Taxi Driver Online

Tyneside taxi firm on road to success

Over the last 50 years a car with a blue stripe has helped drive the mass creation of jobs on Tyneside as Andrew Mernin finds out.


IN THE late 1980s, two Wallsend lads packed their bags and jetted off west to spy on the New York taxi industry. Their mission - as dictated by their father - was to find out how their family business could evolve with the dawn of the brave new age of computers.

Colin Shanks knew the firm he had built up from the ground needed to change with the times and believed the answer lay on the mean streets of the Big Apple.

His two sons Paul and Ian, watched closely at how the network of yellow cabs were dispatched across the sprawling metropolis and even took a behind-the-scenes look at the workings of the NYPD.

The move ultimately paid off and helped Blue Line become one of the largest taxi companies in the region, with an army of around 450 drivers and 30 office staff.

“He had a drive to better himself and I guess he had the foresight to see the importance of technology,” says Ian Shanks, son of the late Colin Shanks.

“We were one of the first companies to have two-way radios and taxi meters inside our cars. He felt that all those things were best for the business and good for the customer.”

In a back office akin to a 1970s living room, Ian is surrounded by memorabilia connected to his father’s legacy, which charts the growth of the business from a one-car, terraced house business into a £3m empire.

The former Newcastle Gosforth rugby player – who once shared a bench with Jonny Wilkinson – now runs the business with his brother Paul and sister Jane.

On one wall he points out a letter from the daughter and son-in-law of Walt Disney, which is framed next to a gold-plated Mickey Mouse watch.

Shanks senior had ferried the couple round in a taxi during the production of a 1970s childrens movie in Northumberland but had refused a £20 tip – which is why they sent him the gold watch.

He also tells how Fleetwood Mac would regularly travel Blue Line to a recording studio close to the firm’s home off Wallsend High Street.

The firm started life in the early 1950s in the family home on Wallsend’s Wooley Steet, with a car embossed with a blue coach line along its body.

“He started with one car and my father was constantly under pressure over getting it repossessed with one thing or another. It was very hard to make ends meet in those days and taxis were very much a luxury.”

“We started from the family home and we as kids used to answer the phones but my father built the business up over the years.”

Ian’s parents both drove taxis, and he believes his mother was one of the first female cabbies on Tyneside.

Colin Shanks was one of the founding fathers of Newcastle taxi rank Noda (originally Newcastle Hackneys Owner Driver Association), but left to set up his own operation following the breakup of the partnership with his fellow directors. And the firm quickly grew, although its journey has not been without its difficulties.

“I remember my father telling me he had got the business up to 25 cars and six mini-buses and at that stage you were considered to be big.

“But I think he lost his bottle because he told me a story about how he took all his staff out for Christmas and stood at the top of the table and realised that if he made one wrong decision he was putting a lot of families’ lives in jeopardy. This scared him to think he was responsible for that so he down-scaled over some years until we became old enough to contribute into the business.”

As time went on, Ian and his siblings began to play a bigger part of the company and helped to fulfil their father’s vision of embracing new technology to take the business forward.

“My father was quite forward thinking because in the 1980s he had an ambition to drive the business forward and sent us to New York to look at ways of computerising what he was doing and it just blew us away. He felt as if he’d taken it verbally as far as he could go.”

The company ultimately took a bold move in the late 1980s and installed a computerised system developed in Manchester.

And Shanks junior has continued that tradition by adopting mobile and automated systems and has followed in his father’s footsteps by investing heavily on infrastructure.

In 1990 Colin Shanks unexpectedly passed away, thrusting Ian into a lofty position which belied his age and status.

“I remember at the time I was 28 years old and stood in front of drivers and was scared because there were men far my senior who had to now rely on me to make the right decision.”

“I had to give them reassurances that we were going to take the business on and we wanted their support because we didn’t want them to scatter thinking we were going to go down the pan.”

Fortunately for the 450 people whose jobs are supported by Blue Line today, the company survived the loss of its enigmatic founder and remains on the road to further expansion.