The company\u2019s reports to the city show that it paid workers as little as<\/a> between $3.67 and $4.67 per hour in May, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection alleges in its lawsuit. At a court hearing on Thursday, Motoclick\u2019s lawyers admitted to not paying workers for their on call time and said that 90 percent of their business comes from \u201coverflow\u201d from the big apps \u2013 the company specifically mentioned UberEats and DoorDash. Motoclick gets those delivery assignments via a third-party marketplace.<\/p>\n \u201cMotoclick admits that it does not pay for on-call time, it is brazenly violating the minimum pay law,\u201d DCWP Deputy Commissioner Elizabeth Wagoner told Streetsblog after the hearing. \u201cWe are hopeful the court will issue an injunction so Motoclick can no longer subcontract orders from larger apps who are benefitting from Motoclick\u2019s illegal conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n The alleged subcontracting raises more questions than answers. Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub denied having any contractual relationship with Motoclick. Uber said that other middleman companies could be facilitating the relationship indirectly without Uber\u2019s knowledge.<\/p>\n \u201cSome merchants that use Uber Eats choose to arrange their own delivery fulfillment rather than use Uber\u2019s network of delivery workers,\u201d said company spokesman Josh Gold. \u201cThose merchants may use third-party delivery orchestration services, such as Cartwheel or Shipday, which route deliveries to independent logistics providers. If Motoclick fulfilled Uber Eats orders, it may have done so through one of those merchant-selected orchestration services, not through a direct relationship with Uber.\u201d<\/p>\n And DoorDash said it is against policy for a third party to make deliveries placed through its platform. <\/p>\n \u201cIf a restaurant on our platform were to use a third party for delivery, like Motoclick, they would be in violation of our terms and conditions, which we strictly enforce,\u201d said company spokesperson Samantha Ramirez. \u201cAny restaurant found to be violating contract terms faces a potential removal from our platform.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Motoclick\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer, Alan Chaparro, alleges in court filings that customers can place an order through a major delivery app and a Motoclick worker could show up. <\/p>\n \u201cOther companies in the restaurant delivery industry will use a third-party marketplace to hire Motoclick to complete specific restaurant deliveries when it makes more sense economically not to dispatch one of its own workers, based upon factors such as availability of a delivery worker being close by,\u201d the filing reads. \u201cOver 90 percent of our revenue comes from handling overflow deliveries for the dominant platforms such as DoorDash and Uber Eats.\u201d<\/p>\n Gold says this is because when a restaurant selects a middleman company to do deliveries both the customer and the other delivery app companies are in the dark. <\/p>\n \u201c[A merchant can] select a middleman who picks the best delivery option for them in real time. So, yes, the restaurant doesn\u2019t know. Nor do we. In fact, we are also trying to secure deliveries from some of those companies because we want the work and it harms us when companies like Motoclick are subverting the market and taking work from us,\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n The city began investigating Motoclick in February 2024 after receiving complaints about violations of the minimum wage laws from over 20 workers. Thursday\u2019s court proceedings lasted around five hours and consisted of cross examination of an anonymous delivery worker, who is a plaintiff in the case, and DCWP economist Michael Papadopoulos.<\/p>\n The most interesting revelations were about Motoclick\u2019s business model, which the city claims \u201csubverts\u201d the minimum wage law, which successfully<\/a> raised take-home pay for workers.<\/p>\n \u201cSo long as apps have an option to subcontract to workers getting underpaid, that will incentivize Motoclick\u2019s marketshare to grow,\u201d John De Vito, senior enforcement counsel at DCWP, testified. \u201cEvery order that goes to Motoclick is not going to a DoorDash worker or an Uber Eats worker. They are subverting the entire market. We can\u2019t even estimate the harm.\u201d<\/p>\n Motoclick claims that it comprises just 2 percent of the entire delivery market in New York City, but the revelation of the middleman scheme could have huge consequences for the pay standard. When Relay, another business to business app that has since shuttered operations in NYC, was exempt from the pay standard in 2024, it led to a vast subcontracting scheme by Grubhub, a Streetsblog investigation<\/a> revealed.<\/p>\n When one company is held to a different standard it degrades conditions for all workers, one expert said. <\/p>\n \u201cThat practice would clearly undermine the viability of the pay standard and would also erode the pay and the working conditions of the workers on the larger apps,\u201d said James Parrott, a senior fellow at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. \u201cIt\u2019s only a matter of time that the whole industry would be dragged down.\u201d <\/p>\n Wagoner and the city\u2019s legal team went into the hearing convinced that it would win an injunction, which gives Motoclick the option to either come into compliance or shut down, sources in the Department told Streetsblog. But federal Magistrate Judge Stewart Aaron is waiting to rule on the requested injunction until after Aug. 5, when Motoclick\u2019s Chaparro will appear for cross examination.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like Motoclick is an addiction they can\u2019t quit,\u201d Aaron said of the workers choosing to sign up and work for the app. \u201cThey can just stop doing deliveries. You\u2019re asking to basically shut [Motoclick] down, which would have the effect of a win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a new game of Whack-a-Mole. Large delivery app companies and middle men are subverting the hard-won delivery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,52479],"class_list":["post-307670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-promoted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Delivery-worker-guatemala-e-bike.jpg\")
A delivery worker on an e-bike in New York City Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n