For Brittney Barber, getting ready for work means assembling several casseroles for her extended family — husband, son, nephew and mother-in-law — packing an overnight bag, and loading up her gray Honda Fit for the 3½-hour drive from her home in Clovis (Fresno County) to San Francisco.

After that 190-mile commute, it’s time to get to work — driving.

Barber, 35, drives for Lyft and Uber. She comes to the city most weeks to put in three or four long days behind the wheel, spending nights at a friend’s house in Half Moon Bay. Working 12 to 16 hours a day, she can pull in up to $1,700 after Lyft and Uber take their cuts, but before deducting for gas and other expenses. That’s 70 percent more than what her homebody husband, Tom, 41, makes driving for the services back in Fresno.

Sheer willpower propels Barber, a bubbly woman who is saving her tips to help with expenses to finalize her and Tom’s adoption of their son Ethan, 7. “I don’t typically love driving, but the money is so good,” she said. “My drive to succeed is so high that my adrenaline keeps me going.” She is careful to stop when she can’t keep her eyes open. “I’ll drive in rain or any other weather conditions, but I will not drive when I’m sleepy,” she said.

She’s among hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers from the far corners of California who log ultra-long commutes to San Francisco.

A Chronicle review of San Francisco business registrations shows more than 1,960 drivers from outside the Bay Area, or almost 10 percent of an estimated 20,000 drivers in the city’s database. But because many drivers — possibly up to half — skip paying the $91 annual fee, the actual number is probably much higher. The biggest number who have registered hail from Sacramento County, almost two hours away, but there are drivers who come from as far south as San Diego and as far north as Redding.

A dense concentration of affluent, tech-savvy passengers, higher fares than other areas, frequent rate increases when demand is high, and incentive programs make the city alluring for ride-hail drivers.

Like Barber, many of the far-flung drivers commute to San Francisco weekly for a marathon stint of three or four 12- to 16-hour days. Often, they aim for bonuses tied to goals such as working 50 hours or totaling 120 rides a week. Some sleep in their cars and shower at gyms or sponge off in gas station restrooms; some cram together in cheap East Bay motels; some, like Barber, are lucky enough to bunk with friends.

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“You are actually married to the car,” said Mohammad, who commutes from San Joaquin County and asked to withhold his last name for privacy reasons. “It’s your bedroom, your living room, your shower. It’s hard, but what can I do? If you don’t drive enough hours, you don’t make nothing.”

The phenomenon shows that Uber and Lyft can be lucrative under the right circumstances for drivers who put in long hours. But it also raises concerns about people going to extreme measures to eke out a hardscrabble living.

“Essentially, these (long-commute) drivers are migrant workers,” said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at UC Hastings who studies ride-share drivers. “Wherever the rates take them, they go. They are just trying to get cash in hand to meet their most immediate needs.”

About a year ago, when ride-hail rates dropped in Los Angeles, Dubal noticed a sudden influx of Southern California drivers in San Francisco. “It is just so precarious,” she said. “It shows the irrationality of poverty; they’re not thinking about whether they’re even making money in the long term.”

The long-distance commute trend also raises concerns about drivers getting drowsy behind the wheel. Uber does not have any break requirements, although its app reminds drivers to take breaks. Lyft requires a six-hour break after 14 hours. But because many drivers use both services to land rides, they could easily work 24 or even 48 hours straight by switching between apps.

Both companies said in statements that drivers value the flexibility of setting their own schedules.

“Peak earning hours are often late at night and early in the morning,” Lyft said. “In order to maximize earnings, a very small fraction of drivers have told us they choose to rest in their cars in between these peak times.”

Uber noted that its community guidelines remind drivers that “driving when you’re drowsy can cause accidents. So if you ever feel tired take a break.”

Drowsy drivers are involved in one-fifth of U.S. fatal accidents, according to the AAA auto club. Crash risks increase along with the amount of missed sleep. People who get only four to five hours of sleep a night have the same crash risk as those who drive drunk.

No data are available on whether drowsy Uber and Lyft drivers cause accidents; the San Francisco Police Department does not keep statistics on accidents by ride-hailing drivers, nor do collision reports mention sleepiness as a factor. Unlike alcohol or drug impairment, which can be tested, a drowsy driver would have to voluntarily state that he or she dozed at the wheel.

“When you sleep two days in the car, you are not fresh, you are not relaxed,” said Tony, 60, who commutes from Modesto to work two, three or four days in a row for Uber, resting in his car. He asked to withhold his last name out of concern for relatives in Iran. “It makes us more tired, so we can’t use our time to do a good job.”

San Francisco became a ride-hailing hub for several reasons. It’s the hometown and one of the earliest markets for Uber and Lyft. It’s small and dense, so drivers have quick trips to pick up passengers. Its population of well-compensated early adopters makes for strong demand. That demand spurs frequent surges — times when rates rise. With many other services delivering packages, food and even pot, there’s competition for drivers, so Uber and Lyft offer bigger bonuses here than elsewhere.

“The bonus incentives for driving in San Francisco are pretty lucrative,” said Harry Campbell, a Los Angeles driver who runs The RideShare Guy blog and podcast. While bonuses change frequently, a common one is $500 for giving 120 rides in a week. In Los Angeles, the bonus for that many rides might be just $200, he said.

Even before the bonuses and surge pricing, San Francisco rates are about 50 percent higher than elsewhere in California. Nationwide, the average ride-hail trip is 12 minutes and 4.5 miles. Such a trip would net an Uber driver $7.40 after the company’s 25 percent cut, The RideShare Guy found. The same ride would bring in about $4.49 in Los Angeles; $4.37 in Fresno; and $4.38 in Sacramento.

Some far-flung drivers return home daily after a shift.

Sacramento single mom Anna McDowell, 25, drives for Lyft in San Francisco, working Thursday through Sunday. She leaves her home about 2 p.m., gets to the city a couple hours later and works until 6 a.m. the next day. Family and friends care for her daughters, Ally, 8 and Zoey, 4.

“There aren’t a lot of jobs here in Sacramento that pay well at all; just a lot of dead-end minimum-wage jobs,” she said. “To have decent work these days, you have to be willing to commute to the Bay Area.”

But that’s a good-news-bad-news scenario. “It definitely pays the bills,” she said. “But it is really far away. It’s hard on the girls. My oldest daughter hates that I’m gone so much.”

Far from resenting her long hours, Barber, the driver from Clovis, outside Fresno, is grateful she found a way to make decent money and help her and her husband create other businesses.

Besides her 40-plus hours of driving a week, Barber runs her own Etsy store, Custom Party Co., that sells items such as cupcake toppers and food picks. She brings her die-cut machine and card stock along with her and does the crafting to unwind after a long day on the road. Back in Fresno, between giving rides, her husband runs Tom’s Tropicals, a farm selling exotic fruit trees, also via Etsy.

“The reason we both drive is so we can work the smallest number of days to produce the largest amount of income and devote the rest of our time to our ultimate goals,” she said.

“We’ve never been so financially stable in our lives. We’re not spending our money; just salting it away.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid