Then you got customers who call three or four taxis at a time and whoever gets there first gets the job. It happens too often. But we just sit back and take it.
My last New Year’s Eve was four years ago. They were out on the streets and up at the hotels. It was busy everywhere. I dropped someone off in Kilbride at quarter to four in the morning, and the dispatcher fed me another job in the same area. When I got them to Forest Road—downtown was just over the hill, seconds away— the customer said, “Did you get a call from up there? I called five or six cabs.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?” I said. “I’d have left you right where you were to. Would you phone for five or six pizzas and just pay for the one that got their first?”
He didn’t like that. But I didn’t like what he said to me, either.
And it’s mostly the younger crowd—students. I’m not saying it’s always students. I’m just saying they’re usually young. One time, I got sent to Burton’s Pond, the university. They were in the back seat on the phone, and one of them said, “Can you cancel that cab?”
I pulled the car off the road: “Get out! Next time you won’t be so smart.”
I’ve often had instances where another driver and I got to a house at the same time and we left them right where they were to. But you got drivers out there who don’t care, as long as they can get that job. We got to stand up for ourselves. Phoning three or four taxis is not right.
It all boils down to the fact that there’s no respect—you’re not even looked at. You’re nothing. That’s the way I feel. I once watched a guy on Good Morning America interview a hot dog vendor on Park Avenue. You can imagine what it’s like having a hot dog stand on Park Avenue. Just before the interview was over, the vendor said, “I guess other than taxi drivers we’re looked down upon.”
The Nature of the Business
Doug, drove and dispatched for twenty-five years
Most cab drivers are eager to tell their stories to complete strangers—customers—but once a microphone is turned on they generally go quiet. But consider that many of their work-related experiences centre on other drivers, as well as the owners, the brokers, sometimes the police and often City Hall. There are the drivers who rob jobs from other drivers. The inspectors who do little inspecting and a lot less enforcing. The stand owners who put junkers on the road and nutbars behind the wheel. Some drivers simply fear retaliation. One, bold and brash, laughed: “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone got a punch in the face for mouthing off.”
I liked my job and the people I worked with, and the dispatchers got treated with respect. But, after twenty-five years, I got sick of babysitting children. Last going off, I used to come in and announce over the radio, “All right, boys. I’m here and I’ve only got half a case of Pablum and six pacifiers. Go easy on me.”
Drivers were removing customers from other cars and putting them in their own car because they felt they were supposed to get that particular job. Drivers were racing to get ahead of other cars and cutting them off so they could pull up in front of the house first. Drivers were calling and forever lying about where they were to. If they were quick enough to click in before the one-and-three-quarter seconds it took the other guy to respond, even if they’re camped out in a line-up at one of the stands, they’d put on the reverse lights, back away and nobody would be the wiser. Drivers were going flat out down over the hill and calling their buddies on the radio to pull over, they got to ask them something, and then zooming on past them to get to a job. It got to be too much for me.
It wasn’t hard to figure out someone was lying. If you just left the stand for a job, and I had your name crossed off, there was no way you were ready for another job halfway across town. There was no way you got from Adelaide Street to the Janeway, dropped off your job and were parked at Virginia Park Plaza, which was the standby stand, and were ready for another job that quick. It’s impossible. I knew they were full of shit; everyone on the stand knew they were full of shit.
Our radio sets used to be closed—you could only hear the dispatcher, and you couldn’t hear the other drivers. This was before cellphones. When the open microphone system was introduced it kept people honest and got rid of a lot of the garbage going out over the system. One guy—I won’t name no names—was a prime example of the way things used to be. He was a poster child for screwing over the dispatchers and customers. He was an intimidator, a former drug dealer who had done a string of time and whose choice of career when he got out of jail was taxiing. Taxi intimidation, more like it. He’d cut you off on the road, or rob a job right in front of you. Shit like that. A few times he told me he was going to come down and throw me out the window for giving one of his jobs to another driver.
I guess I was starting to piss some people off.
I was calling out the bullshitters: You just had a job and you want another? If one guy was a flat-out liar and the other a career driver, I knew who was telling the truth. Greed—that’s what it’s all about.
But that’s the nature of the business.
Sky Pilots
Paul, driving and dispatching for seventeen years
You must’ve heard of “sky pilots.” Those are the drivers who you haven’t heard from for hours, guys who won’t work with the dispatcher the whole night, and all of a sudden they answer the radio at four in the morning when downtown is cleaned up and they’re looking for phone work. It’s like they appear out of nowhere. But you know they’ve been on the go the whole night. You’ve watched them out the window as they blow by. You’ll radio into the dispatcher to let them know what they’re at, cruising around and not taking jobs off the phone. Then you’ll hear: “Forty-two? I hope you’re listening, because you’re not getting anything from me after four o’clock.”
I prefer to work with the dispatcher. If I’m in the area and he wants a car, I’ll call out. I’ll tell you now, I was in on Brookfield Road and the dispatcher whacked me to the Fairview Inn. You mean to tell me there were no other cars between me and the east end? You let out your dirty digs—your complaints. The dispatcher knows you’re frustrated, but what can he really do about it?
When I dispatched, with that many drivers out there, when I came in at eleven-thirty, I put my foot down: “If you don’t work with me now, come four o’clock in the morning you’re not getting anything off the phone.” I’d say that in order to get the drivers to work with me because the company got regular customers waiting. Those same regulars are going to be there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when there’s nothing doing. You got to try to keep them happy.
The Downtown Rush
Donald, driving and dispatching for seventeen years
Some of the brokers are pretty tight. On average, if you drove 100 kilometres you should have about $35 for them. But see I’m a cruiser. I cruise. So if you expect $35 out of me and I’m cruising around and I’m not getting no work and I put on twenty or twenty-five kilometres before I get a job for only a run up over the hill and you expects $35 then you’re cracked. I give them half of what’s on the meter. My tips are my own.
For me, if you expect that $35 for every 100 kilometres, I’ll give him back the keys. You can drive me back home. I’m at it long enough, and they all know me. I’ll work my twelve hours. I know that at the tail end of my shift, at the ninth and tenth hour, when these weekend warriors are gone home, there’s that three hour window when there’s only a few cars on the streets. You’re flat out then. You can make sixty, seventy, eighty or ninety bucks just cruising. All you got to do is take one from downtown and head out over the overpass with them, and that’s $40 there.
But I can see where the owners are coming from. The price of everything has gone up. If you go 100 kilometres, you should have $100 on your meter. But then you take twenty for gas, and that leaves you with eighty. Then you split that, and that’s forty. You’re coming into an average of $35 each. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, a broker has got fifteen cars available for F
riday and Saturday night. For fifteen cars, he got seventeen drivers for Friday night. Two of them got to do without a car. The bottom two, to my knowledge, that made the least amount of money on Friday night won’t get a car on Saturday.
The real difficulty is starting off in the early part of the night. Since the bars changed their hours from two o’clock until three o’clock they shot themselves in the foot. Most people, students, used to rush home, get cleaned up and rush downtown. Now they party until twelve o’clock, and then they get the taxi downtown. They got that extra hour. You got three hours of drinking; they’re priming up at home. What is it, $6 a beer down there now? Look at the George Street Festival. That’s gone retarded. Thirty bucks to get in on the street. When I first started out, I used to drive my brother’s car from six or seven o’clock until six or seven in the morning. There used to be seven of us out there, seven drivers. We used to be that busy that we had enough work to keep us going the whole night. Now you’re sitting around waiting until around midnight before you really get going.
