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Of course there would be. A decent deilvery man can do at least 4 pizzas an hour if not more. That would be $2.50 to $3 per pizza to deliver it. And since tips can be assumed of at least $2 or so, you can see where the pizza man can bring in $16 an hour which should pay for wages, gas and the use of his cellphone plus a few bucks left over for profit for the business which is already making a good profit on the pizza itself.
Delivery volume is highly variable. I've delivered about 50,000 pizzas in my lifetime (none in the past decade) and there are peak times and slow times, as well as high-volume stores/areas and low-volume stores/areas.
Tips are also highly variable.
I could deliver 10 pizzas an hour to student areas at peak times (Sunday afternoon/evening, Friday/Saturday evening) and there were areas (and times of day) when delivering four an hour was a stretch.
Students were notoriously poor tippers, most never considered it.
If you deliver low-end pizzas, the volume is often high and you can deliver a lot of pizzas but the tips suck, and if you deliver high-end pizzas, the tips are great except the volume is low so you don't get a lot of tips because you're not delivering a lot of pizzas.
I had one manager who tried to cheat on labor costs - on weekdays, he sent the other drivers home at 9 pm and kept me as his only driver. This had me running from one end of the delivery area to the other, and delivery times at night suffered. (The bean counters figured him out and fired him.)
You accept a minimum wage job in order to gain experience. If you don't like earning minimum wage, you then search for another job that will offer you more after you've advanced in your current position. If you're valuable enough to a company they'll offer you a pay raise. If not, find a company that does value your new experience more. It's called working your way up. People aren't allowed to just start out at the top. Sorry libs...not everyone is born "equal."
Please check out the real world in the new economy.
At my last job, I worked with two dozen people, all of whom were paid within 25 cents of minimum wage. The ones paid more than minimum were lifers who had been working there more than ten years.
Performance didn't matter much, the best performance was worth no more than 25 cents per hour more than the worst performance.
Most of the employees were over 30, several were over 50 and one was over 65.
In the minimum wage world, there are two basic types of employers. One type rewards performance - at one job I got a 10% raise in two weeks - and the other type doesn't reward performance. If you have a surplus of qualkified applicants, why would you pay more when you don't have to?
In the minimum wage world, performance sets a ceiling for compensation, not a floor.
I think we need to rememebr that most minimum wage jobs satrted out as parttime jobs for teenagers.that is what minimum wages was set for not adults. They were kind of unskilled just starting out out jobs.One reason many teens can't get jobs now is that some adults seem to thnik they can make a real living wage from them.I have a neighbor whose son delivers pizza this summer and he said he makes alot more tips than minimum wages per hour.
Jobs with tips are a small minority of minimum wage jobs. Teens can't get those jobs today because there are a growing number of adults holding onto minimum wage jobs because they need the money and can't get better jobs.
Could you explain to me though why a teenager *needs* to be earning $10+/hour when not only do they provide limited skills, but their own bills are typically limited because most are living w/ parents still? In fact, oftentimes, the people that are on minimum wage are there because they have little or no skills and *cost* a business a large amount of money to train. By a business taking on an unskilled/underskilled worker, they are taking on a HUGE risk. They risk that by putting money into that employee for things like training, that that employee will only soon leave to find better pay somewhere else because the next business doesn't have to invest as much to train them. This is just a single example of the cost of hiring the type of people that typically apply for those minimum wage jobs.
Why should someone that has little or no work experience be paid nearly the same as someone that's worked for 10 years and added to their list of skills and knowledge every year, thus making them *more* valuable as an employee?
Why are we talking about teenagers? How many teenagers deliver pizzas? How many employers in their right mind would HIRE a teenager to DRIVE A CAR on the job?
If you really have ran your own business then you should understand that itemizing is almost certainly not an option for a teenage or college aged pizza delivery driver because they will almost never incur expenses in excess of the standard deduction.
Perhaps you are right that people may realize this and not want to do these jobs. But that's not really the point. The law is the law. Don't get me wrong the part about washing clothes is ridiculous and the cell phone thing could even be perceived as a stretch. But the miles thing is not. It's very clear about the mileage expenses. Very, very cut and dry IMO.
I actually don't see how this lawsuit is ridiculous at all. Perhaps you could explain it to me. At first I thought it was but then I actually ran the numbers involved and it changed my mind.
I suppose that from the legal angle you may have a point. I also look at how the law can get things complicated when many of the people that enact laws that affect businesses may not have an economic clue.
To me a business is there to try to survive. If I tell a business how much to pay their drivers without know their profit margin and other finance factors is not right in my opinion.
Forcing them to pay higher wages will affect something. What that may be? Let go of some other emplyee to be able to pay drivers higher wages? If so, is that fair?
How about the employeer not able to expand business, thus not hiring more people, in order to be able to pay hire wages?
Many of these laws may have good intentions but in the end many of them also bring up many unintended consequences and later another group complains because they pay the consequences of the law.
