At the edge of Orlando’s airport is a crossroads of Latino culture ready to deliver people from around the world to their vacation dreams.
It’s where hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers gather and wait for a ride request.
“If you don’t have credit, you don’t have a job; here you are provided opportunity,” said Benjamin Rivera of Puerto Rico, standing near his natty Kia Optima.
Some call it the “FIFO” lot, for first in, first out. It opened this summer after the airport relented to growing pressure to let ride-share drivers pick up arriving passengers. Previously, they were allowed only to drop off passengers for departing flights.
Crowded and chaotic as drivers wait to be summoned, FIFO is where for a few minutes or an hour “we are friends,” said Jesus Collins, 27.
Drivers there may not earn more than others, but they aren’t driving around aimlessly, wasting gas, wearing out their cars. The fare of one airport ride can equal that of several quicker trips in town.
On a recent weekday, there was a laid-off exec, a mobile preacher, a college student, job applicants, mothers with kids in school, a retiree with intolerable free time and a construction worker. Full-timers do at least 12 hours a day and part-timers half that.
They drive luxury cars, a pickup with loud pipes, an aging Honda, an SUV limo, every kind of anonymous sedan, vans still in family service and Prius hybrids.
They share empanadas, drink cold Wawa coffee from paper cups and glance at the master of their ride-share universe — the app on their phones that displays a number.
“I’m at 17 and started at 93,” said Marisol, 40, who declined to provide her last name. She begins each day by dropping off her two children at school.
“89,” said Ernest Luna of the Dominican Republic.
“Stuck on 39,” said Wilson Simon, 26.
It’s the number of drivers ahead of them before they can slip into the stream of arrivals traffic to collect OIA’s inbound passengers.
“You are in line to get a hit,” said Jene Foster, 29, one of few drivers not speaking Spanish. “You may have to wait, but you will get a hit.”
The lot is next to B-52 Memorial Park, where a bomber perches high on pylons. Its 180-foot wingspan droops awesomely and menacingly.
Though drivers have much time to kill, they seem oblivious to the monstrous plane.
Standard in the ride-share cars are half-used rolls of paper towels and half-empty Windex bottles. Drivers obsessively clean windows, brush mats and wipe water spots from hoods and trunks.
When not doing that, they gather, eyeing each other. They are Colombians, Brazilians, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans and relatively few Anglos. The biggest share is Venezuelans.
“60 percent from Venezuela,” guesses Javier Chacon, 41, of that nation. “I have no idea why.”
Rafael Meneses, 41 and Venezuelan, said his country’s economy and government are disintegrating. Residents are leaving.
“The security is really bad now,” he said.
The drivers thrive in the diverse company of each other and passengers. “You may be a driver,” Foster said. “But you become a counselor.”
No FIFO story about sad, interesting or stupidly intoxicated passengers goes unshared. No anger about predator passengers — even women — is restrained.
“He ended up kissing my arm,” said Jennifer Borgess, 27, who described her family as Cuban and Israeli.
She was talking about a drunk with a pistol stuck in his pants’ waist. She was able to get him out of her car, a new Cadillac.
“I was so shaken I could hardly drive,” said Borgess, who had been an American Express manager until her job was outsourced to Asia.
Her complaints to Uber about the man got nowhere, Borgess said. So she encourages Uber passengers to use Lyft.
As the drivers argue, joke and wait, conspiracy suspicions flourish.
One of them is that some drivers have a device that messes with the order-in-line app on other drivers’ phones.
One of the drivers, Matt, who described himself as a construction worker but declined to offer his last name, laughed that off as absurd.
He said it’s a system quirk that leaves a driver stuck on a number: “Then all of a sudden, you get a request for a ride.” Later, when he drove off to pick up a fare, the rumble of his engine could be heard well after his pickup was out of sight.
Another driver said passenger reviews determine how quickly drivers advance to a request.
That drew the attention of Foster, who drives a 2002 Accord with like-new back seats. She pulled up her reviews on her phone.
“Such a sweetheart,” said one.
“Kindest uber ever. Such a sweet soul,” said another.
There were few nice words for the FIFO lot, which has about 80 spaces but typically is jammed with two or three times as many cars.
Jose Sutil, 40, said his ride-share apps erroneously indicate available parking at the FIFO.
He spoke as cars inched by along a perilously skinny lane through the lot. “There is no spot here,” Sutil said, dryly.
The FIFO lot also is taxing.
Jetliners roar overhead, drowning the whine of rubber and engines on the nearby Beachline Expressway. Birds ruling the lot, grackles, never shut up their metallic retching. Even so, some drivers said they are drawn to the work.
It’s adventure, they admit. They program Pandora for music of people of all nations. Some are happy their passengers are thrilled to visit Disney.
Angelo Ibarra, of Colombia, spends down time on real-estate work, thumbing through listings on his pad. He also is a pastor, he confessed.
“I’m spreading the word of God to those who are in need,” Ibarra said.
