Yesterday, I leased a cab for 24 hours. My company only had one. I had a few things happen that has made me want to get out of this taxi business. First, the fact that I had 1 cab to choose from. If I hadn’t arrived around 5:00 a.m. in the morning, I probably wouldn’t of had that choice.
The second issue is when I got the cab, the engine light was on. I took it to the garage to have the foreman look at it. He opened the hood, took out three electrical wires, waited about three minutes, and hooked it back up. The engine light wasn’t on (This is a little trick of theirs). As soon as I hit the highway, the engine light came back on. Not only did the light come back on, another light came on. It looked like a wrench (transmission).
The third issue I had today was at 4:00 a.m. the Gandolph machine stopped working. The Gandolph machine is the system taxi drivers use to process credit cards. I had to stop working. Now the lost of those two hours, I’m not going to get credit for. Why, you might ask? Because the company just won’t. So that two hours of my lease I can’t get refunded back. There is no one available to fix this problem at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. When I got to the garage, I found out a lot of drivers were effected.
Here is an account of what my income was like for 12-17-2011
24 Hour Lease
Expenses
Lease – $93.00
Gas – $46.72
Total Expenses = $139.42
Income:
$20.00
$39.65 (credit card)
$17.00
$17.49
$9.00
$11.00
$23.00
$37.75
$42.06
$42.00
$12.00
$10.31 (credit card)
$12.00
$10.00
$20.00
$8.00
$9.00
Total ?Income = $335.47 (minus 5% for credit cards)
If Mayor Rahm Emanuel knew anything about the taxi industry in Chicago, he might think twice about his taxi reform. Does he really think cab drivers want to work more than twelve hours a day? Cab drivers work more than twelve hours of day because that is what it takes to even earn a decent living.
The city wants to do away with the twenty-four hour lease because cab drivers are using the?vehicles?for personal use. This is one example of how out of touch Mayor Emanuel is. It’s not that cab drivers are leasing the cab twenty-four hours to use it for personal use. Cab drivers are leasing the cab for twenty-four hours because of supply and demand. There is a greater demand for cabs because of the supply of chauffeur licences the City of Chicago issues out. The supply of licences far outstrips the available medallions that the City of Chicago issued out.
Is Mayor Emanuel not aware of the supply of Crude Oil that’s available in the world? Does he not know that the price of gas is going to go up over the years? Yet, he doesn’t want to raise the taxi fairs? This is why the so called 99% are so angry at politicians. They seem to be clueless to the struggles of the working people.
Today I woke up at 4:15 a.m. in order to get at the airport at 5:00 a.m. My plan was to increase my income. My first fair was at 6:45 a.m. to Ashland & Wrightwood. After the fair, I stopped to eat breakfast and by a Venti “Black-eye” at Starbucks. As soon as I finished, it started raining. The drive back to O’hare was a one hour drive. Upon arriving, I decided to get some rest. It continued to rain for the next two hours. When I woke up, there were cab drivers who had left from their waiting lanes and left gaps in the lanes. That is when cab drivers in further lanes started filling in the gaps. The drivers were in essence leaping ahead of other cab drivers in lanes who couldn’t move their cabs. This created chaos as cab drivers were upset at the other drivers who were taking advantage of the opportunity. The airport supervisor had to be called. The supervisor ended up moving the first four lanes to be the last lanes.
