Private hire driver REAL earnings

SailorSam

glentoran99 wrote: »

So you only make £130 on a Friday or Saturday night?

And there speaks a typical punter.
I drove a Black Cab for about 25yrs, We had our good days but also had days when it cost us more to go out then we took.
Then we'd pick up the type of passenger on a Fri / Sat night who'd say .... 'you must be making a fortune, we've been waiting over 30 minutes, then you get £5 for a 10 minute journey'. But that was at the start of the night when everyone is wanting to go out at the same time, or just after the pubs have closed when they all want to go home at the same time. For the 4 or 5 hours inbetween we may have been sitting on ranks doing nothing.
It must be over 10yrs now since i worked nights, but at that time if we'd done £100 it was a good night. At the time i started i paid £17.5k for my Cab & Plate, 25yrs later i sold up for £6.5k, which will give you some idea about how much the job had fallen.

CKhalvashi

Sams view on it is the same as mine.

We're in the lucky position of being near a large airport, and I run another operator in London, which deals largely with travel agents (with a lot of airport runs at £60+ a pop), so can spread the work out.

It's no longer as easy as it was; fares are still about the same, and the amount of work has generally fallen, which is why we've had to search for new technology/work and do it in different ways to before.

Plates are freely available here for anyone that passes the test (license is £300/year), and apart from a maximum of 10 years for the car (unless it's wheelchair adapted) there's no age limit on the cars themselves.

We have no restrictions on the type of vehicle, and all our company cars are ex Addy Lee Galaxies, purchased for about £7k at 3 years old.

SandC

Fuel costs along with other stuff such as cleaning of the taxi, road tax, MOT, costs of washing and cleaning, license or other registration fees are all tax expenses for self employed though so you can't reduce all of this down to 'I earn £x per hour'.

A PAYE job wouldn't be advertised as paying x amount after tax and NI so you can't really quantify self employed earnings in that way either.

SailorSam

SandC wrote: »

Fuel costs along with other stuff such as cleaning of the taxi, road tax, MOT, costs of washing and cleaning, license or other registration fees are all tax expenses for self employed though so you can't reduce all of this down to 'I earn £x per hour'.

Where i am we use to have 6 monthly Mots, and the Cab had to be immaculate, as if it had just come out of the showroom. A good Mot may cost less than £200, but a bad one could be over £1000. The garage i used use to have a noose hanging in the corner and if the Cab needed a lot of work they'd offer to let you choose which you wanted, the work or go and jump off a box with the rope around your neck.
After all the work was done the very last thing you had done before going to the test centre was a steam clean, the engine and all the underneath of the Cab had to be spotless. This particular day was pouring down with rain and by the time i drove about a mile to test centre underneath the Cab was dripping wet. The mechanic put my Cab up on the ramp then called me in, he said i'm not testing this, i'm not getting underneath it's dirty, you've failed.
I had to go back to the Council and book another test, and all the time you're off the road you're losing money.

CKhalvashi

Mine got a wash and a full valet before going in, but never underneath/the engine.

I remember driving from the car wash to the test centre in the rain (20 miles), and the car passed fine, as it was still immaculate inside.

Between tests (every year, but 6 months after 5 years) it was clean, but never that tidy.

Toomuchdebt

My ex husband is a taxi driver-he started off renting a car but soon bought his own...he's been doing it for over 15 years and is doing pretty well for himself so it must also depend on the area.

CKhalvashi

Toomuchdebt wrote: »

My ex husband is a taxi driver-he started off renting a car but soon bought his own...he's been doing it for over 15 years and is doing pretty well for himself so it must also depend on the area.

Largely depends if you're working for less than £1 a mile in London, not mentioning company names........

w211

Experience, luck, hard graft, and the area (as mentioned), even time of the year, all plays a part in how much you'll earn

Due to the criteria above, this chap made £3,200 in a week:

https://twitter.com/Cab4Now/status/520850877486477312

[£4,000 in fares less 20% commission to the operator]

CKhalvashi

w211 wrote: »

Experience, luck, hard graft, and the area (as mentioned), even time of the year, all plays a part in how much you'll earn

Due to the criteria above, this chap made £3,200 in a week:

https://twitter.com/Cab4Now/status/520850877486477312

[£4,000 in fares less 20% commission to the operator]

But John has been in the game for 25+ years and coincidentally knows which areas to play and when to work.

He also drives Exec, rather than your standard car.

This was posted on a week which was almost entirely on Surge (where the operator puts the price up as it sees fit), before the recent rate cuts (driver was paid about £2/mile on standard, it's now about £1.70) and before the recent flooding of the market by the operator he is working for (no names mentioned, as I own a rival London app). Commission for his operator is now 28%.

No cabbie is going to be doing this week in, week out, and the answer to what a typical cabbie earns can vary to not a lot, to a very decent sum, largely dependent on where they are, what they're doing and even who they're working for.

Also remember that if the car breaks, there's no income
Don't get ill because no income
Don't go on holiday too often because no income
Don't.......I'm sure you're starting to get the message here.

189 jobs, with London traffic, is a minimum of 80 hours (assuming always getting the next as you drop, which never happens), so probably closer to 100. Again, nobody can be doing this constantly without getting severely ill in the end.

dktreesea

The private hire cars who make money in our neck of the woods own their own cars and do the airport run. Some do inter city runs but they get paid up front by credit card, so if the cab doesn't complete the run for whatever reason, the operator cancels the credit card tab, and if he makes the run, the customer can't do a runner at the end.


The other thing to remember though, is that some of the ones who are the main breadwinners in their households but making low pay, say £3-£4 an hour, usually get quite a healthy top up from the State via the benefits system.


Not all of them though, because they may have partners working, or sufficient savings, to raise their household income beyond the limit for benefits. To those drives I would say keep the cab driving for the busy times, say friday and Saturday nights if wanting to do the city runs, or early evenings if doing an airport run and get a part time day job for the rest of the time. Why work for £3 an hour if by dumping the slow shifts m, even for a minimum wage job, you can double your income?