Choose Your Driver

Let Uncle Block be your personal cab driver.

I operate mainly within the lower city of Hamilton, between Parkdale in the east, Longwood in the west, the bayfront on the north and the escarpment on the south. I can also easily make pickups on the mountain up to Mohawk Road. Though I pay a cab company (a broker) a monthly fee for dispatch I rarely employ the radio dispatch service myself for a number of reasons.

Anyway...

Why should you have a personal driver?

• Have you ever called a cab company and been told by someone on the phone that the cab would take only 5 minutes only to have it show up a half hour later? Or, have you ever been told by a call-taker that it would take half an hour for the cab to show up.... but the cab only takes a few minutes and you aren't even ready yet?

  This is because the call-takers cannot really know how long it will take for a given cab to show up. In Hamilton, both cab companies usually have well over one-hundred cabs on the road at any time. It is impossible for call-takers to know where all of the cabs are at any instant. The answer they give is only an estimate based on the number of times the phone rings in the office.

  On the other hand, if you have a personal driver you call him directly. He knows exactly where he is. (hopefully - the same cannot be said, certainly, of a large number of "taxi drivers" currently licensed by the City of Hamilton.) No one can give you a better estimate of how long it will take than the guy who is actually driving the cab you will be using.

• No disappointments. No surprises. Once you get to know your driver you will be more confident about what you are getting when you make the call. If you are calling one of the taxi companies you are just tossing a coin hoping the guy they send has some competence. Understand this: just because Hamilton's cab drivers have passed a test administered by city hall, it in no way guarantees any one of them has a clue as to what he is doing. I don't need to tell experienced cab customers this. You already know it is true.

  Also, many of Hamilton's cab drivers drive like idiots. It is amazing some of them even have a G2 license. All cab riders and private car drivers in Hamilton know this is true. You can decide whether your personal driver operates his vehicle in a manner consistent with your unique tolerance for risk.

• When you call one of the major companies you don't even know if the cab will show up at all. There are several reasons for this:
  • The address was changed as it went from A to B to C to Driver. Yes, your cab was sent. Yes, the driver was competent but, No, you won't be getting your ride because he went to the wrong address.
  • Many people who call to request a taxi have extremely limited command of the English language. Often, it is very difficult for even the most concientious call-taker to correctly interpret the caller's request. The probability for error is thus significantly elevated. Hence, a greater incidence of cabs arriving at the wrong pickup location(frustrating the hell out of the driver) and customers waiting for cabs that will only show up around the same time the cows come home, or when hell freezes over, or whichever comes first(frustrating the hell out of the customer).

    When a personal driver is selected, communication is enhanced between driver and passenger. Hamilton is now host to a large group of cab drivers fluent in a wide range of world languages. Hamilton also has a large and growing immigrant population. Customers who would prefer to deal with someone who speaks their own native language are thus able to chose someone with whom they are linguisticly compatible.

  • The cab driver cannot find the address. Often, when drivers (especially new drivers) cannot understand dispatcher's instructions, or cannot find your address because they cannot read a map.... they will simply ignore the call.

    Your cab will not be coming. Some drivers will request extra assistance from dispatch when they encounter such difficulties but many, too embarrassed to speak up, will simply ignore the call.

    A personal driver, having established a certain reputation with you for competence and reliability, has a much stronger incentive to provide you with satisfaction. You both already know that you communicate well. Even if the driver does not know exactly where you are you can always give directions yourself. These directions go directly from you to the driver.... not from A to B to C to Driver, as in the radio dispatch system.

  • The driver may not like the sound of the address, or the pick-up location. Some of the more experienced drivers will simply ignore the call if they think there is a high probability of getting 1) crack dealers, 2) drunks, 3) violent criminals and whack-jobs or any of 4) a plethora of other unpleasant people.

    At night, I rarely answer my radio in Hamilton's north and east end. A cab driver, of course, can run into any one of the customer types enumerated above in any part of the city. The odds are however, much higher, when operating in Hamilton's north and east end.

