Full Disclosure: Most of us Admins are active Spark drivers and love the gig. We monitor the Spark Drivers Group on our site and look for newbies or struggling drivers who might need guidance in the right direction.
Walmart Spark is one of those gigs you’ll either love or hate. If you’re doing Instacart, you’ll love the Spark Express orders. They’re shop and deliver, same as Instacart. In most areas the base pay for shopping orders going only a few miles is $11. If there’s no tip, you’ll end up running to all four corners of the store and having to deliver for 11 bucks. Compared to Instacart’s $4-$5 base pay, Spark is a much better option.
To clarify the relationship, Walmart owns Spark. Spark is Walmart’s own delivery service. Walmart developed and maintains the Spark app. Originally drivers were hired through a third party called Delivery Drivers Inc (DDI). Walmart bought DDI once it proved that it could handle the massive volume of Spark drivers. Spark now handles everything. At the end of the year your 1099 will come directly from Walmart Inc. Spark is just the app and the software, even though it was developed and maintained by Walmart.
In addition to Walmart, Spark also delivers for a few major retailers such as Home Depot, Advance Auto, Sally Beauty, Game Stop, and Sherwin Williams (yes, the paint store). Deliveries from Advance Auto are usually going to an auto repair shop where the customer is waiting for their car to be fixed. They’re Express orders and usually pay decent.
The Spark app allows you to set your vehicle. This directly affects the offers you receive. If you don’t set your vehicle size, you’ll see every type of offer Spark has. For example, some Home Depot orders contain oversized items that won’t fit in a sedan or coupe. If you don’t have your vehicle size listed, you’ll see the Home Depot orders even if the item(s) won’t fit in your car.
For Walmart, Spark offers four types of deliveries – Curbside Pickup, General Merchandise, Express, and Pharmacy. Yes, you’ll deliver prescriptions from Walmart. If you have a small car, you’ll probably want to stick to Express shopping orders or Pharmacy. Most curbside pickups are three deliveries. If you don’t have your vehicle size set in the app, you might be offered a triple delivery with 500+ items that will never fit in your car.
General Merchandise (GM) batches from Walmart are one of those things you’ll either look for or hate to see on your screen. Some drivers make $200/day doing just three GM batches. What’s to hate about GM batches? The mileage is insanely high and you never know what you’re picking up. While the Spark app allows you to see the items in a grocery order, it won’t allow you to see anything in a GM batch. You could be picking up a bottle of Tylenol or a 55-inch TV. During the summer months GM batches include a lot of 50-pound bags of potting soil and landscaping mulch. How do you decide whether a GM batch is worth it? It all depends on if you have your vehicle size listed in the app. If you don’t have your vehicle size listed, there’s a very good chance you’ll be picking up TVs or other large items
Pharmacy delivery orders for Spark are hit or miss. Most do not require the customer’s signature. You just drop off the package and take a picture. The two biggest pitfalls to pharmacy orders are the base pay and the selfie check. You must complete a selfie check upon arrival at Walmart and do another selfie check upon completion of the delivery.
Spark pharmacy orders are one of the few types of gig deliveries where the base pay increases exponentially as the mileage goes up. The minimum base pay for a pharmacy delivery going a few miles is $7. Screw that! If the same delivery is going 14 miles, the pay is normally in the $31-$35 range. Hell, yeah! Pharmacy deliveries can also be two separate orders going to different addresses. Those pay a lot more than single deliveries. One of our Admins recently took a double pharmacy order going 13.8 miles that paid over $48.
HOW DO YOU BECOME A SPARK DRIVER?
You can sign up to become a Spark driver on their website at SparkDriverApp.com.
You can also download the Spark Driver app directly from the App Store or Google Play and sign up directly in the app.
Once you’ve completed the Spark application process you’ll have to wait for your background check. Walmart has zero transparency and doesn’t mention the name of the company it uses to run background checks. You’ll have to patiently wait for the report and hope to receive that “Welcome To Spark” email.
HOW MUCH CAN YOU EARN DOING SPARK?
Can you earn $200 per day doing Spark? It depends entirely on your area and the number of Spark drivers in the zone. In areas where the market is flooded with drivers, some are lucky to make $100 per day. It’s the old rule of supply and demand. Too many drivers means more drivers willing to work for peanuts. Once some jerk takes a curbside triple going 30 miles for $16, the next time the base pay will be $14.
Based on thousands of posts and comments from Spark drivers, the lowest paying area to do Spark appears to be the Deep South. North Carolina to Mississippi appears to have horrible base pay with little to no tips. The best paying areas appear to be the Northeast and the Denver area.
On an extremely optimistic note, four of our Admins are full-time Spark drivers. One does Spark about 50 hours per week and always reaches his weekly goal of $1500. One works about 5 hours per day doing only GM batches and averages $1000 per week. We know drivers who consistently make over $2000 per week but they work 80+ hours. The best advice we can give is to keep an open mind. Spark has zones based on geographical areas. If your zone isn’t worth it, consider driving to another zone.
