Taxi Driver Online

oooooooooooooooooooooo no bloody hell no it was 3 weeks ago!
think John forgot to post der winnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs

So what's fairer, renting a vehicle, or renting a vehicle with a plate attached, which can cost perhaps £50,000?

Cleary the driver in the latter case is paying a lot more.

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My point was that if you limit the number of garages it's those who control the garages who make the excess profits - the mechanics continue to earn what they did before.

By the same token, it's the plate holders who have the market power in a restricted numbers situation, the jockies are in the same position as they were previously.

Therefore your point about wages/worker quality is not really relevant to the point I'm trying to make.

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Suprisingly Dusty its an assumption and a guess that thats true, in fact it isnt.

someone leering leech on here only the other day quoted 200 per week for a taxi licenced maintained insured ect

find me a weekly car hire for that!

I repeat, who is the bigger leech, the owner with the vehicle and worthless plate, or the owner with the vehicle and £50,000 plate?

To take your argument to its logical conclusion, you might as well say that you are leeching off people when you charge them for your taxi if they can't afford a car, or you're leeching off people who buy one of your fast tans because they can't afford to holiday abroad

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Where was that offered?

I think someone buying a vehicle for £10k with a £50k plate will be looking for higher rentals than someone buying a car for £10k with a free plate.

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Taxi Driver Online
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As I said, it's you that's supporting the worse form of leeching re HC plates, but you also said further up your message that PH ops were leeching, so your closing words are contradictory and hypocritical.

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yes you would think so wouldnt you?
in fact I will give evidence this is not so.

in Gateshead where plates are free (but told repearedly they have a premium!) there was a quote of £200,

in Halifax where premiums are £70,000 there you can get a rental at £200 pounds per week.

uncanny isnt it?

perhaps we ought to have a list on rentals (only joking john)

I suspect the Gateshead quote is for a sole driver renting from an office, (ie including office fees) and a good vehicle.

The Halifax rental is possible a poor quality car working the streets, and one payment of several drivers using the vehicle.

I'm probably not entirely accurate with my assumptions, but I'm quite sure the figures you quote aren't comparing like with like.

You really have to compare like with like.

For example, if anyone could operate a saloon HC in Brighton, would rentals be as high as they are now?

I think not.

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poor quality cars with £70,000 premiums uuuuuuuummmmmmmmm
Dusty assumptions on here get to, me not logical is it?

when I read that figure I did [edited by admin] up,and of course with only 47 taxis they do double shift, but you know when the man from Gateshead borrows terms from the man from Sussex you wonder just how many borrowed opinions he has.

he claims to have managed offices in the past, you would think he knew a bit more than he appears too?

usually a taxi owner may rent his taxi out, so that he can eat whilst paying off his £70,000 on his low quality car? no they are not low quality the council dont allow that! he does usually work a shift himself too.

so comparing like with like? I like that yes its so much better than assuming everywhere is like Gateshead or Bournmouth, Brighton or Leeds
every tuesday being quiet and the like!

Exept for London of course we all know about them, print Banknotes whilst sat on rank?

yes compare like with like.

OK, I didn't know the precise SP in Halifax, so presumably it's just the drivers that are poor quality

But in general terms, I don't really get your allusion that high premiums mean that there won't be low quality cars.

As we've discussed ad nauseum, there's not really a hard and fast connection between quality and premiums.

For example, as I said in another thread towards the end of last year:

The OFT report said:

The average estimated licence shortage premium (where it exists) for a licensed vehicle is around £16,500 (in addition to the cost of the taxi itself). The estimated values obtained are as high as £50,000 in Woking...

Yet a recent Woking Borough Council report said:

Standard of current taxi service - from the findings of the Survey it is evident that there is a need for continued improvement in the local taxi service. The pedestrian survey and consultations undertaken with individuals and organisations, indicated concerns over the age, condition and safety of vehicles and driver quality and customer care and that the overall impression of the local taxi service did not reflect well on the Borough when compared with taxi services elsewhere.

And we all know about the tat in Blackpool and the £40k+ premiums.

The key to quality is of course direct regulation - indeed you say so yourself - 'the council don't allow [crap cars]'.

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Taxi Driver Online
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Yes, I'm quite sure I was wrong in some of my assumptions, that's why I qualified my remarks by saying:

I'm probably not entirely accurate with my assumptions, but I'm quite sure the figures you quote aren't comparing like with like.

Comparisons of rentals are often made and conclusions drawn, but it's very often the case that the comparisons are not like for like, and I was just mentioning some of the factors that may be relevant in comparing rentals.

But I still hold to my basic point - rentals are ceterus paribus ( ) higher in areas with premiums.

The ceterus paribus assumtion (ie that all the other factors in the comparision are the same) is important because it allows the comparison to disregard factors that aren't really relevant to the comparison - for example, if a rental included office fees, then you either include the same fee when comparing a plate premium area with a non-premium area, or exclude office fees altogether. So by keeping other factors the same, and thus comparing like with like, the effect of premiums on rentals can be isolated.

So for a more simple comparison, imagine I wanted to run an Octavia PH in Brighton, which I could probably lease new for around £60pw, and with maintenance and insurance it would probably not cost much more than £100 pw?

Now suppose I wanted a weekly rent on the same car to work the ranks. How much?

Where's cgull when you want him?

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Yorkie, plate values for saloons are decreasing but that is following the intoduction of the cheap and chatty Fiat Doblo but as it is a WAV you can get a plate for free.

Rentals in Gateshead are £150 - £180 a week, this is for 24 hrs and includes all costs including insurance, from plateholders.
Rentals from PH operators for HC vehicles far exeed that, vehicle rental starts from about £180 a week but doesn't include office fee's or insurance.

In conclusion the "greedier" plateholders are PH offices, these are the people with enough money to go out and buy 50+ WAVs should they so wish, then rent them out or sell them on to those who can't get finance to purchase their own in their own right.

This whole argument is becoming decidedly boring, people who speculate money into new businesses should expect a return on the investment made and a decent weekly return for their hard work, whether they are a garage owner or taxidriver.

Derestriction doesn't work in the way you suggest, it delivers more power to those with money as they can then afford to put on an unlimited amount of vehicles.

The problem here is that few people can see beyond the end of their noses, they are so blinkered by their own greed that anyone who disagrees with their quest is full of [edited by admin].

I will say only this, when every HC driver is forced to work for a PH operator ,when all the ranks have been replaced with freephones, when all the PH operators demand newer vehicles and then put up their fee's and you've got to either pay up or leave, don't dare say "hey, i wish the trade was like it was before.

B. Lucky

I think that's the crux of the problem with your arguments - you gather together everything you don't like about the trade (particularly in Gateshead) and blame them all on de-restriction of HC numbers.

If the above was going to happen then it'll happen irrespective of whether HCs are restricted or not.

By the same token, if PH ops in Gateshead are buying fleets of cars and renting them out to people then this would happend whether HC numbers were restricted or not.

I can't understand why anyone would pay a MINIMUM of £180 just for a car, but I don't think it has anything to do with de-restriction surely?

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I've been saying that for about 3 years now

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