Each night, independent contractors called juicers rush around the city with trailers and vehicles to collect the scooters for a fee and recharge them before they are put back into service the next day.
Juicers are paid for each scooter they collect, usually $5-$7.
Harvesting, as Lime calls it, the scooters can be highly competitive as juicers vie to collect the scooters.
Nick Borich uses his ute to collect up to 20 scooters a night, making on average about $140.
He estimated he had missed out nearly $1000 during the voluntary recall
"From a juicing perspective, this disruption has been really inconvenient."
As soon as the scooters were back on the streets, he would be back out collecting them.
"Ready and waiting, I'd say every juicer will be, too. It'll be hectic."
Mr Borich was also looking forward to using the scooters again.
"There have been so many opportunities this last week where I would've ridden a Lime and instead have had to drive."
But the recall has not been bad for all of the city's juicers.
Max North said it had given him a chance to relax and socialise at the weekend, which he would not have done if the scooters were still on the street.
He usually takes two nights off a week, usually on a weeknight when there were fewer scooters to collect.
"We had a chance to go to a friend's party on Saturday, something that we might otherwise not do because Saturday is usually a lucrative night in the Lime fields."
The break also gave him time to run some maintenance on the car and trailer he used.
Mr North used juicing as a "side-earner" and usually made between $400 and $500 a week.
Saturday nights were usually the most profitable but there were other nights where he just broke even, he said.
"It's fun as an extra side-earner but everyone keeps in mind it can, and temporarily did, evaporate overnight."
In a statement last week, Lime executive Mitchell Price thanked the company's community of juicers for their patience during the recall.
An update on the redeployment of the e-scooters would be made today, Mr Price said.
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Comments
Lots of juicers running round in a competitive environment to pick up scooters. Sounds very much like an uncoordinated free for all of vehicles in circulation, which further undermines any sustainability claim linked to these scooters. I don't dislike the scooters themselves but let's call a spade a spade. It would be greener if regular users had their own scooters.
Hardly something to encourage- driving more carbon dioxide emitting vehicles and trailers around the hills to pick up Lime litter.
No body to blame except Cull, Bidrose, Councillors and DCC Management. If they had bothered to do their jobs before the Limes landed - discuss them done a google search, came up with a requirement, asked people of Dunedin. and had a set of rules , guidelines and requirements, I honestly can't understand how these people have a job. It doesn't look good for the big dollar projects Dunedin has coming up if they can't manage the implementation of a simple thing like Limes. I'd love to see the MOU that Bidrose drafted for Limes, was it just crayon drawings? these people entrusted with running Dunedin, Like Staynes said I guess with the upcoming elections this year a lot of them will need to adapt to not having a job lets hope Dunedin remembers these clowns and votes them out because they are not worthy to be in such positions
But, you would say that. Every thing south of Port is a DCC failure. We know, R2.
It is not hard just a little planning, Anybody with a few clues or a little street wise could see this happening, Ideally NZTA should have taken charge of the Limes and decided how they will operate through out NZ. It would have saved this mess NZ now has. Also it would have saved a lot of confusion for people - . Again I still don't follow all of your little chime in's, some may call it the seagull effect.