A Vicious Cycle
Allen, driving for twenty-two years
Before the bars close, downtown is not phone work. I cruise Water Street and Duckworth Street, and I’ll shoot up Adelaide and look for a job. We used to tell the regular customers to go up by Mile One if they’re heading west or to go up by Club One if they’re heading east. You drive up and lock your doors, and people start swarming your car. Then the customer you’re there to pick up might only be going up to Gear Street. But that person is a regular customer, and that’s what they called us for, a run up the hill for $5.
Then you get others: “Thanks for picking me up. Take me to Mount Pearl for fifteen?”
“No way. How’d you get downtown?”
“Valley Cabs.”
“You can pay what’s on the meter, or you can get out in the cold and wait for Valley Cabs.”
Out-of-town taxis aren’t supposed to be down there. That’s the regulation. But still and all taxis from CBS are down there taking work. Taxis from Paradise are down there taking work. What’s a taxi from CBS doing down in Logy Bay Road? We’re not allowed to pick up and drop off in Mount Pearl or Paradise. We’re not allowed to pick up in Mount Pearl and drop off in St. John’s. But we’re allowed to pick up downtown and drop them off in Mount Pearl.
If those cabs are going to be at it, I got no problem doing the same. It’s like a vicious cycle. When I do pick up someone in Mount Pearl, I’ll haul into somewhere like Tol’s Time Out Lounge. Buddy might get in the car, and I’ll take him wherever he wants to go. If I see a cop around, I shut off the meter and just say, just like everyone else does, “You’re related to me.”
Make the Most of What You Got
Leonard, driving for four years
People can’t afford to go out and buy new taxis. You got to make the most of what you got. You’re not making enough money, and what you got is worked to death. If you see an old car that used to be a taxi stay away from it because that car is worn out and isn’t fit to be on the road. If someone reports it the city got to do something about it. But other than that, there’s only so many random inspections that they can get around to. That’s another problem you can’t fix with the number of people they got down there. I’ll tell you this. If there are 100 taxis out there I’d say eighty of them shouldn’t be on the road.
Cribbing
Sandra, driving for four years
You can make a decent living at this. It’s just a matter of how you handle your money. This job changes how you prioritize. When I was getting paid once every two weeks, the day after I got paid I’d probably go get a case of beer and a little draw. That’d do me for however long. It’s different now. Pot becomes a priority. I pack a lunch and make sure I got change for a coffee. I’ll smoke a draw before I go, and I’ll roll one for later on when I have to pull over because I’m ready to snap.
I can’t say I speak for all of them, but about 80 per cent of the drivers I know smoke pot. They all got the same kind of mindset. It’s one o’clock in the morning. All the customers are getting on my nerves. I’ll go have a break and smoke a joint. Then the rest of the night is way easier to deal with.
You smoke more cigarettes, you drink more coffee and you eat take-out. So if you weren’t doing that and you worked five days a week you could easily take in about $600 cash. But if you’re taking in $600, that’s not what you’re giving the boss.
With the guy I drive for, he wants half of what’s on my meter, and he wants me to turn on the meter as much as possible. But he expects that at the end of the night he’ll see a few more kilometres than I have money. With some brokers they want you to pay a dollar and a quarter a kilometre. If I got $400, I should have about 330 kilometres. That’s why when somebody asks if you can take them to Mount Pearl for $20 you take the $20. What the boss doesn’t know won’t hurt him. It’s called “cribbing,” working off the meter.
One time, I didn’t have the right kilometres. The boss said, “You’re cribbing me!”
I said, “What?”
“You don’t know what cribbing is?”
He assumed I didn’t and went into great detail about how it’s robbing and how you go about doing it. He gave me about twenty ideas on how to do it. “Now that you know that I know,” he said, “you better not be at it.”
But you do it according to the broker you drive for. There are some brokers that I won’t drive for because I’d make less money. I just got too much respect for them. I wouldn’t be able to do what I can do with another broker who might’ve pissed me off.
