Late for a meeting, 2018-style: Lime customers jump on scooters in Graham St in the Auckland CBD. Juicers scramble to collect scooters at the end of each day. Photo / Chris Keall.
Late for a meeting, 2018-style: Lime customers jump on scooters in Graham St in the Auckland CBD. Juicers scramble to collect scooters at the end of each day. Photo / Chris Keall.
It's the hottest new job in the gig economy: becoming a "juicer" for Lime - collecting the company's e-scooters, recharging them at your home, then returning them to the wild.
But is there any money in the scramble for scooters, and are we seeing the turf-wars and break-insthat have reportedly hit Lime contractors in the US?
The Herald spoke to two juicers.
Will, a 30-something with a day job as a software developer, become a juicer after seeing a Facebook ad promising up to $20 to collect and recharge a scooter (or "harvesting") in Lime parlance.
But he says most scooters have a $7 or $8 bounty; the most he's ever seen is $11.
Student John Mailley says most scooters pay $7. The highest he's ever seen is $14.
Customers locate a Lime e-scooter using their a smartphone app and GPS. Juicers use the app in a special "juicer" mode, which displays scooters with flat batteries on a map, each with a price on their head. The bounty depends on where a scooter was dumped by its last user, and how depleted its battery.
Once a scooter pops up on the app's screen, juicers race to claim it.
At one point was about to claim a scooter near Orakei train station when a rival sprung over the fence and seized it. Another night he raced up a final stretch of Basion Point on foot, as scooters chirped ahead (juicers can use the Lime app to make a scooter beep, which aids final location after GPS gives the general area). "I could hear other juicers hoofing it up the hill behind me," he says.
"It wouldn't suprise me if there's a punch-up one day, but at the moment it's competitive but friendly."
Scooters with completely flat batteries can be picked up at any time. But after 9pm, any scooter that's only partially charged can be picked up. "That's when it's all on. The app lights up like a Christmas tree," Will says.
He says he averages six or seven scooters an evening.
The toughest part is when another juicer beats him to a scooter. It's a close race "an amazing amount of the time," he says.
Recently he drove from his Orakei Basin home, zeroing in on a scooter left at the Devonport wharf. But just as he had it in sight, another juicer pulled up first and grabbed it.
Late for a meeting, 2018-style: Lime customers jump on scooters in Graham St in the Auckland CBD. Juicers scramble to collect scooters at the end of each day. Photo / Chris Keall.
A juicer has to charge a scooter at their own home. Lime tells them a charge, which takes around four hours, will add around 68c, depending on their electricity plan. Juicers bear the cost.
Charged bikes have to be dropped off at designated "serving" points ((typically the footpath near a bus stop) before 7am in the morning.
Will sets his alarm to 5.15am to ensure he can drop off scooters at serving points near his home. Only four scooters can be left at each serving point. If Will sleeps in, he then has to drive around looking for serving points with one or more free slots.
Scooters have to be placed a foot apart, with handlebars turned to the left. A juicer must take a smartphone pic of their handiwork before they get paid.
The Balmoral-based Mailley says the trick is to drive around in loops in a tight geographical area, and to grab as many scooters as possible in one trip in his hatchback (he has plans to co-opt his father's van. One NewstalkZB listener reports they saw a diesel-belching truck being used to collect Lime scooters en masse - not quite in keeping with the company's green image).
Lime riders monkey around in central Auckland. Photo / Supplied.
Mailley has 12 Lime chargers at home (the maximum the company will allow). He says his record for one session, of around four hours, was collecting 17 scooters (equating to roughly $30 an hour). When the Herald spoke to him on Wednesday evening, he had already collected and recharged 60 scooters for the week, earning himself around $450.
Will laments that Lime incentive scheme in the US, which sees a US$150 bonus for signing up a friend as a juicer and collecting a set amount of scooters within a target timeframe, has not made to New Zealand.
After being beaten to the punch so many times, with rival juicers nabbing bikes as he parks his station wagon, Will has taken bringing his brother along to ride shotgun. It's a much more effective system to have someone ready to immediately spring out of the car and grab a scooter - but it also means half the money to go around.
Lime seems to run things with a light touch. Mailley says he signed up online, supplying his driver's licence details.
Users put their apps into juicer mode when they're looking to charge scooters. Photo/Getty Images.
He was then invited to a briefing at Lime's Auckland headquarters (an unmarked warehouse in Kingsland). Container loads of new Lime scooters were being unwrapped in the background. Mailley says no record was kept of who was taking how many chargers, which were handed out free. He initially took eight but then thought "what the heck" and grabbed another four.
The juicers at Mailley's briefing session were told paying tax was their responsibility.
As an archetypal "gig economy" citizen - he already juggles work as a musician, wedding photographer and real estate photographer amid his studies - Mailley says he's used to taking responsibility for organising his own tax payments as a casual contractor. But he wonders if others will be clued-up.
The student has refined his technique. He now collects a batch of scooters early in the afternoon, so he can do at least one drop-off before the 9pm
Will fears the money is too good. He's anticipating they'll be more juicers signing up as word spreads about the money in harvesting.
Though on the plus side, he notes that Onzo is about to release up to 2500 e-scooters for hire in Auckland on November 10, swamping the 600 from Lime, and another 500 are on the way from a third contender, Wave, on November 30 - so they'll soon me a lot more work to go around.
Lime did not immediately respond to a query about how many juicers are currently on its books in Auckland and Christchurch.
