Talk to your taxi driver

There isn’t anyone who is going to tell you it's time to grow up. Well, there is, but you probably won’t listen to them. I don’t mean growing up in the way of paying your bills, or moving out of your parents' house, or buying your own car. I mean growing up in the sense of knowing who you are, understanding your values and being true to your core.

There is a moment in life when you know it's time to make a change. I call it your “happiness GPS” pointing you in the right direction. Something inside you is telling you, “This is not the right way,” and sometimes, if you continue to go in the wrong direction, the universe will send you a big wake up call. This is what happened to me.

I went to college to be a teacher and entered a five-year bachelor's/master's program when I was 20 years old. Anyone who thinks they know who they are when they are 20 years old is horribly mistaken. When I was 20, I was convinced I was going to be married by 23, have children at 26, and be happily settled with my husband in the suburbs. But my “happiness GPS” had other plans for me.........

A Cab Driver's Challenge To Get Healthy Changed My Life >> Read More

Trenton, NJ taxi Driver Killed on the job

Cab drivers in Trenton are on their own

TRENTON — Hitel Blair has worked as a cab driver in Trenton for more than 20 years and has giving rides to hundreds of strangers. He doesn’t remember every stranger, but he does remember the stranger that pulled a knife on him on a sunny afternoon 20 years ago.

“I saw the glare as I was driving. So I grabbed his hand and last thing I know I’m driving and holding this man’s hand to stop the knife from touching me,” Blair said........

>>> Read More

R.I.P Larry Hamilton

Florida taxi drivers / writers wanted

Picture by wikimedia.org

Taxi driver stories wanted, - if you a cab driver or person who takes cabs often, write about it from your own experience.
Make $15 per story, each story must be 250 - 450 words long of ORIGINAL content,- have fun, tell the world what had happened in your taxicab or while you were in it as a passenger, get your text published on internet and make money while doing this.


>>> Go to Taxi Stories
We also need taxi drivers / article writers on daily life of cab driver, cab drivers opinions, places worth visiting in Florida, issues concerning taxi drivers in Florida, tips to other cab drivers on how to improve their lifestyles or how to reduce overhead cost of taxi driving business, etc
We are interested about anything related to taxi driving in Florida, either in Saint Pete, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Gainesville or Miami, just to name few major places.

Articles must be + 400 words long, it will be published with its own link, you will be credited with its creation and you will get paid between $15-25, depending on quality of writing and relevance of content.


We reserve the right to refuse to publish certain articles with inappropriate content and without pay.

Crashing Cabbies: Las Vegas, Nevada by Sasha

Taxi Cab Crashes into Garage at Fashion Show Mall

Stories and news articles on taxicabs are about awkward passengers, sticky situations; For the most part, it is rare that taxi drivers make headline news for their indiscretions or odd behavior. However, one taxicab driver in Las Vegas, Nevada managed to change the way in which people look at the expectations of a cab driver.
Shopping malls across America are filled with people shuffling around looking for the best bargains or the newest trends to hit the market. The parking lot is filled with cars smashed into tiny spaces; or taxi cabs lurking around searching for a passenger, picking up lunch, or simply running the meter while their customer is inside exchanging an expensive ugly sweater they got as a gift.

Fashion Show Malls

Fashion Show mall is another typical shopping mall in Las Vegas, Nevada and on April 11th, 2013, the stores were filled with people, cars were parked like sardines in the lot, and cab drivers did their normal run. However, an unidentified cabbie drove his taxi into the wall of the parking garage instead of fulfilling. According to investigators, the driver was taken to the hospital with serious injuries and yet there was no particular reason reported for the single-car crash.
Although the story is quite disturbing, it leads to the question of whether or not taxi drivers are held to a different standard because they are supposed to be the levelheaded ringleader. Whether or not the driver intentionally drove his (or her) car into the wall is irrelevant. In specific professions, there are standards that allow no room for human error. For example, patients in the medical profession hold their doctors and nurses to the highest regards, and students in a classroom think their teachers know everything and they expect to learn everything their teacher knows.
When these professionals make a mistake, it does not stop people from going to the doctor or to school; it just makes them more cautious. Is this accident going to make people at Fashion Show mall stop riding in a taxicab? Probably not, however, it will allow them to make a change in how they perceive their driver. It does not matter what their ethnicity, race, religion, or gender is. What matters is that they can drive and they know the difference between a cement wall and a paved road.

