Personally, I’ll take you as far as you want. I like long drives and don’t care if I come back empty.

But I know many drivers want to hang around their local area. They don’t find long trips profitable (net-wise), or they are only driving part-time and long trips don’t fit their schedule.

When I accept your ride request, I don’t know anything about the trip, and you don’t know anything about what kind of trip is acceptable to me.

The last thing I want to do is pick you up at Walmart during rush hour with your cart full of bags and maybe a toddler in tow with a child seat, load it all into my trunk and you and the kid into the backseat, and drive you 1.7 miles over 30 minutes for $3.75 (I don’t know what you’re paying Uber, but that’s what I’m getting).

You wouldn’t, either.

The first thing I want to do is drive you and your carry-on 10 or more miles on the highway outside of rush hour.

I’m not a public service. I don’t care about your shopping or life needs. I don’t care how, or if, you get home from Walmart, or the bar, or anywhere else. You won’t tip (although you can, in the app or in cash), so there’s no incentive for me to want to drive you short distances under crappy and time-consuming circumstances.

I’ll take the long trip anytime. I’ve nowhere else to be, and driving is what I enjoy and what makes me some money.

I’ll gladly drive you from DC to NYC if you like. Or across the country.

But many drivers will not. They have families, or schedules, or closely monitor their P/L, or for some other reason want to stay “local,” mostly because they can’t pick up rides in NYC (Uber won’t let them) and must drive all the way back without compensation, and I don’t blame them, and neither should you — which is when they might say at the outset, “Sure, dude, I’ll drive you to NYC, but you gotta understand I have to come back to DC empty, so if you’ve got, say, $100 in cash extra for me — NOW — let’s go!”