The official yardstick
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program surveys employers across the San Antonio–New Braunfels metro. In its May 2025 release, transportation and material-moving jobs overall — the big group that includes truck drivers, delivery drivers, and movers — averaged $21.23 an hour in San Antonio. Two years earlier, in May 2023, the same group averaged $19.66. Driving pay here is rising, but slowly.
Averages blend the best and worst jobs in the group, and they describe employees. Contractor earnings — Flex blocks, rideshare, courier routes in your own car — are gross receipts before your vehicle costs, which is why the two kinds of numbers below should never be compared as if they were the same thing.
Couriers and messengers: $19.58 an hour on average
The most delivery-specific occupation BLS publishes for this metro is couriers and messengers — the category that covers package couriers and medical couriers running specimens, records, and medications between facilities. May 2025: an average of $19.58 an hour, $40,720 a year, across about 320 couriers employed in the metro.
It is steady, route-based work, and the average hides a split: employee couriers at big firms earn differently from independent route contractors, whose hourly figure has to absorb their own car.
Mail carriers: the top of this list at $29.81
The strongest official number in non-CDL driving belongs to the Postal Service. BLS counts about 2,030 postal service mail carriers in the San Antonio metro earning an average of $29.81 an hour — $62,010 a year. That average reflects a workforce with many senior carriers in it; entry-level City Carrier Assistants start below it and climb. Even accounting for that, no other CDL-free driving job in the federal data for this metro comes close, which is why the USPS door stays competitive despite its slow hiring process.
What the companies claim
Two published figures cover the gig side. Amazon states that most Amazon Flex drivers earn between $18 and $25 per hour. Uber's San Antonio page cites a median of $24.12 per hour for local drivers, measured over September 21 to October 19, 2026.
Both are the companies' own numbers, presented the way companies present numbers. Both are gross — before fuel, maintenance, tires, and the self-employment tax a contractor pays on top of income tax. And Uber's figure is a median during a specific four-week window that included strong fall demand; a February weekday median would read differently. Use the claims as the ceiling of a good week, not the expectation for every week.
Gross is not take-home for gig drivers
If you drive your own vehicle for Flex, rideshare, or courier routes, your real wage is the gross minus the car: fuel, oil, tires, brakes, depreciation, and the extra insurance questions app driving raises. Drivers who track every mile and every expense know their number to the dollar — and it is always lower than the app's headline. Our truck driver tax guide covers the record-keeping and deductions that protect that margin, and most of it applies to gig drivers too.
The comparison that matters
Put the verified pieces together and San Antonio's non-CDL driving ladder reads like this: gig and courier work clusters around the high teens to low twenties an hour gross, employee delivery averages near the metro's $21.23 transportation average, and a postal career tops the group at a $29.81 average. The next step up is not another app — it is a CDL. Our CDL pay guide lays out what local, regional, and specialized truck driving pays in San Antonio, and the gap between the two ladders is the whole argument for the license.
Every deductible mile you do not record is income you gave back. Our tax and per-diem guide shows the record-keeping that works — most of it applies to delivery and rideshare drivers too.
Read the tax guide