Taxi Driver Online

By "the holders situation" I take it you mean the driver that can now put on his own single shifted vehicle which can also double as his private car?

You can run a new E7 for less than £200 a week, on the street, all in, financed over 4-5 years. (Oh and btw, Jim put the financial breakdown on fasties. Bob Dewar did a similar breakdown which came up with much the same costs) Of course station permits and a radio position all adds to the costs but you must remember that this is a new vehicle which doubles as your Private Car.

You could of course buy a much cheaper vehicle and reduce your costs even further while working the busy nights for yourself. David Downie, an “owner” who works the Haymarket rank has spent less than 30K in capital out lay in over 20 years, service driving taxis. His latest cab is a 5K TTT metro. There are others.

More plates doesn't mean an increase in service to the customer. You need more drivers to do that. Some but not all, double shifted vehicles would simply become single shifted. A lot of guys on fair rentals would keep working for their current owners.

It's just the same guys doing the same job controlling their own costs while working around their family commitments.

The only one to lose out is the greedy bas*ard with the high overheads, charging the big rental, massaging their big illusion of “businessman”.

Ok £200 per week for E7
Ok Permits
Ok Radio-£100 pweek approx
Lets take the airport permit just for starters £30.00 pm =£7.50 pweek
Insurance ( new with no previous no claims history) approx £25 pweek

Total now before you have done any work is approx £332.50 per week divided by say 6 days = £55.41 per day just for the above. Then you have diesiel say a conservative figure of £18 per day 10 hr shift say = £73.41 per day before you earn anything.
Unless you rent the car out on another shift you are not better off at all.

I am talking day shift for the above scenario..

Renting £40-£45 per day + £18 diesiel = £63 per day-- No ins, No radio fees, No Permit fees, No repair costs, No worry.

You can only work so many hours if you single shift it therefore you would cherry pick when to work ie the busy times, therefore under your plan it would be this scenario--busy times too many cars out not enough work, the not so busy times, hardly any cars out people complaining that they cannot get cabs because everybody is working the supposed busy times. Under the current system all times are covered by cars, therefore you need to put a stronger argument down on paper to convince anybody that your plan is robust, I just do not see the positives in what you are saying.