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Title: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: cov_bloke on January 27, 2008, 12:01:10 PM I'm in a rut and I'm thinking of a career change. The idea of driving a black-cab appeals to me. Can you give me a bit of info?
(1) What's the best way to get started? (2) Is it better to buy your own taxi (and what are the associated costs)? (3) Do you get to chose your own working hours? (4) Can it be a decent earner at certain times, e.g. weekend nights? (5) What's it like as a job? Cheers. Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: taximan007 on January 27, 2008, 02:57:32 PM What Licensing area do you live in?
Are Hackney Carriages Regulated or De-Regulated where you Live? Do you have to have a "London Cab" in the district that you wish to work or are saloon cars allowed as "taxis" Depending on where you are working it can be one of the best jobs you've ever had, then again it could be one of the worst. If you are in Coventry these links give you the information you require before you even get started. http://www.coventry.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/business/licensing-and-registration/taxi-and-minicab-licences/ http://www.coventry.gov.uk/ccm/content/city-development-directorate/planning-%26-transportation/planning-and-transportation/taxi-and-minicab-licencing/licensing-632.en http://www.coventry.gov.uk/ccm/content/city-development-directorate/planning-%26-transportation/planning-and-transportation/taxi-and-minicab-licencing/licensing-635.en Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 03:37:23 PM I have run my own Private hire taxi company (mini-cabs) not black cabs (hackney carridges) for the last 17 years i also drove a mini-cab prior to starting out on my own. My company currently operate 100 PH vehicles with 161 drivers, i will try to answer your questions as best i can:
(1) What's the best way to get started? In most cases you would be required to apply for either a local private hire drivers license/badge or a hackney license depending on the type of vehicle you want to drive. Your local council will have have a licensing department that will give you all of the relevant application forms, you may also be required to undertake a medical and knowledge test of your local area but local authorities differ across the country. My local council also require a criminal records bureau (CRB) check to be carried out on you but again your council will advise you on this. (2) Is it better to buy your own taxi (and what are the associated costs)? Definitely not to begin with, i have hired at least 2000 drivers during my time as a company owner, in this time i have often started drivers on a Monday and they haven't lasted out the first week!i also have drivers that have been at my company since i started out on my own. You will find out very quickly wether its the job for you or not. If you decide that this is the job for you after giving it at least 3/4 months then consider getting your own vehicle. Costs vary around the country but your council will be able to tell you of all relevant costs. (3) Do you get to chose your own working hours? Taxi company's differ on working hours but generally a company will use either: (a) free calling shifts, where you can come and go as you please or (b) Fixed shifts, where you are allocated shift times. (4) Can it be a decent earner at certain times, e.g. weekend nights? Yes it can but you do have to work hard, historically taxi drivers work 12 hour shifts but there is not normally a minimum requirement, it does very much depend on the company you chose to work for. 6am-6pm or 6pm-6am tend to be the norm among many drivers, night shift drivers at my company can expect to take between £15-£25 per hour, day shift drivers take between £12-15 per hour. (5) What's it like as a job? Same as most jobs you'll either love it or hate it, it really depends on you!, most of my long term successful taxi drivers are chatty, enjoy meeting a wide variety of people, helpful, pleasant and polite it also helps to know your way around your local area, sat nav systems are good but there is nothing better than local knowledge to avoid traffic hot spots. My company does not own it's own vehicles, they are individually owned and often driven by up to 3 drivers, the owner can chose to let what we refer to as commission drivers, drive his car for him. I vet all drivers wether owners or commission, the owner pay's what is known as a radio rent to my company and he keeps all the fares taken when he drives his car. commission drivers are paid a % of what they take in fares, the %'s our drivers earn ranges between 40% and 50% and the rest less cost's ie. fuel/oil etc. goes to the owner of the vehicle he is driving for, but be aware that how you are paid differs from company to company. Black cab's in my area don't necessarily work for any particular company as they are licensed to be flagged down by passengers ie. hailed, this is the main difference between PH (mini-cabs) that are not licensed to be hailed, and hackney carridges (black cabs). Hope this helps. Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: taximan007 on January 27, 2008, 04:28:55 PM :goodpost:
"night shift drivers at my company can expect to take between £15-£25 per hour, day shift drivers take between £12-15 per hour." Just wondering is that Gross take or Nett? If it's Nett I will be coming to drive for you upon my return ;) Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Ironside on January 27, 2008, 04:42:54 PM cupcake drives black cabs in london
Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 04:55:16 PM New people coming into the taxi trade often have concerns regarding their personal safety whilst driving, in my experience most peoples fears are generally uncalled for. My company carries out more than 10,000 individual bookings per week, the vast majority of these go without any form of problem.
