grandad wrote:
We had similar here a few years back. Drivers were told that if they are on the rank they must be available for immediate hire. If they have a booking coming up they must leave the rank. I argued that if my booking is for in say 115 minutes then I am still available for a local job off the rank. Unfortunately I never got a definitive answer.
It's a tricky one, and to be honest I'm not entirely sure if the out-of-area rule here applies to just our East Fife zone, or to the whole Fife Council area
Would find out, but reason I've never asked is because it's largely academic as regards sitting on the rank. Even a run to the far reaches of the East zone would take an hour there and back, and a couple of hours as regards Fife as a whole.
So does that mean that I shouldn't sit on the rank if I have a booking within an hour, because if I get a 20-mile run off the rank I'd have to refuse it, thus a breach of licensing conditions?
No - in reality the vast majority of runs will take ten minutes maximum, and the chances of getting one that would take an hour are probably less than one per cent.
So in practice drivers take a more common sense approach, which is probably why Grandad's council couldn't provide a concrete answer - it would look incredibly pedantic and totally lacking in common sense.
On the other hand, that's why as an independent I don't normally take bookings unless it's a decent run - I'd spend too much time working my way up the rank, but would have to pull off in case I got a run that took a bit more than five minutes
And although we're all normally gagging for the £30 runs, if you're an independent taking bookings for short runs then you get into a scenario on the ranks when you're at or near the front and hoping it *won't* be a £40 run
On the other hand, if the rule was strictly enforced then it might work out for me, because then the office cars wouldn't be able to sit on the ranks at all, because normally they'd get a job off the radio before they had time to do a one-hour rank hire
But it's more a case of common sense prevailing. And on the rare occasion it does happen here then if the driver passes a job back then it's going to be a better than average one, so I'm not going to be complaining.