This guy juice juice of limes and birds every night: NPR



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Electric scooters are photographed on a sidewalk in Paris in June 2018. Several companies offer small vehicles for rent by the minute in cities around the world, including many United States.

Christophe Archambault / AFP / Getty Images


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Christophe Archambault / AFP / Getty Images

Electric scooters are photographed on a sidewalk in Paris in June 2018. Several companies offer small vehicles for rent by the minute in cities around the world, including many United States.

Christophe Archambault / AFP / Getty Images

Some people like electric scooters. Some people hate them. And some people charge them – for money.

During the day, Joel Kirzner is a consultant in Arlington, Virginia. But when he finishes his work at the office, he takes out his phone and checks several scooter apps to see what's available nearby.

If there are few scooters on the battery, they will appear on the card of his phone. And if he manages to find the scooter in real life (and to beat all rival chargers, he will earn a few dollars for each one he charges at home.

"It's like Pokemon Go and you make money," he says.

Recently, he saw two scooters at the door of his office. He jumps into his Subaru Impreza and starts to pick up.

Electric scooters are hot right now. Lime and Bird, the two largest companies, account for about $ 2 billion each. You can rent scooters by the minute from one or both companies in more than 100 cities nationwide – from Abilene (Texas) to Tacoma (Wash).

And both companies rely on independent contractors like Kirzner to keep the wheels moving, taking the scooters home and loading them into regular outlets. In the process, the shippers respond to another essential need: they help move scooters from the most remote places to hot spots where they will find more bikers.

Lime calls the loaders "juicer". Bird has its own word games: the loaders "catch" the birds, then release them into "nests" – specific locations chosen by the company – in the morning.

This is mainly night work: some scooters are not available before 9pm, they are supposed to be back on the roads early the next morning. They are therefore available to commuters.

After the sunset on a cool recent night, Kirzner recovers 12 scooters in quick succession near his office, before returning home to charge. He collects birds tonight – there were more than just files – and earns $ 4 or $ 5 for each, including a bonus for collecting several scooters.

The bonus offered by scooter varies depending on the location, the level of charge and the running time of a scooter (sign that it may be in a less desirable location). And in general, premiums have decreased over time. For example, Bird was paying up to 20 dollars for scooters that had been waiting for a long time. But unscrupulous shippers would carry the scooters into the street and keep them while their value would increase; now, says Kirzner, $ 20 for an accusation is almost unknown.

The lowering of rates has reduced some of the fierce competition so far against scooters. Many people are simply not willing to take the road for more modest payments, especially on a cold and windy March night.

Andy Castillo, who was collecting lime scooters in Washington, DC, does not charge anymore. He used to go out with his mother, who is retired – "it was a way for us to hang out together," he explains – and they would fill his van with scooters .

"When I started, the scooter cost $ 6," says Castillo. "They recently dropped the price to $ 4 and I did it once or twice thereafter, and it was not as exciting."

Kirzner said that it was always worthwhile for him to lay charges, especially since he rarely went out of his way to collect and redistribute his items near his office and home.

"It's like looking for money on the street," he says when he finishes a pickup and spots another scooter, worth $ 5 per load, available right across the street.

Joel Kirzner loads Bird scooters on his patio in Arlington, Virginia on March 4th. He regularly picks up the scooters once his workday is over and charges them overnight for the Bird and Lime companies.

Camila Domonoske / NPR


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Joel Kirzner loads Bird scooters on his patio in Arlington, Virginia on March 4th. He regularly picks up the scooters once his workday is over and charges them overnight for the Bird and Lime companies.

Camila Domonoske / NPR

Of course, this is not this easy. Once they are all crammed into his hatchback (he has a very precise system to insert up to a dozen birds), he brings the scooters home and branches them on his patio. Its loaders are perfectly organized, mounted on pieces of plywood with matching color fasteners.

They will charge hours and he will pay for electricity. (The effect on his electricity bill is negligible, says Kirzner.) The next morning, he will get up early to get the scooters out on the road, dropped off at Bird's chosen locations, before going to work. daily.

Kirzner says that since he started charging in September, he has earned more than $ 9,000.

He also warned that this job was not very reliable – not like, for example, driving for Uber or Lyft, or other options in the show economy. Some nights he might arrive empty-handed. And in some cities, Lime or Bird fell back and disappeared overnight.

It is also unclear whether companies will continue to use contractors. Other companies, like Lyft, rely on employees to recharge their electric scooters. Kirzner himself wonders how it can be profitable to pay him $ 50 or $ 60 for a few hours of work that a full-time employee could perform for $ 15 at the hour.

More speculatively, some analysts suspect that robots could be created for these jobs – scooters.

"What people are already talking about is that these things are autonomous," says Horace Dediu, an influential analyst who coined the term "micromobility" to describe small electric vehicles like scooters.

A three-wheeled or self-balancing scooter could "crawl on the sidewalk at a speed of about 3 miles to the hour," he says. "Maybe during the night they will reposition themselves on a charging station.Now, either you have a person who plugs it in, or they can fly over what is essentially an inductive point … so that they can to charge themselves. "

"So you'll have these kinds of armies of scooters crisscrossing the city at night wandering to try to find a charging station," Dediu theorizes. "I think it's not crazy that it sounds."

After all, payments to shippers such as Kirzner represent a substantial cost to scooter manufacturers, who still spend a lot of money as they grow and have not yet managed to make a profit.

But for now, the chargers play a vital role in the economy of the scooter.

In the icy darkness, Kirzner carries his night car out of his car and tidies them up perfectly. He says that he earns a decent wage for his work from 9 am to 5 pm. But a boost helps, he says.

"I have expensive rent, high car payments, cable bills," he says. "You talk about the middle class endangered.I have the impression of being in this area where I can live well, comfortably.But if you want to have a little more financial stability, it really helps. "

And he'd rather do that than drive for Uber or Lyft, he says. He puts fewer kilometers on his car – and there are no drunkards to handle.

"The birds do not answer me," he says. "They tweet from time to time – you know, they're beeping – but other than that, they're very nice."

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