Taxi Driver Online

Phone the licensing officer in Watford he will give you the full SP on things.

Q. How do you get PH off a Station Forecourt?? Look at Peterbourgh, York, Darlington, phone TAXIBANK I'm sure they will tell you.

But that was because the train firm had a change of mind.

At Watford that hasn't happened yet, and may never.

If the T&G think that flag-waving and scare-mongering is going to win them 'free and open access', they are so very wrong. Only a change in the law will do that.

Now if the buffoons at Watford paid up in the first place, and amended the tariff to compensate, they would be happily picking up the punters and earning their lot.

But both they and the T&G think they know better.

Well perhaps they should check their pockets.

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IDFIMH

Andy it all boils down to 1 thing, paying to work again, I'll say the same thing again and I've said it many times "WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO PAY TO WORK"? We pay enough insurance, Council fees, maintenance, road tax, Auto dispatch the list is endless. The average driver needs to take in the region of £15,000 per year to break even, that takes in to account car rental, fuel etc etc. On top of this you have companies asking drivers to pay them for the privilege of taking their passengers home, the train companies shouild be paying the drivers not drivers paying them.

You rightly said it was only a few quid a week, that few quid a week might be £10 a week next year, I wonder if the owner of AA United would pay £10 per car per week if that happend?? I doubt it .

Isn't the truth about Darlington that the drivers didn't want to pay Taxibank but agreed to pay the railway.

The issue was never about paying for the right (or unrestricted access) it was simply a case of a middle man.The drivers were already paying a third party but didn't want to pay Taxibank.

So yet again you use an example that has absolutely no relevance to the issues you are discussing.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

In Poole the HC trade refused to pay any fee to pick at the rail station. BR banned us from the forecourt so we rank just off BR property and got all the work anyway. There were many stories of PH companies taking over etc, and drivers would be prosecuted for entering the station, although we still did all the staff jobs and cancelled train jobs etc. After a couple of months BR painted over the rank taxi signs and soon after a bus stop replaced the taxi rank. The new off station rank continued to get the station work and began to draw work from the nearby shopping centre from where the taxis could now be seen. Did the railway company extract a fee from the bus company, I doubt it. They get the fee because taxi drivers pay it, its that easy, we spend our time bitching and snipeing at each other, its divide and rule. Things will only improve when we consider the trade as a whole business. There is no benefit in improving your own position if it damages the whole.

Once again can't all you licensed taxi drivers see that sites such as this are not TAXI forums.

Claude

What do you consider to be the whole business? Taxi and PH?

Claude

Quite right Claude, this is not a Taxi Forum, it is a Taxi and Private Hire Forum.

The fact that you can't work with your fellow London Private Hire colleagues, is your problem.

Most of us in the real world learn to live with the competition, alas you seem unable too.

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IDFIMH

For the past two and a half years, Watford Hackney carriage drivers have refused to pay the required Permit fee asked by Watford Station of £355, for the privilege of parking on their land.

Silverlink the company who administer Watford station had tried many times in the past to resolve the situation but found their efforts thwarted by the intransigence of the Watford Hackney Carriage drivers. They were of the opinion that the Hackney Carriage drivers had made no constructive effort whatsoever to bring about an amicable solution.

After several years of conflict and no payments from the Taxi drivers, the Station authorities finally said enough is enough. In the later part of 2003 they put the Station Public hire contract out to tender and invited applications from the Taxi and Private hire trade to service that contract. The said Contract has now been awarded to a local Private hire company who trades under the name of AA United. The Hackney Carriage drivers, who collectively could have tendered for the contract, sought not to do so.

In January 2004 the station authorities moved Watford Hackney Carriage drivers off the station Rank and replaced them with Private hire vehicles from AA United. Watford is a large mainline station but has a relatively small Taxi Rank of only eight spaces.

The dispute arose when Watford Hackney Carriage drivers objected to the station Management's decision to install a Private Hire Freephone in order to give the public an additional choice of transport. There is also a suggestion that the Hackney carriage drivers wanted exclusive rights to all contract work, especially the lucrative side which involved transporting stranded passengers to their home destination.

For their part, the station Authorities have only excluded Hackney Carriages from standing and plying for hire on the Station Taxi Rank. They have not placed any restriction on Hackney Carriages picking up at the station if hailed by a member of the public. It was also implied from a station source that it may be possible for any suitable Hackney carriage driver who wanted to ply for hire on the station to do so by contacting the company who hold the current contract, namely AA united.

Silverlink and the local Taxi licensing department have reached an agreement on the legality of the Private hire vehicles being parked on the station Taxi Rank. The agreement stipulates that vehicles must at all times prior to hire, be vacant and the driver must not be in the vicinity of his vehicle.

The local council is in a predicament because...........................

Hi Claude,
It is the Taxi trade, there is no PH trade, there are only vehicles that do taxi work under a different license. It 25 years as a driver and radio controller I have never ever heard anyone ask for a PH. The public has no ideal what a PH is or why it exists, they ask for a taxi every time and generally don't care as long as they get to where they want to go at a cost they can afford.
We have PH because of the short sighted greed of most HC plate owners, if they had considered the position years ago we would not have a 2 tier system now. We could have had controlled growth leading to a professional taxi trade that was respected and not derided. That is what I meant by considering the whole before stiking out for ouselves. We are drowning in our own mess and do not have the sense to stop digging.
T.

Where are the taxi forums, trade associations, national body etc, ??
Too busy fighting each other to get organised!!
Why are you here making comments Claude, is it a case of this or nothing.

I have a certain degree of sympathy for the HC drivers at the station, although I wouldnt suggest that £355 per year was an excessive for the rail company to charge, I should also state that I don not believe public hire vehicles should pay to ply for hire at stations.

Its all well and good for the national bodies to give official lines and say that drivers shouldn't pay for permits, from an office many miles away.

But what these bodies seem to forget that it is the owner and driver who is at the sharpe end, and the one who ultimately pays, or doesn't, as in this case.

No doubt there will have been some militancy amongst the drivers and owners involved, but again I would imagine that this may have been encouraged by the bodies concerned, rather than discouraged. For if they had won, it would not have been their victory it would have been the national bodies (funny that, they lose its their loss, they win its our victory).

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Was the Watford permit 'open'.

Were they prepared to take the money of all Hacks?

Or was there an exclusive club?

This weighs up the value for paying.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

That's quite an interesting situation.

I would have thought that a vehicle itself can't be charged with 'plying for hire'.

And the driver of that vehicle, if he isn't in the vicintity of it, surely can't as well.

Hmmmmmmm.

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IDFIMH

"if the buffoons at Watford paid up in the first place, and amended the tariff to compensate"

This comment is beyond belief. Sussex Man is no business-man. It is this rollover and be crapped on, thinking that has held back this trade for years. It is serfdom, grabbing at scraps from the big man's table.
Because he is explioted by those above it is ok to prey on those below with even lesser power, the customer.