There is a strange little season in rideshare that does not get talked about enough: the midsummer blues.
This is especially true around college areas.
During the regular school year, a college town is a machine in motion. Thousands of students are trying to figure out where they are going in life, where they are going that day, and how they are getting there. Classes, parties, jobs, errands, late-night food runs, early-morning appointments, train stations, airports, dorms, apartments — everything is moving.
Then summer hits.
And suddenly, there is still college, but not really college.
The buildings are still there. The campus is still there. The roads are still there. But the energy changes. The whole place goes from hustling and bustling to the day-to-day business of an empty town.
That does not mean everything is closed. There are still graduate students working on master’s degrees and doctorates. There are still professors, administrators, staff, maintenance workers, summer programs, orientation visits, and families driving around saying, “Maybe this is the school.”
The machinery of the college still has to function.
In some ways, summer is when the quiet work gets done. Buildings get repaired. Rooms get cleaned. Systems get checked. Maintenance crews get access to areas that are normally packed with students, carts, backpacks, scooters, and people who have no idea where they are going.
But for rideshare, it is a different animal.
The rides are not gone, but they are thinner. The rhythm changes. Instead of steady student movement, you get scattered pockets of activity. One ride here. One ride there. Someone going to work. Someone heading to an appointment. Someone visiting campus. Someone leaving town.
And in between all of that, you drive through the boredom.
That is the summer slump.
That is the part where you are trying to figure out where the money is hiding today.
One of the stranger forms of entertainment during this season is seeing what people put out to the curb. Because when you are driving around enough, you start noticing the leftovers of other people’s life transitions.
Furniture. Lamps. Small appliances. Cheap shelving. Mattresses that should probably be avoided by everyone. Bags of things people thought they needed until they had to carry them down three flights of stairs.
College towns have their own version of migration. People move in, people move out, and a whole lot of stuff gets abandoned along the way.
Some people are done and moving on. Some people only have a couple of months before they are out. Some people are still trying to get their apartment cleaned up before the next group comes in. And some people are dealing with roommates who apparently thought “moving out” meant leaving the mess for somebody else.
I know that one personally from my sister talking about her daughter’s roommate in New Haven, who left the place in rough shape. They had to spend the time cleaning it up so she could get out without creating problems.
And that matters, because some of these apartments have waiting lists. Long waiting lists. There is always somebody else ready to move in. There is always another student, another family, another lease, another set of keys, another person trying to start the next part of life.
So this is the odd little middle season.
The town is not dead. It is just between waves.
For the driver, that means patience. It means knowing the usual hot spots may not be hot. It means understanding that the normal rhythm has shifted. It means accepting that some days are going to feel slower, quieter, and more irritating than they should.
But that is part of the work.
The summer slump is real. The midsummer blues of rideshare are real. And if you work around college towns long enough, you learn that every season has its own personality.
The fall has the chaos.
The winter has the weather.
The spring has the escape attempts.
And the summer has the empty-town boredom, the curbside leftovers, and the constant search for where the day’s money is hiding.
So with that being said, I hope you have a safe, fun, and profitable day.
Because if it ain’t safe, it ain’t fun.
And it ain’t gonna be profitable.