Costing Regular Business
Allen, driving for twenty-two years
For years, while the taxi inspector was there, nobody shagged around. If you had to go see the taxi inspector, if somebody made a complaint about you, he’d sit you down, and it made you pretty nervous. People had a lot of respect for him—a little bit of fear and a lot of respect—because he kept you on your toes.
The last time the city had a full-time taxi inspector down there was probably in the early ‘90s. He was doing a good job, too. He’d be down there on a Friday night looking for cars with defects, cars that didn’t have working lights and proper stickers. Stuff like that. Sometimes these big stand owners have cars floating around without proper stickers on them. The stand owner might have an extra car and an extra driver. They just stick a radio in a car and send them out. It’s not legal, but the stand owner might say, “Go on and take it. Make an extra couple bucks for the weekend.” The taxi inspector had the power to stop that sort of stuff. He’d stand up on the corner of Adelaide Street and George Street and haul people off the road. If you got too many people in your car, he’d go over and issue a citation. A lot of that is on the go. There might be six or seven students heading home from downtown that’ll pile up in the car: “We’ll give you two bucks each to take us to the university.” But you’re not supposed to take any more than four or five passengers. If you have an accident, you’re not insured. The insurance won’t cover you because you got too many people in the car.
There are a lot of junkers out there, too. They’re only inspected by City Hall once a year. That inspection is pretty perfunctory. All they do is check the signal lights, headlights, and backup lights. They check to see if your doors open. They don’t take it off the road and lift it up on the ramp.
The taxi inspector was there to prevent things like that from happening. These days, if the city needs someone to do something like an inspection someone comes over from Housing.
It seemed like we had a little bit more legitimacy when there was a taxi inspector. You had somebody to answer to. Now it’s like any fool can drive a taxi. We got guys coming from Ontario and British Columbia thinking there’s this big job market here and then they can’t find anything. What do they do? They go drive a taxi. They’re out there driving and they don’t know where they’re going. It’s costing us regular business. The funniest one I ever heard was when I was working at Gulliv
er’s. The taxi stand is on Adelaide Street, right in front of City Hall. The dispatcher called out, “Car such and such head over to the front of City Hall.”
Buddy radios back: “Where’s that to?”
They Got to Get These Cars Moving
Gordon, driving for eighteen years
Over the past thirty years, the city has slowly deregulated the process of monitoring who could operate a taxicab. Starting in 1976, under Section 16 of the Taxicab Bylaw, part-time drivers were permitted. Soon after, City Council amended the bylaw by removing the “sole occupation” restriction which permitted part-time taxi drivers, but only if it was their sole occupation. In a memorandum to the city, the taxicab inspector raised his concerns that, because of the change, full-time drivers might suffer a loss of income. But many of the part-time drivers who entered the industry worked shifts the career drivers were unwilling to accept, mainly those at night.
To get a taxicab driver’s licence, drivers were once required to present a letter of conduct from the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. But, starting in 2000, the city dropped the regulation in favour of self-regulation, or owner operators, brokers and stand owners monitoring the quality of their drivers. In an editorial to The Telegram entitled “Know Who’s Driving Your Cab? Neither Does the City,” one concerned driver stated, “The stand owners are under no onus to ensure a review of the driver’s past performance, or that it excludes criminal behaviours that may put passengers at risk.”
I didn’t like it from the first day I started, right up until now. But this province has got fuck all to offer you. I tried to get out of it a couple of times, but you know what they say about taxiing, that you’ll always come back to it. No hard labour, or nothing. The industry isn’t fit for human consumption. There’s nothing straight about the owners. The drivers are dirtbags, people on welfare. Some of the lowest forms of life are driving taxis. There’s no money at it, but combined with what they make on their welfare check, by the time they give buddy who owns the car half they’re probably making $500 a week. There are a few well-to-do people out there. There are retired people at it. But when a taxi hauls up to your door you don’t know what you’re going to get. The driver could be the lowest form of criminal in this city, or he could be the most respectable man you’ve ever met. You just don’t know.
The Other Side of Midnight Page 8