Oldest Working Taxi

[warren t claim]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:30, Dyslexic Viking said:

Not sure how things like that work here. But instruments may also have been changed etc.

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A taxi lamp on the roof means that it's licenced as a hackney. 

Maybe he disconnects the speedo cable for nine months of the year?

[LightBulbFun]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:20, warren t claim said:

https://www.one2car.com/en/for-sale/lti-tx1-bangkok-metropolitan-ratchadaphisek-huai-khwang-lat-phrao-phetchaburi/7617276

 

WTF???

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@Conan Taxi for @hairnet's next visit? LOL

[Dyslexic Viking]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:34, warren t claim said:

Maybe he disconnects the speedo cable for nine months of the year?

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I don't see any reason why he would do this here, but anything is possible I guess.

[warren t claim]

Earlier this week I wired in a new Bluetooth radio into a TX4 belonging to a mate. I can't believe how cramped they are for the driver! Did I really used to do a twelve hour shift in similar TX1/2s? I honestly felt like I was behind the wheel of a Morris Minor!

[stuboy]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:44, warren t claim said:

Earlier this week I wired in a new Bluetooth radio into a TX4 belonging to a mate. I can't believe how cramped they are for the driver! Did I really used to do a twelve hour shift in similar TX1/2s? I honestly felt like I was behind the wheel of a Morris Minor!

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bloody tiny

[warren t claim]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:45, stuboy said:

bloody tiny

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Yet I used to think that they were spacious compared to the Fairway!

[N19]

Do taxi drivers prefer contract work (where it's all done via the apps, corporate clients or hospital/school work etc)... or people hailing from the street or ranks? I assume that the contract work has no risk of non-payment and, in theory, some degree of safety as you know who the booker is, but equally I assume it's less lucrative as the firms take a cut?

[Dyslexic Viking]

Remembered this one I shared in another thread here. 1946 US Ford taxi that worked in Oslo used in Shell advertising for their fluids had reached 400,000km with only a valve job as the biggest repair.

 

Wasn't unusual before with 10 years working life on taxis, my 1963 Mercedes had 9 years.  And considering the roads and conditions they worked under, it is impressive.

[warren t claim]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:49, N19 said:

Do taxi drivers prefer contract work (where it's all done via the apps, corporate clients or hospital/school work etc)... or people hailing from the street or ranks? I assume that the contract work has no risk of non-payment and, in theory, some degree of safety as you know who the booker is, but equally I assume it's less lucrative as the firms take a cut?

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A street hail or rank job is almost always cash and if it isn't then I have a chip and pin card reader that's linked to my bank. 

I also work for a local PH firm where about half of the work is paid by the passenger via the firm's app. The app jobs used to be a pain in the arse as it took us up to a week to get paid for them but now any job I get where the punter has paid with their bank card registered on the app gets put into a seperate Revolut bank account at 3.30am everyday. In many ways that's better than cash.

Hospital account work is a mixed bag. If I'm covering a normal private hire hospital job then it's paid at a fixed price reduced rate. Specific hack hospital jobs are paid at a higher rate. Last week I had a 4am hospital job from a nursing home needing a wheelchair vehicle. Whoever ordered that must have had a massive wank when the job was covered as I'm the only hack out at that time and wasn't at the airport.

Non-payers are very few and far between. I catch about half of them and that makes it all worthwhile.

[warren t claim]

One interesting question is do I feel safer driving a hack fitted with a partition and bandit screen as opposed to a Mondeo PH car?

I find that a punter riding in the back of a hack feels safer giving the driver some verbal shit as he knows that the driver can't reach over and give him a slap. Due to the fact that the sliding doors on my E7 are a little tricky to close this stops most punter abuse as the know I'll be getting in and out of the cab to let them in and out so they'll have to deal with me face to face. 

In all my years of driving a PH car I wasn't attacked once.

[Jim Bergerac]

  On 30/05/2023 at 23:30, warren t claim said:

https://www.vehiclerepoweringsolutions.com/new-cabs-for-sale

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There is a place that does these conversions up the road from me. Quite a few about now with the telltale two fuel fillers.

[GregZX]

  On 07/04/2023 at 07:49, cms206 said:

Looks like Glasgow's last FX4 - M676 HGB - finally bit the dust at the turn of the year. There are still a couple od Metrocabs earning, Clydebank could muster a 52-plate last week but I'm almost certain there's a Y-reg too.

Inverclyde used to be a hotbed of diesel 45s, Cavaliers and Mondeos well into the 2010s but I've not seen any recently.

