The longest ride in Uber history

Uber driver Janis Rogers picked up a fare in Virginia and drove her nearly eight hours and 400 miles to Brooklyn, in what is believed to be the longest Uber ride on record.

Then, the 64-year-old turned right around and drove back to her home in Newport News, Va.

Even more impressive, she did it all without stopping to use the restroom!

“I was wide awake and kept on going. I don’t have a problem with going for a long time,” she laughed.

The fare was a young woman outside a Ben & Jerry’s in Williamsburg, Va., who said she needed to get to Bedford-Stuyvesant to see her boyfriend. It was June 9, at 11:51 a.m.

The bill for the grueling 397-mile, 7-hour-42-minute jaunt: $294.09.

But the rider wasn’t exactly pinching pennies. If she had been, she could have taken a plane for $188; a train for $95, and bus for only $45.

Rogers, a friendly 64-year-old Southerner, said she was happy for the long-distance haul, a departure from the average Uber ride of 5.4 miles.

Rogers said her passenger looked “about 19 or 20” with “long brown hair.”

“She was pretty. She was sitting outside with a suitcase and a bag,” Rogers drawled. “I did not get her name. I think she had been Ubering up the coast.”

Rogers said that when the stranger got in the car she asked, “How far north can you take me?”

“I said, ‘Well, I’m not doing too much today, so I’ll take you all the way.’

“She said, ‘Really? That would be great.’”

The woman then curled up in a blanket Rogers keeps in the back seat of her 2005 Prius and “slept the entire way.”

“She didn’t seem excited to see her boyfriend,” Rogers recalled. “She was kind of blasé. She looked tired.”

Rogers reached her Putnam Avenue destination by nightfall. The two said goodbye — no tip was offered — and Rogers turned right around and drove back to Virginia, arriving home at about 3:45 a.m.

‘This was not lucrative. I did it because it was an adventure.’
Rogers, who didn’t even own a cellphone before joining Uber in May, didn’t make much money on the longest ride.

After driving 15 ¹/₂ hours round-trip and spending $32 for gas and tolls (she didn’t spend a dime on food or drinks), the trip earned her about $9 per hour, she calculated.

“This was not lucrative,” she said. “I did it because it was an adventure.”

The trip was “a little bit scary for me,” she said. “I had never been anywhere downtown in New York. I’ve driven through New York to visit my sister in Maine. But never downtown.”

Rogers said she first realized she may have made Uber history when one of her riders Googled “longest Uber ride” and up popped a story on Joe Strandell, who drove a woman 320 miles from Santa Barbara to Palo Alto in California in 2014. Strandell shared his story with Harry Campbell, an Uber driver who blogs about the ride-sharing industry.

Campbell told The Post Rogers is the new record-holder. Uber itself did not return messages seeking comment.

Rogers likens Uber driving to fishing.

“It’s like I throw my line in the water when I turn my app on — and I wait for the hit. And when I tap my screen, it’s like setting the hook. And then … and when I pick them up, it’s like reeling them in.”

And sometimes she catches a big Brooklyn fish.

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