When Zachary Bretz and his now-fiancee moved to Park City during the pandemic, they found an idyllic mountain town, but one with a problem: His partner, who often traveled for business, struggled to find Lyft or Uber drivers who would actually show up for scheduled rides to the airport.

Bretz often ended up taking her to Salt Lake City International himself. He began to notice that outside of Uber and Lyft, the other options for private rides were expensive car services, which were often tailored to the ski town’s affluent guests.

“I just thought, why is there nobody in that kind of in-between space offering reliability?” Bretz recalls.

Bretz decided he’d be the one to give Parkites another option. Now, about three years after his The Park City App company started, he is the state’s only private competitor licensed as a transportation network company to shake up the duopoly of rideshare apps. While rides from his app may cost more, he said his drivers receive a larger share of fares — 80% — which he believes leads to better, more reliable service for customers.

Bretz has wondered why no one else is taking on Uber and Lyft. Maybe they’re “smarter than I am,” he joked.

But Bretz thinks the app can work out for passengers and his nearly 20 drivers — even as he concedes he’s fighting an “uphill battle for communicating value” against the two rideshare behemoths.

“My attitude has always been, this is America,” he said. “If you have a dream and some tenacity and some capability, you can try anything.”

The Park City App has been downloaded 17,700 times, Bretz said, and has a 4.7-star out of 5 rating from 95 reviews in the Apple App store. Redditors have sung its praises, with one commenter encouraging people to use the app to “know your money is staying local vs going to big faceless corps who share only a tiny bit with the drivers.”

Reliability, at a cost

A Salt Lake Tribune analysis of prices for rideshares between downtown Park City and the Salt Lake City airport at 6 a.m. on a March Saturday showed that Bretz’s app charged about the same as Uber, at $76 for a standard ride. Lyft’s was around $10 less.

For a ride expected within minutes of ordering on a Friday afternoon in March, the Park City App stayed at $76, while Uber’s price was around $67 and Lyft was about $49.

People making the roughly 30-mile journey from Park City can also take a bus, but that requires one or two transfers and can take up to two hours. Private car services often charge well over $100.

And Uber and Lyft do work — but not all the time, Bretz said.

He said he can understand the mindset of an Uber or Lyft driver who might have second thoughts after agreeing to do an early-morning ride from Park City to the airport.

If that driver lives in the more affordable Salt Lake Valley, they would need to wake up in time to drive their empty car up I-80 before retrieving the passenger in Park City and heading back west to the airport. All of that to wind up with about $30, after the rideshare companies take their share.

“A driver who maybe the day before thought, ‘I don’t mind. I’ll make the $28.’ Well, when it’s time to wake up and do that drive, it doesn’t feel as good,” Bretz said.

But, he said, “If we pay the drivers more, they’re going to be more committed to the ride.”

“If we can build a service around reliability — and that’s what people want, especially when it comes to airport transportation — then I think we’ve got a solid business.”

Lyft‘s website states that its drivers typically earn between the mid-$20s to low-$30s per hour during what it calls “engaged time” – that is, when a driver is on a trip or en route to picking up a passenger. It also offers an “on-time pickup promise,” that provides riders a $100 credit if their airport pickup is more than 10 minutes late.

Uber doesn’t post an hourly figure on its website, but it does offer strategies for “maximizing your earnings,” like using its heat maps to accept trips in busy areas to take advantage of price surges.

The Park City App offers fixed fares, and doesn’t surge prices according to demand.

And, the big companies’ numbers can be deceiving. A 2024 study from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center found California gig passenger drivers’ median hourly employee-equivalent wage was $5.97 without tips and $7.63 with tips.

Neither Lyft nor Uber responded to The Tribune’s requests for comment.

Bretz declined to share revenue figures, but said ridership has been increasing steadily. He said his company booked 302 rides in January 2024, 697 in January 2025, and 823 last January. And he thinks the 2026 number would’ve been higher if not for Utah’s record-low snow totals.

Airport rides constitute the greatest share of Bretz’s business, but passengers can use the service to go elsewhere, like to a Jazz or Mammoth game or to a bar. Still, Bretz said, his service likely wouldn’t be a good way to get home from bars, since the company has fewer drivers to respond to immediate requests.

Charles Li started driving for The Park City App just over a year ago, after one of his Uber customers referred him to Bretz.

He said he likes this gig better because he can develop relationships with the regulars.

“We know who the customer is. It makes both ways easier.” With Uber, Li said, “you never know who the next customer will be.”

He also enjoys the extra money. Sometimes, Li said, Uber would take more than half of a fare. That’s not the case with The Park City App, which takes about 20%.

Getting licensed to rideshare

Early on, Bretz was the company’s lone driver. He wanted to test his app, and his business concept, so he gave rides away for free for four weeks. It was also a way to build a customer base, like a grocery store offering free samples.

The first version of the app operated through a “ground transportation model,” in which Bretz would dispatch drivers to scheduled rides. This was expensive, he said, because he had to carry commercial liability insurance on those vehicles, and it didn’t offer the flexibility of rideshare companies.

As Bretz started getting more interest from drivers, he applied to the state to become a “registered transportation network company,” which allows drivers to become independent contractors who can accept rides from the app. The drivers are also responsible for their own vehicles’ insurance.

To get that designation, he had to provide paperwork, including his company’s drug and alcohol policy and documentation of its fare methodology, and pay a $5,000 fee.

Utah Department of Commerce spokesperson Ashley Beyer said getting such a license is “extremely rare,” but she added that the state Division of Consumer Protection, which oversees these applications, was “unaware of any declined applications.”

Outside of Uber, Lyft and The Park City App, the state’s only other transportation network company license holder is River North Transit, which operates the Utah Transit Authority’s On Demand services. UTA On Demand is available in southern Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City’s westside, Tooele County, south Davis County and west Provo and Orem.

Not just a rideshare app

Lynn Kelley, a Park City resident, has been using the Park City App for years, ever since Bretz was doing almost all the driving.

Kelley travels a lot for work, she said, and relatives often visit her in Utah. She said in the past, she would find a car service that suited her for a while, but then they “would start to experience difficulties” like canceled rides, poor service or rising prices. She needed to find “somebody I can depend on.” So, she gave Park City App a try.

Bretz “was so friendly. He was always on time. He was accommodating.”

A few years later, she said, the rides are still as reliable. And when she has had an issue, such as getting a receipt for reimbursement, or a slight delay getting family members from the airport, she’s been able to contact Bretz to make it right.

Kelley, who has spent her career working on process improvement for large companies, said: “That kind of attitude, I think, is the kind you really want in a business owner.”

She has paid as much as $88 for a Park City App ride to the airport, or as little as $55. She typically requests a mid-tier, heavier-duty vehicle in the winter, which costs more. And over time, she has developed relationships with the drivers. “I don’t know how he gets such good, friendly, reliable drivers,” Kelley said, “but they’ve all been top-notch.”

Bretz said word-of-mouth marketing has been key to the company’s growth. About 90% of their clientele is local. If he had the budget, Bretz said, he’d advertise to get more tourists, but the thin margins make that difficult for now.

Bretz, who built the app and funded the company himself, said most of the company’s revenue comes from rideshare, but he has also expanded the app’s services — letting users schedule ski lessons and baby sitters. Maybe one day, he said, it’ll host dog walkers and beyond.

Until then, he plans to get there, and grow the app, one ride at a time.