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This was still operating in Glasgow until a few months ago. He's now replaced it with a Y reg TXI. A real shame given the amount of welding done to it for the last MOT. Seems to be scrapped now at 371k.

[GregZX]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:49, N19 said:

Do taxi drivers prefer contract work (where it's all done via the apps, corporate clients or hospital/school work etc)... or people hailing from the street or ranks? I assume that the contract work has no risk of non-payment and, in theory, some degree of safety as you know who the booker is, but equally I assume it's less lucrative as the firms take a cut?

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I do a mixture of PH work and local authority school contract work. The cash/card PH stuff keeps me going through the week with money for small bills/fuel/shopping etc whilst the contract work is paid at the end of the month into my bank and goes towards big bills like car insurance, council tax, car payments etc. That's good because it means anything that my old French shite needs has to wait until the end of the month.

[GregZX]

  On 11/04/2023 at 07:26, High Jetter said:

Interesting, as when I was PH one end of a journey HAD to be in the area you were licensed for. Council recently awarded the contract for school runs to a firm from miles away, so some very unfamiliar plates around the town now - not sure how legal that is.

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I do a school contract in South Lanarkshire council but my plate is East Renfrewshire. I don't think it really matters as long as you have a PVG and a fully licensed and insured vehicle.

[Conan]

  On 11/06/2023 at 20:20, warren t claim said:

https://www.one2car.com/en/for-sale/lti-tx1-bangkok-metropolitan-ratchadaphisek-huai-khwang-lat-phrao-phetchaburi/7617276

 

WTF???

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I can say for sure that that thing is in period UK made. People imported a lot of weird shit just for the sake of having something different. I've seen quite a few of them back in the day both as private vehicle and business vehicle (mostly airport shuttle for hotels). The mods done to it are wretched though.

[cms206]

  On 11/06/2023 at 21:35, warren t claim said:

One interesting question is do I feel safer driving a hack fitted with a partition and bandit screen as opposed to a Mondeo PH car?

I find that a punter riding in the back of a hack feels safer giving the driver some verbal shit as he knows that the driver can't reach over and give him a slap.

In all my years of driving a PH car I wasn't attacked once.

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Never been a taxi driver but I will say that in the sixteen years I've been driving buses, be it on days, nights, lates, earlies, whatever; I've never once had a problem driving at any time without a bandit screen, but with a bandit screen it's open season for every tit and their granny to have a go.

[High Jetter]

  On 12/06/2023 at 16:03, GregZX said:

I do a school contract in South Lanarkshire council but my plate is East Renfrewshire. I don't think it really matters as long as you have a PVG and a fully licensed and insured vehicle.

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I hear there's fewer regs now. They even dropped the practical knowledge test years ago round here. Many newer drivers have no idea where they're going.

[N19]

  On 12/06/2023 at 16:20, cms206 said:

Never been a taxi driver but I will say that in the sixteen years I've been driving buses, be it on days, nights, lates, earlies, whatever; I've never once had a problem driving at any time without a bandit screen, but with a bandit screen it's open season for every tit and their granny to have a go.

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LRT Lothian fitted bandit screens which were retractable, according to the drivers personal preferences and how safe they felt. 

Isn't there an exemption for minicab drivers wearing seatbelts for the reason of escaping if they get attacked? There were a couple of minicab drivers murdered in the early 90s for their takings I seem to recall.

[mk2_craig]

  On 12/06/2023 at 21:12, N19 said:

LRT Lothian fitted bandit screens which were retractable

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On buses they bought new following the decision to add them to the spec. This must have been about 1990. Older buses in the fleet were retrofitted with fixed screens, some Ned once tried to spit at me through the screen!

[warren t claim]

  On 12/06/2023 at 21:12, N19 said:

LRT Lothian fitted bandit screens which were retractable, according to the drivers personal preferences and how safe they felt. 

Isn't there an exemption for minicab drivers wearing seatbelts for the reason of escaping if they get attacked? There were a couple of minicab drivers murdered in the early 90s for their takings I seem to recall.

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The seat belt exemption is a bit strange. As a hack driver I never have to wear a belt, even without a passenger but a PH driver is only exempt when he's POB. Due to the fitment of seat belt chimes in modern saloon cars about 80% of PH lads in my area wear a belt. Only those few remaining Mk4 Mondeo drivers who could disable the chimes are driving around like real men. Hack drivers are different though. I only know of about ten in my area who listened to the advice from Jimmy Saville and of those eight drive new Ford Tourneo hacks where the buzzer can't be bypassed. I know of only two TX drivers who clunk click.

