BESHARA FADEL

Business has been good for ride-share driver Beshara Fadel.

The 49-year-old Henderson resident said he has little competition on the road these days. He said he made almost $400 on a recent Friday.

Fadel, who has driven for Lyft and Uber for about 2 1/2 years, temporarily quit driving from March through June and claimed unemployment benefits under the program for independent contractors, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. He said he got back behind the wheel after seeing potential for a bigger check.

“I got tired of being home,” he added. “I gained 20 pounds in those three months.”

Before the pandemic, Fadel would sit at McCarran International Airport’s ridehailing lot and wait his turn to pick up arriving travelers. There could be as many as 30 to 100 Uber vehicles waiting, he said. Not anymore.

“It’s just like nonstop,” Fadel said. “We don’t even have to wait at the lot. We just get call after call after call after call.”

Fadel upgraded from a Toyota Camry to a Honda Pilot about two weeks ago. Now he can seat more passengers and drive as an UberXL, when before he drove as an UberX.

Uber changed its UberX passenger limit from four to three because of the pandemic, meaning a quartet seeking a ride has to pay more for the larger-capacity Uber XL.

Ultimately, that allows him to give fewer rides and make as much as, if not more than, he previously did, Fadel said.

Spending less time on the road allows him to take more breaks, lower his chances of getting into a crash and limit his exposure to the novel coronavirus, he said.

Fadel said he’s “very worried” about the possibility of coming down with COVID-19 from one of his passengers. He sanitizes the SUV after every ride, and the stickers he placed on its body warn customers: No mask, no entry.

Also, Fadel sets his car’s air conditioning to pull air from the outside instead of recycling air in the cabin.

“The other day someone coughed in my car, and I had to put down the window,” he said.