The Strange Tales of London Cab Drivers

picture by i.telegraph.co.uk

Taxi Tales: London Cabbie Confess All

For most cab drivers, their only responsibility is safely maneuvering their way throughout the city, drop off passengers, and get paid. Occasionally, the cab driver looks in the rearview mirror hoping to get a glimpse of the person he or she decided to give a ride. It is in that moment they realize they are not doctors or lawyers; they are street priests and their cab is the confessional. Along the narrow streets of London, taxis stop to scoop up tourists, women, executives, and young students trying to find their way home. The driver asks ‘where to?’ and zips along the streets of London fast enough to drop off their passenger and slow enough to run up the meter. They often look at the reflections of their customers in the mirror and shake their head in amazement at the oddity of others.

Experiences

The interesting thing about people is that regardless of how peculiar they may be there is someone shortly after them that were even more peculiar. A woman asking her cab driver to stop at a convenience store in order for her to purchase another pair of stockings to hide an affair from her husband, for a cab driver like Terry, may be a reasonable request. It is the moment when Terry glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw she had her new stockings scrunched in her hands and putting them, on that may have seemed to be a little much. In the life of a cabbie, the next passenger after a woman like her is probably more fascinating. For example, the account of the anonymous driver who watched as a much older gentleman and two young women began a rendezvous in the back of his cab. John, a London cab driver whose last name is unknown, once noticed something strange on the floor of his backseat. When he pulled over, he realized that the last passenger did not leave a briefcase, bag of money, purse, or phone. Instead, the passenger left a living snake and according to his account, it was the same length of his taxi and he had to drive to the police station and requested that they removed it.

Seasoned Drivers

As in any profession, there are the more seasoned drivers. The ones who are in tune with their city and have a laundry list of streets to avoid. For example, London’s popular Clampham High Street turns into fraternity town on the weekends according to cabbie John Kennedy. By his account, the worst season is the summer because it is the time of the year when he is driving around an intoxicated passenger with the windows rolled down and the mixture of alcohol and vomit permeating his cab.
Regardless of the city, country, or continent taxi drivers will often encounter bizarre people and attention grabbing conversations. For them, it is not the odd people that are odd, but the people considered normal and sane by societal standards that may cause their driver to lift their eyebrow and shake their head.

High stress chase by Cops after stolen Yellow cab in South Florida

What was that guy thinking stealing taxicab and driving 130 miles an hour??!!!!
....and we wonder why people shoot kids at school or blow up buildings?
There is a lot of nuts and desperados out there,- ask any cab driver....and they will tell you.

Cab Driver from Hell

Taxi driver suspended for putting lives in 'grave danger"

Sydney cabbie Nicholas Charles Brown, 55, has had a string of complaints about him, including overcharging, short-changing, smoking, failing to assist a pregnant woman, being rude, aggressive, not knowing the way from the city to the airport and ''consuming alcohol and driving recklessly whilst conveying passengers''.

The Administrative Decisions Tribunal has suspended Mr Brown's taxi driver's licence after his actions were found to have placed his passengers and the public ''in grave danger''.

One of the 17 complaints occurred last October, when two young women in Potts Point hailed Mr Brown's cab at 10pm.

''After we had been in the taxi for a couple of minutes, the driver put on sunglasses, turned the music up and began to sing loudly. His driving was erratic and I noticed that he would frequently swig out of a can that appeared to have an alcohol .....