During my time in the trade i am only aware of a hand full of serious incidents in my area, one particular drunken idiot decided to kick the car repeatedly and hurl verbal abuse towards the lady driver. Within a couple of months i watched in court as he was sentenced to 6 months in prison! good on em. Different area's will obviously be more prone to problems than mine, if this is a concern of your's remember it's better to always try to defuse any conflict by talking your way out of a sticky situation. Secondly, in cab CCTV is now widely available for taxi's. All my car's are GPS tracked so if a driver was in trouble he is able to press a secret button to alert my control room staff and all my other taxi's, of any emergency situation taking place. This has proved very effective in the past when a trouble causer suddenly finds himself surrounded by a gang of hairy arse Cabbie's.... conflict, what conflict? Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 04:58:15 PM :goodpost: "night shift drivers at my company can expect to take between £15-£25 per hour, day shift drivers take between £12-15 per hour." Just wondering is that Gross take or Nett? If it's Nett I will be coming to drive for you upon my return ;) Definitely gross, or I'd consider going out driving myself.....again! Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 05:28:27 PM Probably the biggest moan amongst existing taxi drivers is "feeding", IE. where another driver is getting better jobs than the driver that's doing the moaning. This is often because he's either a special friend of the taxi controller or more than likely the driver that is getting the better jobs is because he is driving a company owned car.
This situation is wide spread among the taxi community world wide, however it can easily be overcome, 1. Try to chose a company that don't operate their own vehicles, 2. Try to chose a company that operate a computerised booking and auto-despatch computer system, the computer that auto-despatches bookings doesn't have any special friends it just despatches the next job in line to the closest available free vehicle. Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Ironside on January 27, 2008, 08:19:47 PM one thing that always gets me about taxi driving is that taxi crivers still need to pay petrol
lets say this coming weekend i am going to nottinham the taxi i get is about 25 mins from airport to hotel the taxidriver then has to drive back to airport empty so for 1 hour he gets £27 and has to pay petrol and the firm for that money there cant be all that much money being a cabbie often i see the same car on the same rank for over 30 mins gets a quick job £2-3 then is back in the rank for another 30 mins + i just dont know how taxi drivers can make a working wage Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: byronkincaid on January 27, 2008, 08:30:56 PM I understand you can make a grand a week as a london black cab driver if you work your nuts off, getting harder to do tho apparently
Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 08:48:44 PM one thing that always gets me about taxi driving is that taxi crivers still need to pay petrol lets say this coming weekend i am going to nottinham the taxi i get is about 25 mins from airport to hotel the taxidriver then has to drive back to airport empty so for 1 hour he gets £27 and has to pay petrol and the firm for that money there cant be all that much money being a cabbie often i see the same car on the same rank for over 30 mins gets a quick job £2-3 then is back in the rank for another 30 mins + i just dont know how taxi drivers can make a working wage I have some vehicles regularly taking (gross) around £2,000 per week, they work about 12 of the possible 14 shifts available, with up to 3 drivers working them. Several single driver cars often take about £1000 per week, honest guv it's true. Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 08:54:11 PM I understand you can make a grand a week as a london black cab driver if you work your nuts off, getting harder to do tho apparently This is also true, i was recently speaking to a London cabbie at the airport in Malaga, costa del sol, he worked thursday's, friday's and saturday's driving a London black cab, the rest of the week he spent in Marbella taking it easy. Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 08:59:34 PM Many cab drivers will not tell you their true earnings because:
1. Fear of getting robbed 2. Fear of the tax man 3. Fear of more people becoming taxi driver's.....more drivers means less customers for him=less money for him. All true guv....honest. Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 09:03:31 PM I just read this whole thread again....it looks like i finally found a subject that i know what i'm talking about...LOL...about time too.
Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 27, 2008, 09:08:31 PM Just don't start asking about funny taxi driver stories or i'll be here all night! I got some crackers tho....LOL
Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Graham C on January 27, 2008, 11:32:08 PM go on, just one ;)
(the best one mind) Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: taximan007 on January 28, 2008, 07:08:51 AM In most areas taxi drivers can earn a very good wage providing they are prepared to do the hours, (40 hour week never existed when I was driving).
