Relay - Driver

Relay Delivery for Android is a courier platform that offers to pay drivers by the hour, rather than per delivery. That targets the gig economy's most entrenched anxiety: will there be enough orders to cover our bills? Imagine logging into DoorDash at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday and looking at a blank screen for 20 minutes without receiving any pings, not even sure gas money will materialize — Relay solves this by paying drivers $15-25 per hour no matter how few orders are coming in, but in practice the system design is so broken that workers say they're unable to book shifts for lack of availability, sometimes for months.

The Hourly Wage Revolution That Wasn't

The app's essential pitch is pretty radical: Guaranteed hourly pay, set at $15 to $25 based on market, along with 100 percent of any tips — and none of the uncertainty of "dead time" totals. Drivers punch the clock, get batched orders from restaurants (not one-order runs, but a couple) and deliver food within an exacting two-mile radius to keep it hot. First, the system takes a base hourly rate — typically between $9 and $12 — then adds tips and bonuses; if the total is less than minimum-guaranteed, Relay fills in to reach that number. A Chicago driver guaranteed the minimum $15.40 begins with $9.24 in base pay, and if tips plus bonuses fail to match that amount, Relay guarantees only until it does. Currently live in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens in NYC, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Miami and select New Jersey suburbs, it positions itself as the anti-DoorDash: shorter routes, less gas burned; batched pickups, less time waiting at restaurants; predictable income, no feast-or-famine cycles. The onboarding is marketed as taking only 24 hours, conditional on the driver having a smartphone, a valid driver's license, insurance proof if it pertains to a vehicle, and legal ability to work.

Technical Architecture Meets Reality

The Android app itself has a bunch of features that sound good in theory if you can get the hang of it: live order-tracking to show when food is ready (which means no guessing games when picking up), smart routing for multiple orders, integrated chat for support during a shift and direct database linking with your bank account to receive automatic payments. The interface presents pickup plans, delivery addresses and customer notes in a single flow, theoretically eliminating the chaos of tab-switching between multiple apps. However, the execution falls apart under close inspection. Drivers complain of a maddening GPS bug in which Google Maps accurately shows them at the customer's address, but Relay's app insists they are somewhere else — and that sends them into desperate messaging threads with support, where what one reviewer described as "incoherent answers" have apparently not managed to resolve things. The promised efficiency often sends drivers on nonsensical routes and the much-hyped ready notification system tends to fail, keeping couriers waiting at restaurants while the app confirms their orders as complete.

The Reservation System Nightmare

And here is where Relay's promise of change meets the facts on the ground: The system by which shifts are reserved operates like a kind of mean lottery in which no one actually wins. Some drivers report seeing reservations rocket directly from "Closed" to "Full," without ever being displayed as something that can actually be booked — a kind of Schrödinger's schedule, where shifts both do and don't exist at the same time. One exasperated courier told me that they couldn't make any reservations at all for six straight months, despite scanning the app all day long every day (even though there are no openings to be found).

The company disapproves of multi-apping (operating DoorDash or Uber Eats simultaneously) and claims it interferes with their batched delivery system, while a broken reservation system leaves drivers no other choice but to find work elsewhere. Support agents have no suggestions beyond telling drivers to "refresh the page" — an answer that's so insipid it could be satire. Those promises of "choose your own schedule" are absurd when you can't actually choose anything. 

Financial Reality Check

According to ZipRecruiter, Relay Delivery drivers earn on average $18.45 an hour nationwide — but results vary based on location with Washington D.C. paying between $16.20-20 hourly vs Chicago which pays in the wage range of $15.40-25 hourly. The company says drivers can make between $20 and $35 an hour on average including a combination of hourly rate, bonuses and tips but real-world reports suggest the average leans closer to the bottom figure.

The shorter delivery radius will indeed help save on gas — a real advantage for some individuals — but a lack of consistent shifts to book makes moot any financial benefit that came with an hourly model. The reviews from employees are bleak: Relay Delivery's overall review and benefits package score is 2.4/5 which indicates overall dissatisfaction in compensation. Its business model depends on restaurant partnerships, with these eateries using Relay to be their exclusive delivery partner and avoiding DoorDash's far larger commissions — but this apparent B2B focus is coming at the expense of drivers. 

Who Actually Benefits

Relay is mainly for drivers who manage to crack the reservation system and score regular shifts in busy markets like Manhattan (because they are able to keep the order volume up enough that the hourly model makes sense, and tips come more frequently). The 2-mile delivery radius is a fit for cyclists and scooter drivers, with none of those suburban sprawl runs that shackle you on other apps. Drivers who seek predictable income over the possibility of high earnings may like the wage floor, if they can actually use the platform. The app is a catastrophic experience for anyone hoping for the flexibility advertised, drivers in less active markets where fees would make minimum wage difficult to reach or those without patience to fight through an unintuitive reservation system that seems designed hostilely towards human use.

When logging in means winning an impossible lottery, the promise of stress-free delivery work becomes its own special kind of stressor. Relay Delivery is an intriguing case study in how even the most well-intentioned reforms (guaranteed wages, shorter routes, batched efficiency) can be undone by technical ineptitude and systemic breakdowns; it's left drivers with an app that purports to solve gig economy problems while introducing entirely new categories of frustration that make DoorDash's widely known issues seem quaint by comparison.