>>>Read More

Diary of a Singaporean Cabby

It could be story of any cab driver in the World

"With a family to support, becoming jobless at 55 is a nightmare in Singapore. Unable to find a suitable job, I became a taxi driver. My real life stories may seem trivial and my views may lack substances of a learned professor, but I shall write without inhibition. In sharing my thoughts, love for music and food, I hope my blog will be more pleasurable. More importantly, I blog to make a dull job a bit more interesting.//"

>>> Read More

Taxi Drivers: Easy Targets

Taxi Drivers: Easy Targets
by Sasha Brown

Taxi cab driver Annuel Delicieux shot during robbery speaks to 10 News

For cab drivers, there is always this one unforgettable ride at least in a day’s work; but for Annuel Delicieux, it was the unforgettable ride of his lifetime. At around 3 am on Dec 18, 2012 in Tampa Florida, two assailants aimed a gun at a cab driver, took his money and shot him. The two shooters, although now sitting in jail have changed his life significantly because the father of three who was just trying to make a living, who fortunately survived the shooting, now has to undergo therapy and could not work for at least a year because of the incident.

According to other cab drivers, Tampa is considered a safe place for taxi drivers. In fact, the city’s crime rate has gone down 46% for the past 6 years. Nevertheless, it does not make it any safer for cabbies working late nights to the wee hours of the morning from robberies or senseless shootings. They may have safety procedures to follow in such circumstances but readings from articles show that most of the taxi related crimes are not solely based on the intent to rob. More than half of taxi driver killings are showing an act of senseless murders due to the assailant acting out for his/her self-esteem. In the case of Mr. Delicieux for example, he already gave the robbers the money they demanded but they still shot him brutally. For wanting to create chaos from the situation, the suspects in this case still killed him even when he followed orders quickly and without a fight.

These taxi drivers working round the clock face risk factors everyday such as being defenseless working alone, late at night with cash in public and high-risk areas.

San Antonio Airport taxi drivers seek help beating the heat

San Antonio airport taxi drivers seek help beating the heat
Drivers want covered parking or indoor facility built

“Cab driver” does not sound like it would be on a list of the “worst jobs to have in the summer”, but try telling that to the nearly 200 drivers that work at the San Antonio International Airport.
“We're all cooking here,” said Ricardo Delvalle. “We have to stay in cars with the A/C running, the engine running. It’s a waste, as far as gas.”

Unlike airports in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, the holding area for cab drivers at San Antonio International is a large uncovered parking lot.
There are two small aluminum canopies where drivers can sit in the shade, but without a larger covered area or indoor facility, many of them have to tough it out in the extreme heat.

Training Taxi Drivers in Tampa

Hospitality 101: Tampa Bay & Co. training taxi drivers




TAMPA — Polite or gruff, informed or oblivious, a taxi driver can make a big difference in a visitor’s first impression of a city.
Recognizing the value of this interaction, and its larger impact on tourism, Tampa Bay & Company will jump start its new guest services training program with training for drivers of vehicles for-hire, such as taxis, limousines and vans.

"I think it’s a good idea and it’s long overdue,” said Brook Negusei, president of Cab Plus Inc. in Tampa. “The first thing you see, coming into Tampa, is the cab driver, and when you leave, you see a cab driver.”

The initial training is slated for mid-August, in time for the Republican National Convention and the 50,000 visitors it will bring. Further ahead, the program will expand to include other types of tourism industry employees.

The program will provide an “enhancement of the total guest experience that the delegates, media and other attendees will witness first hand,” as opposed to being a traditional economic development tool, said Kelly Miller, president and CEO of Tampa Bay & Company.

Being Cab driver in Dublin

Perils of being taxi driver in Ireland are not much different than perils of being cab driver in Tampa Bay.... are they? Local St. Petersburg Insiders would say:-, depend who you are and what taxi company you taking calls from.or who you are paying your lease to? ......