Shortage

Shortage of taxi drivers, latest to hit the News headlines.

Said less than 50% of pre covid drivers have returned to the occupation!

I just wondered, as there is not a huge number of unemployed people, then many people who had worked in areas where shortages are now experienced, must have moved on to work in other areas. (I have read separately that a record percentage of people are intending to change occupation: job satisfaction seems to have really taken a hit!) So what occupations have all these leavers moved to take up?

Executive positions on Wigan Council...

Ena

In one word it is 'Logistics' taxi drivers are now delivering goods instead of people, parcels, food etc because goods don't fart in your vehicle, throw up, run away without paying, and in general are a pain in the arse, and that is just the women

Ex taxi drivers delivering goods can use their own vehicle, the only requirement being that they must have business insurance.
If they went back to taxiing, the fixed running costs for a Private Hire Vehicle are about £3000 a year, it is more for a Hackney Carriage, and on top of that you have your vehicle purchase and maintenance costs.

Then yoo have to go and do the bloody job, and put up with all the crap from people, and I don't just mean your customers, yoo have folk like Whupsy having a go at yoo too

On top of all that AGMA/Wigan Council are bringing in a new set of common rules and standards for taxis in Greater Manchester, inclooding Wigan, and from December 1st this year, three weeks from now, anyone wanting to licence a Private Hire Vehicle/Hackney Carriage in Wigan will have to have a vehicle under four years old, and it must be able to comply with the Greater Manchester clean air zone regulations, imagine how much that is going to cost someone, and they are doing that after the decimation of the taxi industry by Covid, which going off the daily infection rates, is far from over, and as regards existing vehicles, and the clean air zone, and charge for none compliant vehicles, that as been delayed by a year to April 1st 2023 because of Covid, and they have agreed to pay a small grant towards the cost of a replacement compliant vehicle, but that will be no where near the cost of such a vehicle.

So as regards meself and the taxi industry in Wigan, it was 'Goodbye and Farewell and Achoo'

I miss it as much as I would miss having a boil on me bum

maybe yoo can ask billy to come out of retirement .

Whupsy

He has been gone for years now.

TTS

Thanks for all the information.

I did not realise that you too had quit taxi driving.

Across all occupations, (well, almost all) folk are performing tasks which ultimately feed into promoting the wellbeing of all of us, so I feel sad to learn of people having dysphoric experience of their jobs.

i know that but if there short ? .

853 migrants crossed the Channel today and arrived in UK. Maybe they could help.

TTS...£3000 a year, where do you get that figure from, more like upwards of £13000 a year. Insurance £1500 + fuel £7000 + settle £5000 need takings of £260 just to break even, and that's not counting repairs, cleaning, licensing fees etc, I am glad I got out of it just before the pandemic hit, very lucky

Tommy2, mate of mine tried to get me into private hire 25 years ago. He lauded me how good it was, I saw his bagful's of cash on his setee and partly wish today i'd ave done it. Perhaps it might have been a good career move at that time?

Booked a taxi to take my granddaughter to school last Monday. He was an hour late said there was an accident just down the road and he would be 10 minutes. There was no accident. Ten minutes to school and 10 minutes return journey to bring me back home and it cost £20.

thaknows

I didn't know whether to include the 'settle' in the fixed costs, but I thought that the point is that a taxi is costing £3000 per year even if it is just parked up doing nothing, you wouldn't pay a settle if you weren't working, and there are umpteen types of settle, full settle, weekend settle, day settle, night settle, and there are percentage settles, whereby in any week you pay a percentage of your earnings to the office, until the weekly settle is reached, that is good if you only want to work part time.

Pewfall

When I think of yoo,,, I always think of Charlie Drake, in 'The Worker' when he used to call Mr Pugh from the Employment Exchange, Mr Poo
But a bloke who I know, who has employed a lot of taxi drivers, he said that taxi drivers are born not made, and I agree with that, because it does not doo for everyone, and that is just the way it is, it suits some, but I would say it doesn't suit most.

Linma

I not going to name the firm, but a couple of years ago I was working for a taxi firm who ran about an hour late on most of their jobs, they were terrible., it was badly run and one of the biggest gripes from the customers was the lack of communication from the taxi firm, when they rang up asking where their taxi was, they always said to everybody "he's on his way" and when questioned further by the customer, they just stuck to that script, and they would say "all I can tell you is that he is on his way" and then the taxi would turn up, and it would be a woman driving it, taxi drivers don't like being late, because it is them who get the flak for it, even if it is not their fault.
It sounds like you were overcharged for your journey, I would ring the firm up and ask them how much the fare should have been, you might get a refund.

Apparently, Bluestar is the worst of the lot.

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if that muppet taxi driver who pulled out from the wrong side of the road behind a parked car,decides on another career,i wont be sorry ,i pulled up with inches to spare .

Same over here. Due to mandates I won't apply for work if I have to sell out to that. No way! My hubby makes enough

I don't think it helped when the council said they had to look presentable.