the trick and it’s from his dirt bike experience but translates to eskate and euc really well. Keeps all the little shit from being an issue and only giant stuff thats gonna kill any tire remains
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The speedboard has an aftermarket footstop you can install on the front part, according to 2 sk8er’s I’ve found while doing research for the board, its easy enough to drag by the footstop inside stores. Carrying shit while also having my phone in one hand and my remote in the other hand has been physically testing but I’ve been making it work.
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As soon as im out of this $200 loan payment hole, im buying a better insulated bag that can carry drinks without spilling over, my arm almost fucking died today with that drink carrier
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