Uber taking over the school run

Five years ago Tanya King, a Johannesburg account executive, relied on an au pair to ferry her two sons to and from school, and to extra lessons.

However, when the au pair was unavailable one day, she used the driver-taxi app Uber in desperation and has not looked back.

"As a working mother it has revolutionised my life. It's a necessity and it is far more reasonable than what I was paying the au pair."

Her elder son Thomas is now in Grade 11 and has been using the service since the beginning of high school. Her younger son Luke, 13, has been using it for the past two years.

story_article_left1

Luke insists on sitting in front, plugs in his phone and plays his music, and chats to the driver. "He tells me that he is rated five stars by all the drivers," she said.

King said she was one of the first parents at the school to use the app. It is now a popular mode of transport for other parents.

King says it costs her about R1,000 a month.

Robert Saunders of Cape Town uses another app driver service, Taxify, to get his son Jack, 12, to and from school.

"I'm divorced and Jack stays with me twice a week. I live in town and his school is in the suburbs. If I were to take him to school, it would take me two hours of frustration there and back and around R80 with wear and tear."

It costs him R100 each way and Saunders said he would rather spend the money than be stuck in Cape Town traffic.

Uber driver Andile, who has worked for about a year, picks up kids on the school run daily.

"Give or take, it is about 25% of my business," he said. He has collected children as young as seven.

Mike, another Uber driver, regularly picks up six-year-old twins with their carer, takes them to crèche and later fetches them.

Uber spokeswoman Samantha Allenberg said the company did not allow anyone under 18 to have an account. She said that, if parents chose to use their Uber accounts to transport their children, it was at their own choice and responsibility.

Taxify did not respond to queries.