The Jeepney Drivers Who Said No Are Now Driving for Lalamove
They refused consolidation to keep their routes. Now they're hauling appliances across Metro Manila and taking home less than they did before the phaseout.
By Carlo Cruz
The drivers who held the line against jeepney consolidation didn't quit driving. They just stopped driving jeepneys.
Walk through any Lalamove staging area in Quezon City or Pasig now and you'll find them: men in their 40s and 50s, former route veterans from Sampaloc, Cubao, Marikina, who refused to fold their franchises into the cooperative scheme. They drive multicabs and L300s now, hauling someone's secondhand fridge from Makati to Antipolo for a flat fee minus the platform's cut.
The math is worse than it looks on paper.
What the route used to pay
A jeepney driver on a steady route kept what he earned after boundary and fuel. The job was brutal but the pesos were predictable. You knew your terminal, your dispatcher, your suki passengers, the school kids who paid in coins and the office workers who paid in GCash.
Consolidation changed the terms. Drivers were told to join cooperatives, surrender their individual franchises, and eventually shift to modern units financed through loans most could not realistically carry. The ones who refused lost their right to operate. Their jeepneys became scrap or sat rusting behind their houses.
The platform was the only door left
Lalamove and Transportify were already there, hungry for anyone with a license and a vehicle. The barrier to entry was low. Upload your documents, pass the orientation, start accepting bookings. For drivers locked out of the route system, it looked like the only door still open.
The reality settled in fast. Bookings are not guaranteed. You wait at malls and hardware stores for a ping that may not come for hours. Fuel comes out of your pocket. Tolls come out of your pocket. The platform takes its commission whether the trip was worth it or not. A long haul to Cavite during rush hour can eat a full tank and still leave you with less than a day on the old route would have brought home.
And there is no terminal. No dispatcher. No coworker waiting at the end of the loop with a cigarette and the same complaints. The job is alone in the cab, watching the app, hoping the next booking is not a fourth-floor walk-up with no elevator.
Who actually won
The official line was that consolidation would professionalize public transport, reduce emissions, and lift drivers into formal cooperatives with benefits. For the drivers who joined, the benefits remain uneven and the loan payments on modern units are a real monthly weight. For the drivers who refused, the safety net was never built. They were sorted out of the system and absorbed by an app that owes them nothing.
The platform does not provide SSS contributions. It does not provide PhilHealth. It does not provide a pension, a 13th month, or a guaranteed minimum on a slow Tuesday. When the multicab breaks down, the driver pays. When a customer cancels at the pickup point, the driver eats the fuel.
The phaseout was sold as a transition. For many displaced drivers, the transition was from a low-paying job with a route to a lower-paying job with an algorithm, a platform commission deducted from every booking, and a fridge to deliver to Antipolo before dark.
