Taxi Driver Online

The 3 companies in Aberdeen are not interested in Uber. They all sit on the taxi group and are dead against Uber.

Remember uber opened in Aberdeen with 2 maybe 3 drivers. They only have 1 and the others have all returned to working for 3 local companies.

_________________
So busy night tonight??

The trade thinks these 3 groups have been promised £££ in return for getting Uber into Aberdeen. The 3 groups think Uber is the saviour of Aberdeen. People will flock into town due to Uber!!

So far Uber have been given airtime by a Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce, the local press are obsessed by Uber & at a recent business breakfast, uber was given the platform to spin any old [edited by admin] about what they will bring to Aberdeen.

Tonight a friend of mine is up in Aberdeen from Edinburgh (originally from Aberdeen). He shared a few pics of Aberdeen at 22.00 tonight, place is dead.

Uber will make zero difference.

_________________
So busy night tonight??

One thing the existing Aberdeen trade must avoid is being complacent.

Uber has incredibly big pockets, in fact, they are bottomless, so just because they are struggling to recruit drivers now doesn't mean they will not in the future.

They are, IMO, fickle, so if it doesn't work out they may well f*** off and leave you alone, but if they want it to work there, they will make sure it does.

They will offer free knowledge courses to drivers licensed elsewhere and also offer attractive vehicle rental. I hope they do f*** off, but I doubt they will.

_________________
IDFIMH

Difficult to work out what Uber will do. They've withdrawn from UK locations before, and I'd guess that if there's no significant change in the offing as regards the knowledge or whatever, then maybe they'll pull out of Aberdeen in the new year. Can't really see that throwing a whole load more money at it all will make much difference.

Ditto Dundee - not sure if they ever announced a start date there, but I'm sure the timetable was broadly similar to Aberdeen - late summer/early autumn launch.

But not sure they've even had a soft/limited launch there, never mind a full-blown one

Of course, that's assuming their thinking is a hard-nosed, business-based, profit-oriented approach, as opposed to maybe just not wanting to lose face and/or trying to get one over the likes of their opponents in the Aberdeen trade, and politicians etc.

Recall that in fact Uber was set up because founder Travis Kalanick wanted to get back at the medallion taxi cartels in the States, and because of bad experiences he'd had with drivers in the like of Paris (both of which make even the worst of our own plate cartels look like small beer).

So if it's less about a business proposition and more about settling scores then, as Sussex says, the Aberdeen trade shouldn't get complacent

(Kind of reminds me of 203020 in Dundee, a private hire operation set up by the wealthy Marr brothers, who wanted to change the face of the trade - so they bought dozens of E-class Mercs, actually employed drivers and paid them a wage, and they had fancy uniforms etc - all at the council's taxi tariff

[And, as anyone who knows the markets in both Aberdeen and Dundee will know, at least back then 20 years ago Dundee's trade was like a scrapyard compared to Aberdeen's, thus brand new E-class Mercs were a lot more transformatory down here than they would have been up there...)

However, the wheels gradually came off (almost literally), and after a few years it all eventually morphed into little different from the existing trade, and laterally became part of one of the long-standing offices, as I recall it.

Of course, Uber is a different beast, and wants to transform the industry in a different way, and to an extent actually has, but not absolutely everywhere.)

(A parallel from a different industry might be GB News

Which aimed to transform news and current affairs broadcasting from a political perspective. But which is losing money hand over fist. So if it was purely about profit and loss then it would probably have closed by now. But it's about more than that, and its backers have very deep pockets )

Everything has its price, and if whoever owns the Aberdeen firms were offered enough, they would take it


...but couldn't see Uber buying an existing operation anyway. To uses the accountant's lingo (again), I don't think Uber have ever expanded by acquisition anywhere, as opposed to organic growth

Of course, the Autocab purchase and piggy-backing on existing offices via the software was a bit different, but it obviously didn't work, which is probably why Uber went back to organic expansion this year after a gap since 2017 (was it?).

And, of course, they've applied for a licence in quite a few English towns and cities this year or so past, and so it's basically back to what they were doing a decade ago, but probably in markets a bit more difficult to crack.

On the other hand, now that Uber is an established international brand it's maybe a bit easier to crack the more difficult UK markets than maybe it was towards the end of the last decade. And in many of those locations (like Blackpool) they've been operating for some time via cross-border cars - a local licence helps expansion organically by allowing them to use locally-plated cars as well as the cross-border ones, and helps dispel any bad publicity in that regard.

So can't see much scope for Uber buying existing 'taxi' businesses, and the Autocab Trojan Horse had to be put to sleep after turning out to be an old nag

(Not sure to what extent lockdown may have helped Uber's expansion, and thus kick-started their reversion to organic growth this past year or so - many smaller operations in particular fell by the wayside during lockdown, but Uber was still around to help fill any gap left behind. And, of course, any local driver shortage post-Covid could be filled more easily by Uber's model, in particular with the cross-border driver machine honed to perfection )

Of course, that's not to say purchasing existing businesses just couldn't happen, as the slightly left field Autocab purchase demonstrated

Agree - by its own reputation, Uber's likely to be persistent (even ruthless) and throw money to get what it wants.

But loss-aversion is also a strong motivator. With Uber not getting anywhere so far, they're looking to replace the existing Aberdeen HC/PH trade. In other words, put decent local Aberdonians out of work and bring in corporate outsiders from San Francisco who really can't be trusted.

That sort of spin could help the Aberdeen trade.