Climbing the Everest of the taxi world with Cabfind boss Chris Jordan Birkenhead business manages private hire taxi bookings for companies including Virgin Trains
YOU have to be driven to run a pioneering taxi technology business – and Chris Jordan’s passion for private hire cabs is helping him win contracts with some of the biggest names in business.
Jordan is founder and managing director of Cabfind.com, the Birkenhead business that manages private hire taxi bookings for companies from Virgin Trains to TV show Come Dine With Me.
Cabfind.com offers a one-stop shop to corporate customers. Instead of having to call a different taxi firm in every town, clients contact Cabfind.com – which then gets them a booking with a cab firm anywhere from Caithness to Cornwall.
Today, Cabfind.com has a virtual fleet of some 100,000 cars that work for 1,000 firms.
Jordan himself also runs two of the region’s best-known private hire firms – family firm Davy Liver and its sibling, Wirral Satellite Cars.
He says Cabfind.com is more than just a taxi business, though laughs that it has taken him two years to work out what it actually is – a “technology-enabled business process outsourcer”.
But his years in the taxi business led him to realise there was a need for a national private hire portal, and drove him to develop the technology to deliver it.
“There’s lots of people in the past that have said they can do this,” he said. “They’ve been technology businesses. But if they don’t know the business on the ground, how on earth are they going to do it?
“Managing private hire is a specialised task. In the last 15 years there’s probably 200 to 300 people in the country that could actually have done what I’m doing. But most of those people are the equivalent owners of Davy Liver and Wirral Satellite Cars – they’re already the big fish in the small pond. And they don’t need to do it.
“When somebody says to me ‘why are you doing it’, I say I’m not doing it for the money. It’s not the lifestyle that’s doing it. For me, it’s climbing Mount Everest. I want to get to the top. It’s there.
“A tech company can’t buy in my expertise. That’s why I’m not worried about Chinese or Indian or American competition, because they haven’t got private hire taxis in those countries. They don’t understand what goes through my head. But IT – I can buy that in.”
Much to Jordan’s irritation, most of us take taxis for granted – making it hard for him to get across how pioneering Cabfind.com is.
He said: “We’re actually helping the industry because we’re trying to meet the needs of the corporate customer. The individual taxi firm might know what those needs are, but they’ve got no way of meeting them.
“The corporate customer also doesn’t understand the logistics of taxis. People think that they just turn up on a Friday night when they go to a restaurant. If that was the case, then you wouldn’t have any taxis in the day.
“Why are there so many taxis on the streets? There is a huge resource and need for those vehicles. It goes far beyond taking you home on a Friday or Saturday night.
“When I try and explain the story to people, I say ‘for the next two days, try and count every taxi you see’. You’ll lose count.”
LONDON-BORN Jordan left the prestigious Latymer Upper School at 16 because, he said: “I wanted to be in the Olympics.
“I was really good at two sports. One, equestrian, because my mother owned a riding stables, and the other rugby. I was always in the first team playing rugby.
“But rugby wasn’t an Olympic sport whereas equestrian was. So naively, I thought if I joined the Household Cavalry – I liked the idea that they were the top regiment of the British Army – I thought they would train me and I would be able to represent the country .
“The day I walked into Knightsbridge I realise that my dream was shattered. I was not going to do three-day eventing – I was a trooper.”
Chris served on duty at Horseguards Parade and at the funeral of Lord Mountbatten in 1979.
But his career came to an early end when he developed asthma and an allergy to horses.
So he took O-Levels and completed his HND in business studies at LJMU before joining the “ailing” family business in 1984.
Jordan helped to turn the business around, selling off London chip shops to focus on Liverpool’s Davy Liver.
“We know what it’s like to go through recessions,” he said. “But that’s made us thrifty and careful, and we’re very strong for it.
“I’m not the son that had the silver spoon. I’m actually the son that changed the business.
“Businesses have to make money. It’s not for making money for the sake of making money – it’s for the sake of all the employees and everyone concerned, because if it doesn’t make money, it’ll die.
“I saw enough of that in the 80s and 90s – good businesses that failed for lack of cashflow, not lack of heart or commitment.”
As taxi booking technology improved in the 1990s, Jordan formed Wirral Satellite Cars (WSC). He believes its success shows how important taxis are to the economy and “to society at large”.
He said: “Before I launched WSC, West Kirby was a dying town. The nightlife and suchlike wasn’t there.
“When I created WSC and quickly moved up to more than 300 vehicles, one of the areas we covered was West Kirby and Hoylake. And all of a sudden, a whole load of bars and restaurants were able to open up.