Also, the free interprise principle is violated. I want to drive to deliver your procuct? You tell me what you may pay me and I then weigh the pros and cons. I decide to work for you. Now I want to sue you? Do you think that is fair? Not in my book and I do not think you would like it either, take care.
it all depends how much time is spent leading up to the time that your tipped. i think the law is if more than 20% of your working time doing other job functions as well produces no tip than you have to be paid min wage besides tips.
i know here in new york a delivery of any kind can really eat into a days time. between traffic,parking ,access to buildings and walking up apartment house stairs that cuts the amount of tip time drastically.
tips plus pay must consistantly equal at least minimum wage as well per hour..
"TIP CREDIT Employers of “tipped employees” must pay a cash wage of at least $2.13 per hour if they claim a tip credit against their minimum wage obligation. If an employee‘s tips combined with the employer‘s cash wage of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. Certain other conditions must also be met.
i believe dunkin donuts lost their case claiming they didnt have to pay min wage because there are tip containers out.
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-24-2011 at 06:07 AM..
I deliver pizzas for Pizza Hut. I think the $16 per hour is not accurate what so ever. We might get to take out 3-4 pizza orders per hour during rush hours, which is from about 12pm to 1:30pm and 5pm to 8pm. So if you are working from 2pm to 5pm there is no way you are leaving there with $16 per hour. Okay, now with the tipping situation, on average, we recieve $2.50-$3.00. The delievery charge that you pay when you order a pizza is $2.50 and the driver only recieves $1.10 of that. Also the average driver only has a 3.5 hour shift, and about 20 hours per week. So let's add this up really quick.
Delivery Driver Pay Rate: $5.25 per hour
Tips (Averaging 3 per hour @ $2.50 per delivery ): $2.50*3=$7.50
Delivery Charge Received (Averaging 3 per hour): $1.10*3=$3.30
TOTAL PER HOUR : $16.05 per hour!
TOTAL PER SHIFT (Assuming It's The Average Shift): $56.18
TOTAL PER WEEK: $321.00
Now before you start screaming at my comment saying oh I was right...now you need to take out the deductions that a driver has because of his job:
The average delievery is between 2-10 miles from the store. So we are going to round to 5 just to keep it simple.
So each hour the driver takes 3 deliveries: 3*5=15.
Average shift & milage/hour: 3.5*15=52.5
So let's take some gas into consideration now. The average car gets around 25 miles per gallon.
So assuming you get 25 mpg you are going to use 2.1 gallons of gas on an average shift.
Now, in Missouri, gas is at $3.65 per gallon. So after one night the driver will spend $7.67 in gas alone.
Time for some more math:
Pay Per Hour: $16.05
Gas Used Per Hour: $7.67
Total Pay (After Gas Expense) per hour: $8.38
Pay Per Week (After Gas Expense): $167.60
Pay Per Month (After Gas Expense): $670.40
Next, the driver HAS to have insurance on their car, yes it is a requirement in all states, but you must have insurance to deliver pizzas. Full coverage on most cars is around $75 per month. (This will vary from person to person.) But to be fair, we will put this charge at only $30 per month since you are legally suppose to have it anyway.
Next, you must remember that the driver is putting miles on their car every single day. So, you have to put aside the cost for oil changes, new tires, and other repairs needed to keep the car running. So lets just say an additional $20 per month.
So the average driver will make $620.40 a month before takes are taken out.
So if you remember the average driver works 20 hours per week and we are assuming there are 4 weeks in a month.
20*4=80 hours per month
So lets figure out exactly what drivers make per hour.
Monthly Pay: $620.40
Hours Worked Per Month: 80
Pay/Hours: 620.40/80= $7.75 per hour.
So the average driver makes $7.75 per hour. Delivery drivers are making what is required by law.
*Now of course, this is based on averages.*
*Note:Amount of deliveries is based on business. If business is bad, the drivers will not make this much per hour.
**Note: This is based on my wages at Pizza Hut!
While the linked article is no longer available....I would *highly* recommend using extreme caution in believing anything written in that POS newspaper.
It's my local newspaper and their idea of "news" would be to print verbatim one sides version of events with no rebuttal. They've historically presented some incredibly lopsided stories where litigation is ongoing as a means to pressure the other party and influence public opinion.
My first job was delivering pizzas for Pizza Hut... perhaps things have changed in the last few years, but at the time the money was pretty decent, $18-22 an hour most nights with the tips and reimbursements added in. It's hard for me to believe anyone would do the job for less than minimum wage
Wait a minute - aren't employers required to reimburse employees for using their own car on the job?? The IRS rate is 50-some cents a mile I believe, so that would offset the costs of actually driving the car on the job, plus a bit for wear and tear, insurance, etc. If I ever worked at a place that didn't give credit for miles driven, I'd be reporting them to a bunch of alphabet agencies quicker than you can say "this pizza sucks!"...lol.
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The IRS rate is 50-some cents a mile I believe, so that would offset the costs of actually driving the car on the job, plus a bit for wear and tear, insurance, etc. If I ever worked at a place that didn't give credit for miles driven, I'd be reporting them to a bunch of alphabet agencies quicker than you can say "this pizza sucks!"...lol.
