Taxi Driver Online

I agree entirely, the level of debate has returned to the plain it was on before the disruptions took place. As you rightly say the posts are down slightly but the majority of those posts were meant to harm this site and were completely without foundation.

There are some very interesting factors coming up in the next few weeks which i'm sure will be debated to the full.

Regards

JD

I couldn't agree more.

That aside I had to laugh out loud when the Mansfield plank said on the London forum, in reply to the 'Liberals want more drivers' story, that this was a way of getting de-limitation in London by the back door.

No-one has yet had the heart to tell him it went in via the front door about 100 years ago.

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IDFIMH

I thought it was a perfectly valid question. How many people on the street know how a taxi meter works? Am I stupid then because I know all about how mobile phone networks work but have never thought about how a taxi meter works befoe?

Yes you are, at least in terms of the twisted logic used by some people out there.

But we know better

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Taxi Driver Online
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It was only a few years ago since we had meters put in our cars.

Before everything was done from a price sheets, and boy did the firms under cut one another.

Flyer

everybody forgot to mention the meter only shows operators earnings not drivers checking my meter after my drivers shift always reads ooo.oo
maybe the makers have some sort of smart chip installed?it also effects the odometer ooo scary?

So do you mean that your driver knows how to zero it?

I think all meters are different, but I think most have two totals - a grand total and a shift total.

I always zero my shift total, but as far as I know the grand total is still there, although I never check it.

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Taxi Driver Online
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my driver learned how to zero the meter on his first night...from another driver the system in dundee is after the shift you fuell up then split the take 50/50 hence other drivers are always quick to help new drivers learn the system the first week i had my new wav on i picked up a driver who
immediately announced (do you want me to show you how to zero the meter you dont want the owner kenning how much you made) kenning and ken are regular dundonian slang meaning knowing or know just in case you didnt ken

In St Andrews its usually 40% the metered fare. The offices make the drivers call in all the runs to keep a check on things, and the controller keeps a total of each cars take, and this has to tally with the drivers figures, so the total on the meter is never used.

The drivers can still cheat though by calling the fare light, and they have been know to forget to call in the odd hack run, called a "flyer"..

But its a bit of a goldfish bowl in the town, and a lot quiter than in Dundee and the big cities, so the driver's can't get away with much.

it must be tough over there fae fife i noticed the garages are also stiffing you for fuel im over st andrews most wedensdays with the students, there was some bad press regarding dundee cabbies refusing to go out with dundee on saturdays (i dont have enough fuel)was one excuse then there were others claiming fife plates were touting in dundee seems you can have it both ways? any fifer in dundee this saturdy/ sunday would have to wait untill there were only a few fares left before any dundee cabbie would cross that bridge,it was just that busy it would not be worthwile moneywise, but come tuesday it wil be (great, a trip to fife ive landed the jackpot) thats taxi buisness i suppose

The Shell garage in St Andrews is not that dear now... I noticed that it's a penny cheaper than the Allan street one in Dundee where I sometimes fuel up if Im heading for the bridge. I think its just a penny dearer than Asda and Tesco and probably cheaper than the Jet near the Mardi which I used to use but they seem a bit dearer now.

Although we only have one 24 hour garage in St Andrews it would be dearer but for the fact that Safeways are open during the day and keep things from goign to a monopoly.

You wont have the students this wednesday cos they all gone home

I thought you could charge whatever you wanted, so why don't you like crossing the bridge?

We are limited to rate 2 if we go outside Fife, so its about £25 to the Mardi, but we all do it for £20 even if it's busy, because its still a good run and the rush is short in St As.

funny the way we are falling over ourselves to cross the bridge, but you guys dont want to go the other way.

A lot of them book returns, but we wont do them unless we get the money up front, but they wont give us it because they are too busy [edited by admin] around and they know they might not turn up on time for the return, thats why you get a lot of them

So don't you have a grand total that you can use to see how much the driver has metered?

Why don't you just tell the driver that you have to keep the shift total on the meter?

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Taxi Driver Online
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cos then he would zero it an hour or two into the shift to show less money at the end. seems a daft way to do it. why not just charge them a fixed amount each week?

Good point steveo, but the owner could presumably have some idea if the driver was doing that by comparing his take to the odometer - and my meter tracks the mileage anyway, so it would be easy to compare the meter mileage to the odometer - I assume that most meters keep a record of the shift mileage if they also have a shift take total?

Anyway, he could just tell the driver to leave the shift total as it is, and keep a running total, in which case it would be easy to calculate the shift total. In any case, I think some meters keep a grand total apart from the shift total, so that could be used to check the shift take if it was zeroed.

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Taxi Driver Online
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