    This is a shame too. Hamilton's north and east end is mostly populated by honest and decent people. Their service suffers as a result of drivers keeping radio silence in their neighbourhoods. On the other hand, if you call a driver who already knows and trusts you there is almost nowhere in the City of Hamilton that driver wouldn't go to serve you.

• Another good reason to have your own personal cab driver is this: He only has to deal with one call at a time. Even a driver with as low an IQ as mine, can usually handle a single instruction. The situation in the broker's office can often be far different. Anyone having briefly listened to taxi dispatchers during busy time will know how many different pieces of disparate information a dispatcher must process, often in less than a second.

  Many dispatchers simply cannot handle this volume of information efficiently. Though I have to say, if you are fortunate enough to have Wayne McGregor, long time Hamilton dispatcher for several brokerages, both driver and customer will benefit from his genious for the job.

What is the Downside of Having a Personal Driver?

First of all, a personal driver can't be available 24 hours a day. The service he is able to provide will be thus degraded somewhat.

Also, it is important to note that a brokerage will have in excess of 100 cabs on the road at any given time and these cars will be distributed across the city. It is obviously impossible for your personal driver to be everywhere all the time. On occasion, it is reasonable to expect that your personal driver will not be able to respond to your request in a reasonable time frame.

When this happens, and it will happen, you may have to fall back upon the brokerage. Remember, if you did not have a personal driver in the first place, you would have been calling the brokerage anyway.

I am sure I can think of many more reasons why you would benefit from the selection and regular employment of your own personal taxi driver. If I think of any more I shall endeavor to include them later.

I invite anyone interested in having me as your personal driver to please contact me using the response form below.

Why don't I simply publish my cellphone number here and allow anyone to call me? Well, for the same reason I rarely answer my radio anymore.... I am very fussy about who I let in my cab.

Also, if you have read any of the other material on this website you may come to believe, and... I suspect not without some justification, that I may have many enemies. It would be foolish of me therefore, to simply publish my cell number here, thus granting an excellent opportunity for someone brandishing a baseball bat or some other rigid and heavy artifact to seek satisfaction for some real or imagined insult or verbal offense I may have committed, by luring me into some dark, secluded place.

Oh, and by the way, there are a few terms I would ask anyone interested in my personal taxi services to agree to prior to enlisting me. These include but may not be limited to:

• The fare for any ride is due and payable immediately upon completion of the ride. No promises, personal cheques or IOU's written on the back of a matchbook will be accepted.
• A certain level of personal hygiene is practiced. I don't mind a little BO from someone who has done a hard day's work, or gone through some stressful event but if you are a person who has no comprehension of the meaning of the words "soap" or "shower" then you probably reek like a dead animal. Please don't call me. Call one of the brokerages.

  I do not request this for my own benefit alone. Subsequent passengers, I am sure, do not wish to be exposed to your aerial residuals either.

• If you are a bartender, or anyone in similar employment, and you have a patron you would like to get rid of because he (pick one): is violent and disorderly, is drunk and disorderly, is so drunk he has to be assisted or carried, is covered in one or all of the following: vomit, feces, urine, mud or any other variety of offensive compound or effluent, or has spent all of his money and is now just hanging around making a general nuisance of himself... please... do not call me.... call one of the brokerages.
• Under no circumstances shall I transport more than four (4) passengers at a time.
• I will not be a party to any illegal activity whether it involves drugs, prostitution, bootlegging, shoplifting, murder/suicide, terrorism, global warming, child molestation, rape, smoking in public places and/or fraud.
• No eating pizza slices, subs, burgers and fries, sausages, chinese food, donuts, popsicles or traditional Canadian fare while in transit.

If the terms listed above are acceptable to you then I think we may be able to have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Please fill out the form below and send it to me if you wish to employ me as your personal taxi driver.

last modified:Wednesday,March 19, 2008 at 04:40