“Now, people go out to those areas and they have thrived. As a result of expanding the public transport infrastructure to outlying areas, I was able to improve those areas.
“People don’t understand taxis at all in that way. And of course, that example is what happens around the whole of the UK.”
CABFIND.COM sprang from Jordan’s original plan to create a nationwide taxi service.
First of all, he brought his brother Timothy back into the business to help launch Freephone Taxis, which linked a network of private hire firms through one 0800 number.
“That was where we got to know all the taxi firms,” Jordan recalled.
“When the internet arrived, we looked at it and thought ‘well, there are no geographical restrictions’.
“And taxis are all about communication. Everyone thinks it’s all about four wheels, but logistics is about communication. And the internet is a fantastic way to be able to communicate and transmit the data we require.”
In 2005, Jordan was asked to create an electronic booking system for Liverpool hospitals. It worked with LJMU to create the software – and Jordan soon realised that it could be used to create a virtual nationwide taxi service. So he and Timothy founded Cabfind.com.
It soon won contracts with the BBC and with Tesco and found a niche in the rail industry.
“Take Virgin Trains, for example,” said Jordan. “Everyone thinks ‘why would they need taxis?’
“But what happens if you need a train driver from over here to go over there and the train is on a different line? Or what happens if there are late trains?
“So we provide emergency passenger services for the likes of First Capital Connect, First Great Western, First ScotRail.”
One of Jordan’s early dilemmas was whether or not Cabfind.com should work exclusively with one firm in each area.
“Most people will go down the exclusive road because that’s the easy road,” he said. “But we decided not to because, we didn’t want to be beholden to a taxi firm.
“What happens if that firm can’t supply the service? They just might not have enough vehicles – I understand the logistics.”
Cabfind.com also has many public sector contracts in areas from healthcare to the prison service.
And a discussion on those contracts led Jordan back to a passionate defence of the taxi sector. He is frustrated that people see taxis as a “luxury” when, he said, they are more efficient than the alternatives.
“Hospitals use lots of taxis,” he said. “Everyone says ‘taxis?’ Well what would you rather do – spend money on ambulances? People need to get around.
“And prisons – three months ago, as I’m explaining the business to some corporate finance people, they scoffed and said ‘they’re moving around prisoners in taxis, are they?’ Actually, yes, low-level prisoners do move around in taxis to hospitals and doctors. Do you want them to have security vans?
“When you understand that taxis are a very cheap logistical solution, then your views start to change.”
But while taxis may be cheap, Jordan insists Cabfind.com can help firms save money on them by helping them to manage taxi use.
“A while ago I took part in a mentoring scheme,” he said. “I went to a utilities company that was supposed to guide me on its taxi expenditure.
“In the first meeting the guy – a director – said ‘I’m very embarrassed because I can’t help you. I can manage and monitor every single telephone call on every person’s mobile phone, but I’ve got absolutely no idea on anybody’s taxi expenditure’.
“Since then, no matter where I go, I know that most organisations cannot break down taxis in their profit and loss account. It goes down as travel and subsistence with everything else.
“If you don’t see it, you can’t manage it. And if you don’t manage it, it’s costing a fortune. That’s where Cabfind.com is going.”
Jordan now wants Cabfind.com to work with the giants of the travel management industry, who already arrange flights, train travel and hotels for their clients. It has already signed one contract, while talks are advanced with another “big firm”.
Jordan soon plans to pass on the mantle of MD of Davy Liver to reinforce his message that Cabfind.com is a technology firm rather than a taxi one. And to stress that further, he also plans to spin out Cabfind’s technology arm into a new business. Cabfind.com can then concentrate on the private hire market, while the technology firm can win business in other industries from buses to freight logistics.
“I have been knocking on doors for a long time,” he said, “but people have only seen me with the Davy Liver goggles on.
“It’s only recently people have picked up that it’s not Davy Liver, it’s not Wirral Satellite Cars, it’s something different.
“And it’s not just taxis. We’re studying logistics, not just the taxi industry.”
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FAQ
It's a shame the drivers of WSCs don't think so highly of him as he does himself, but, I guess that's the nature of the beast. To this day you still have trouble getting a taxi/ph in West Kirby, Hoylake, Meols, Caldy, Pensby, Thingwall, Gayton and Heswall and I'm sure the guys that invested in those areas will be pleased to note that he takes credit for their ventures being successful too 
Those areas have always been popular eating places they have some very nice restaurants, the nightlife followed after the success of the Golf Open tournament some years back and the decline of nightlife in Birkenhead. It's a good job the LO didn't catch up with them over their insurance scam 