There are good times and bad times on taxi ranks, and I should imagine they are pretty much the same nationwide, obviously weekend night times tend to be the best but not always. I always found the best way to look at a taxi drivers "wage" was to look at the total for the whole week. If you started to analyse it on an hourly rate it would do your head in ;) as more often than not you would be working for less than minimum wage!!!!!! That said, driving/owning a taxi was the best job I ever had, thoroughly enjoyed it. (I also owned a P/H company for 4 years thats another story !!!!!). Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 28, 2008, 10:46:55 AM go on, just one ;) (the best one mind) Ok here's one that always makes me laugh, but a bit of back ground info first: My company started trading from a council house kitchen on a local housing estate, 1 car, 1 driver, and 1 person on the phone, before the end of our third month we got ourselves evicted. The neighbours were complaining about the noisy diesel cars (can't really blame them) coming and going at all hours, we had managed to get up to running 3 taxis by now though, and i knew that a move into town was imminent, in these early days all the taxi's were mine. We moved into a very small office just away from the city centre, we stayed there for a year or so building upto a fleet of 8 or 9 cars. Things at this time got a little out of control as my fleet size was growing without a proper infrastructure being in place, we quickly out grew our second office before the end of my second year. Then out of the blue another taxi company who were working from the the city's longest serving taxi office, approached me to see if i would be interested in buying them out. Their company had a good reputation and a great office location so of course i was interested, unfortunately all my money had gone into expanding our fleet which was now upto about 18 or so cars, it was an opportunity that i couldn't refuse and ended up just buying the lease for their office and not the taxi business with all it's car's. Once i got moved into our 3rd office in less than 3 years, we started to attract quite a lot more drivers, more often than not these drivers were experienced and at one time or another had worked for the company that were in my new office before me. Now onto the main story: One of these drivers was Trevor, a middle aged, over weight, unwashed, string vest and all, typical taxi driver type, Trevor was a compulsive liar, you could tell when he was lying.....because his lip's moved, all the lad's made Trevor the butt of their jokes and it all seemed like harmless fun. A job came in off the phone from a local radio station, it was to pick up a national celebrity from the train station and take him to the radio HQ for a live interview, i told all the lad's about the job and also that he was live on the radio in an hour or so. Trevor was the next driver out so he was the lucky driver to go and pick the celebrity up, the job went well and the celebrity was delivered safe and sound with plenty of time to spare. Just before the start of the live interview Trevor arrived back at the office, within a few minutes the interview began and about 10 of the drivers were eagerly listening in on the office radio: Radio dj: welcome Mr x how are you? Celeb: I'm fine thanks dj: how was your journey? c: pretty extraordinary actually! We all look at Trevor and our ears pricked up.... the interview carried on dj: can you elaborate? c: yes, i came up from London on the train and was picked up from the train station by the nicest taxi driver i've ever had the pleasure of travelling with dj: yes please carry on c: well it turns out the taxi driver had just won £500,000 on the football pools last weekend..... At this point all the drivers and i look at Trevor just as he's starting to change colour, he changes from his normal dirty beige colour to several shades of pink and eventually crimson, Trevor doesn't say a word!....and the interview continues: dj: what?........and he's still driving a taxi for a living? c: yes.....i was amazed too! so i asked him why he was still driving taxi's and not sat on a beach in the Bahama's somewhere living the life of Riley?..... the driver told me that he didn't drive taxi's for the money and that he only did it for pin money! dj: what a great story c: he also told me that he would miss his work colleagues immensely if he wasn't to have the normal day to day banter with the other drivers. Trevor certainly had a lot of banter with the drivers after that pork pie! Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 28, 2008, 10:51:32 AM In most areas taxi drivers can earn a very good wage providing they are prepared to do the hours, (40 hour week never existed when I was driving). There are good times and bad times on taxi ranks, and I should imagine they are pretty much the same nationwide, obviously weekend night times tend to be the best but not always. I always found the best way to look at a taxi drivers "wage" was to look at the total for the whole week. If you started to analyse it on an hourly rate it would do your head in ;) as more often than not you would be working for less than minimum wage!!!!!! That said, driving/owning a taxi was the best job I ever had, thoroughly enjoyed it. (I also owned a P/H company for 4 years thats another story !!!!!). Good post! best job i ever did too....i have also been an electrician, second hand cars saleman, and also worked as a canvasser. Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 28, 2008, 11:00:18 AM The trouble with taxi stories is that their all long and i can't type very fast!
Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 28, 2008, 12:54:53 PM go on, just one ;) (the best one mind) OK here's one that always makes me laugh, but a bit of back ground info first: My company started trading from a council house kitchen on a local housing estate, 1 car, 1 driver, and 1 person on the phone, before the end of our third month we got ourselves evicted. The neighbours were complaining about the noisy diesel cars (can't really blame them) coming and going at all hours, we had managed to get up to running 3 taxis by now though, and i knew that a move into town was imminent, in these early days all the taxi's were mine. We moved into a very small office just away from the city centre, we stayed there for a year or so building Upton a fleet of 8 or 9 cars. Things at this time got a little out of control as my fleet size was growing without a proper infrastructure being in place, we quickly out grew our second office before the end of my second year. Then out of the blue another taxi company who were working from the the city's longest serving taxi office, approached me to see if i would be interested in buying them out. Their company had a good reputation and a great office location so of course i was interested, unfortunately all my money had gone into expanding our fleet which was now Upton about 18 or so cars, it was an opportunity that i couldn't refuse and ended up just buying the lease for their office and not the taxi business with all it's car's. Once i got moved into our 3rd office in less than 3 years, we started to attract quite a lot more drivers, more often than not these drivers were experienced and at one time or another had worked for the company that were in my new office before me. Now onto the main story: One of these drivers was Trevor, a middle aged, over weight, unwashed, string vest and all, typical taxi driver type, Trevor was a compulsive liar, you could tell when he was lying.....because his lip's moved, all the lad's made Trevor the butt of their jokes and it all seemed like harmless fun. A job came in off the phone from a local radio station, it was to pick up a national celebrity from the train station and take him to the radio HQ for a live interview, i told all the lad's about the job and also that he was live on the radio in an hour or so. Trevor was the next driver out so he was the lucky driver to go and pick the celebrity up, the job went well and the celebrity was delivered safe and sound with plenty of time to spare. Just before the start of the live interview Trevor arrived back at the office, within a few minutes the interview began and about 10 of the drivers were eagerly listening in on the office radio: Radio DJ: welcome Mr x how are you? Celeb: I'm fine thanks DJ: how was your journey? c: pretty extraordinary actually! We all look at Trevor and our ears pricked up.... the interview carried on DJ: can you elaborate? c: yes, i came up from London on the train and was picked up from the train station by the nicest taxi driver I've ever had the pleasure of travelling with DJ: yes please carry on c: well it turns out the taxi driver had just won £500,000 on the football pools last weekend..... At this point all the drivers and i look at Trevor just as he's starting to change colour, he changes from his normal dirty beige colour to several shades of pink and eventually crimson, Trevor doesn't say a word!....and the interview continues: DJ: what?........and he's still driving a taxi for a living? c: yes.....i was amazed too! so i asked him why he was still driving taxi's and not sat on a beach in the Bahama's somewhere living the life of Riley?..... the driver told me that he didn't drive taxi's for the money and that he only did it for pin money! DJ: what a great story c: he also told me that he would miss his work colleagues immensely if he wasn't to have the normal day to day banter with the other drivers. Trevor certainly had a lot of banter with the drivers after that pork pie! Ps. To this day Trevor still maintains that he did win the pools.....he say's that he "just didn't want to say anything to the lads for fear they would no longer treat him like a normal cabbie.......Trevor was and still is far from being a normal cabbie! Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: taximan007 on January 28, 2008, 01:45:39 PM Every taxi company has a Trevor.
Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Graham C on January 28, 2008, 02:03:20 PM lol good story :D
Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 28, 2008, 02:21:36 PM Every taxi company has a Trevor. Mine's had more than it's fair share over the year's!...LOL Title: Re: Do you know someone who drives a black cab for a living? Post by: Card_Shark on January 28, 2008, 04:15:47 PM Just after moving in to my new office's, i was sat in the control room alone at about 6.30 am when i heard the sound of rain, the phone rang and i answered it, when i finished the call i looked out of the window but no rain, hang on a minute i can still hear it? i was very confused.
..... Ahhhh must be a leak from the guttering at the front of the building, i go outside to investigate. No the guttering was fine, i returned into the waiting room to find a lady tramp squatting in corner surrounded by a huge puddle of pee........Errrrr! WTF's going on here?, i shouted at her....she totally ignored me and just carried on peeing! i walked into the store cupboard and presented the tramp with a mop and bucket as well as a large bottle of bleach...... she looked gob smacked at me.... i told her that this is not a public convenience and she was going to be cleaning up her own mess. I stood over her and gave my instruction while she cleaned the mess up, when she had finished, she apologised and then went on her way. I still haven't seen her again to this day, that would be 14 year's ago! |