The ping comes fast. A DoorDash driver has seconds to decide: accept the job or lose ground.
For Syracuse DoorDash driver Christine Gaytor, that alert has become the sound of an impossible calculation. On a recent evening, the app offered her $3.25 to shop for groceries and drive five miles to the customer. Gaytor declined, resulting in a demotion.
"Your ratings go down for every order you don't take," Gaytor said. "And it can take you out of a higher-paying tier, which is unfair."
Yet for Gaytor, not driving at all is not an option.
"I get in the position where I have no choice but to DoorDash for the day, or I'm not going to eat, or my animals may not eat," she said.
As fuel prices in Central New York approach $5 a gallon, food delivery drivers across the area say an already strained system is cracking under the weight of rising costs, with workers left to absorb the impact. According to a 2026 report from the Community Service Society of New York, one in five New York adults have participated as drivers in the gig economy, and roughly half of those drivers rely on it as a mandatory part of their income.
Mark Moore, 64, lost his job as a computational mathematician and programmer earlier this year and turned to Uber Eats, applying the same analytical instincts to delivery offers that have guided his career.
"If I can see that I'm making less than a dollar a mile, I can tell you as a driver, I'm losing money," Moore said.
Most customers, he said, do not think about the human on the other end of the order.
"If you're not tipping enough to cover at least a dollar a mile, don't order, because you're hurting someone," he said.
Gaytor works as a caregiver during the day and drives for DoorDash at night and on days off to supplement her income. A mother of five and grandmother of nine, she has a daughter with kidney failure who cannot work, and a son on the autism spectrum who has struggled to find steady employment. For a period, she was helping cover his rent as well.
"I don't think any of us chooses this to be our full means of financial support," Gaytor said. "But sometimes that's the situation that we're left in."
Gaytor completed two shopping orders in roughly 50 minutes during a part of her recent shift, earning a combined $13, a figure that does not account for gas, vehicle wear, or unpaid time spent waiting at restaurants or searching store shelves for out-of-stock items.
"DoorDash pay is usually only enough to cover the gas that it takes to deliver your orders," Gaytor said.
Moore knows that feeling. On a late-night shift, moving quickly, he accepted a delivery of two donuts to be driven 20 miles, for a payout of roughly $3.
"I guarantee you, I paid for those donuts," he said. "I lost money on that run."
Although Moore is critical of how the platforms compensate drivers, he said they fill a gap that traditional employers do not.
"They hired me without question," Moore said. "You just need a driver's license and a car and they're going to give you work. And that was what I needed."
Elizabeth Schmidt, a labor economist at SUNY Oswego, said the gig economy provides people with steady employment, but that accessibility comes with a structural cost built into the independent contractor model itself.
"Gig workers are expected to internalize as part of their own costs the wear and tear on their vehicles and things like gasoline," Schmidt said. "When gasoline prices fluctuate, something like Uber or Lyft or DoorDash, their payment schedule and percentages are pretty much set, and they don't float with the price of gasoline."
Gas price increases hit some households harder than others, Schmidt said, and gig workers tend to absorb the worst of it.
"That redistribution is really tough on an economy, and of course it's tough on the most vulnerable workers that don't have that cushion to bear that cost," she said.
For Gaytor, the frustration runs deeper than any single shift or expense.
"These companies are all about their money, and they know that we're desperate," she said. "They know that we're all struggling to make ends meet, and so they know we have no choice but to drive just to feed our families."
Gaytor recently started a better-paying full-time job and is now in her 10th week, easing, though not ending, her dependence on DoorDash. But with gas prices still climbing, she said getting behind the wheel on her time off remains part of the routine.
"I'm exhausted," she said. "Having to drive on my days off for every waking moment that I'm not at work, and it shouldn't be that way. Nobody in this country should have to work at all moments of every day. It's not realistic."
DoorDash and Uber Eats have offered drivers a 10 percent discount on gas, but the relief is limited, according to the companies. The discount requires an application and approval process that takes anywhere from three days to two weeks, and expires at the end of May.