Pretty much all murders of taxi drivers go unsolved. Crimewatch has a few reconstructions of them on YouTube.  There were the Heathrow minicab murders of Stephen Sylvester in his tasty early Mk3 Cortina XL and an Asian part time driver stabbed to death in his HC Viva. 

It looks like plod made a breakthrough in the murder of Steve Johnson who was killed when driving his Mk2 Cavalier diesel hack back in 1990.

  https://highgear.co.uk/police-arrest-man-in-connection-with-1990-hanley-taxi-driver-murder.htm

[warren t claim]

  On 12/06/2023 at 21:39, warren t claim said:

 

It looks like plod made a breakthrough in the murder of Steve Johnson who was killed when driving his Mk2 Cavalier diesel hack back in 1990.

  https://highgear.co.uk/police-arrest-man-in-connection-with-1990-hanley-taxi-driver-murder.htm

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-59753723

 

On the other hand maybe not.

[N19]

  On 12/06/2023 at 21:36, mk2_craig said:

On buses they bought new following the decision to add them to the spec. This must have been about 1990. Older buses in the fleet were retrofitted with fixed screens, some Ned once tried to spit at me through the screen!

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There seemed to be a number of LRT 'oddities' which you would never see elsewhere. The doors on stairs to stop folk going upstairs late at night, boards with tourist/visitor destinations in the windscreen, ticket machines behind the driver, and of course the dreaded (when you lived right at the end of the route) purple screen meaning 'part route'.

 

  On 12/06/2023 at 21:39, warren t claim said:

Pretty much all murders of taxi drivers go unsolved. Crimewatch has a few reconstructions of them on YouTube.  There were the Heathrow minicab murders of Stephen Sylvester in his tasty early Mk3 Cortina XL and an Asian part time driver stabbed to death in his HC Viva. 

It looks like plod made a breakthrough in the murder of Steve Johnson who was killed when driving his Mk2 Cavalier diesel hack back in 1990.

  https://highgear.co.uk/police-arrest-man-in-connection-with-1990-hanley-taxi-driver-murder.htm

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A bit of googling turns up quite a few in the 80s/90s. I suppose it's a form of crime (like wage snatches) which has reduced because fewer cabbies will be going around with large sums of money in their cab, if many payments are online.

[warren t claim]

  On 12/06/2023 at 21:52, N19 said:

 

 

A bit of googling turns up quite a few in the 80s/90s. I suppose it's a form of crime (like wage snatches) which has reduced because fewer cabbies will be going around with large sums of money in their cab, if many payments are online.

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Money never seems to be the motivation in taxi driver murders. The scum just want someone to kill.

[High Jetter]

There was a tv doc recently on a successful forensic cold case ph driver murder, some 30? years after. Iirc he drove a Chrysler 180.

[Imhotep]

May have been mentioned already but around Rowley Regis/Dudley I keep seeing an M reg Carina PH car still being used.

[egg]

  On 12/06/2023 at 15:50, GregZX said:

This was still operating in Glasgow until a few months ago. He's now replaced it with a Y reg TXI. A real shame given the amount of welding done to it for the last MOT. Seems to be scrapped now at 371k.

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According to Glasgow's public register - Y636 GAE driven by a Mr Ahmed. MOT next month - had done 396k at last MOT (which it has been on for past 5 years!).

[GregZX]

  On 20/06/2023 at 18:28, egg said:

According to Glasgow's public register - Y636 GAE driven by a Mr Ahmed. MOT next month - had done 396k at last MOT (which it has been on for past 5 years!).

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That's the one. Some don't appear to have current MOTs. My friend has a Peugeot Expert Glasgow hackney and his has a current MOT.

[warren t claim]

  On 20/06/2023 at 18:28, egg said:

According to Glasgow's public register - Y636 GAE driven by a Mr Ahmed. MOT next month - had done 396k at last MOT (which it has been on for past 5 years!).

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Here in Wirral we had a Y plate GAE cab working until about five years ago. It was a very pale yellow colour. 

[warren t claim]

  On 21/06/2023 at 19:22, warren t claim said:

Here in Wirral we had a Y plate GAE cab working until about five years ago. It was a very pale yellow colour. 

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After my extensive research involving seeing what other cabs I'm ranked up with, our oldest working cab is a light metallic green S reg TX1 auto.

[jmsguzzi]

Saw this 04 plate Passat working in Gateshead last week.