Taxi Driver Online

Evening All

Based on a fleet of 50 vehicles. What would the typical start up costs be to implement the following systems.

Autocab
Auriga
Cordic
Mercury

e.g one of set up fees, and any monthly costs. Im not interested in lease options.

Can you offer any guidlines please?

Thanks

I'll tell you that but only if you can tell me how long a piece of string is.

The number of cars doesn’t really define it well enough. Are you talking about the office set up or simply the cost of adding PDA's?

Bill

Hi Bill

I'm looking at both the office and PDA/ Datahead cost, what the base costs for a standard system and what are the costs for something top of the line.

I've been told with Autocan to budget around £1200 per car for a good spec system, then monthly costs on top.

No let me help you out on this one. You need to be quite specific because one man’s start-up is another’s ultimate wish so let's make a few assumptions and leave out the top of the line nonsense because that nothing more than sales speak. He'll want auto dispatch via data (most probably GPRS) and a big screen so he can see where his cars are. He'll want ring back but will have doubt's about text back based on what he's heard. All the rest of the features are pretty much common to all booking systems. He'll ask about IVR but if you try to include this into the equation it starts to get silly.

So, based on my experience, Mr average 50 car owner will want an office with up to four PC’s. With 50 cars he will most likely already have a phone system and broadband internet access. The room is completely empty apart form the phones and desks.

So here's the deal. The proposal has to cover everything below with a guarantee written in blood that no hidden extras exist.
(1) The all in price for a four user office (absolutely everything included except IVR)
(2) The annual cost of 50 data (PDA or otherwise) including any airtime
(3) The total annual support charges for both the office and the data.

Now here's the bad news. No company owner is ever going to post on a predominately driver based forum any accurate figures of what they paid for their system otherwise there’d be a rush for rebates on rents! I think you have seen our prices but sadly, this is not the “done thing” in the taxi trade.

Bill

Four phone calls to those listed.

Four quotes from those listed.

Or have I missed something?

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IDFIMH

When I spoke with Autocab and Auriga they both suggested about £1,000 per driver for a system the same as what I'm used to working on. The support for the systems is a monthly charge and to be honest I can't remember what it was but they were different and I have all the paperwork here somewhere. Just ring the companies and ask they're not MI5 they'll tell you.

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Mercury is expensive and that is a fact.

Ours upto date has cost £70,000 and is still climbing.