Claim's Cabbies Corner. Kill crazy rampage imminent.

Talk about your cars etc here. Keep it sort of sensible and on topic please.
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Warren t claim
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Fuel Miser

Post by Warren t claim »

An interesting selection of new private hire cars has turned up in my area.

A young lad called Nathan has decided to raise the game of private hire settle (rental) cars by buying an upmarket fleet comprising of Audi A6, Jag XFs, Jag XEs and his own BMW 530D GT which recently threw it's camchain. He's having no trouble finding drivers willing to pay probably £120 a week to drive them but I can't help but think that he's on a hiding to nothing when the repair bills and servicing costs start to roll in.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Hupdate

Post by fried onions »

About 10 years ago in Hull a taxi arrived for 4 of us. It was a new BMW saloon. Never have I had a more uncomfortable ride, the seat was like a board. Granted I had to sit in the middle of the back seat but it's not unreasonable to expect a car like that to have comfortable seating for 5.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Hupdate

Post by NorfolkNWeigh »

Presumably young Nathan won't be bothered by a few service and repair bills , when you're laundering money some legitimate expenditure is always good...
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Hupdate

Post by Warren t claim »

NorfolkNWeigh wrote: Wed Jan 01, 2020 11:17 pm Presumably young Nathan won't be bothered by a few service and repair bills , when you're laundering money some legitimate expenditure is always good...
Somewhat surprisingly he plays a pretty straight bat.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Hupdate

Post by mercrocker »

Ok, here are some quick taxi memories as requested by WTC. Not personal experiences, rather those of my Mother but I certainly remember the local fleets....

The area is that known as Waterside - basically the western bank of Southampton Water in the backwaters of the Fawley Refinery there. A local taxi operator set up in a converted shop, forming a fleet by getting three or four other chaps to trade their own cars in for white Mk2 Cortinas. I seem to remember one at least one of them was a 2 door which must have been inconvenient to say the least.

Not long afterwards the business was doing well enough to upgrade to a matching set of two-litre Consuls, all in L trim and factory black. There were four Consuls - I think they may well have been taxi spec - Mk2s were certainly available in such configuration. A bit later a black Granada Ghia joined in but that was sourced second-hand, followed by a Consul estate also in black but I'm fairly certain that was a repaint rather than factory....I seem to recall the two odd cars were on Essex plates but the Connies were GTR724-727L.

My mum drove one of the Consuls on school runs for a few months - it was after I had left school so would have been around 1975/6. School runs back then basically involved taking special-needs kids to outlying schools that catered for them. Probably around a 10-12 mile return trip and all done off the meter as this was contract stuff of course. Some of the kids would now have been labelled with some Syndrome or other but back then they were basically on last-chance alley, having been expelled from mainstream classes and taught in small groups within schools outside their communities. Segregation, basically. Some of these used to kick off spectacularly, usually before getting in (or put in) the Consul and often to the encouraging smack around the head from the fag-gobbed Mother that had begat them.

Eventually me own mum decided she had had enough and went back to being a dinner lady or summat but not before she had been rear-ended by an uninsured denizen of one of the local housing estates whilst waiting for some child to have his head smacked again. I think to be honest it shook her up a bit but I do remember she filled in the accident report referring to the taxi as a Consul Granada which is what the gaffer had advised her to put - I suppose he didn't want anyone to think they were still hackney-ing 375 Lowlines around or whatever.

Later on the fleet (imaginatively named Waterside) got more school contracts and purchased a Duple Viceroy-bodied Ford R coach as well as a couple of pig-snout Mk1 Transit diesel minibuses. They also bought up another small operator from the next town and inherited their three black Citroen D Specials which made a nice line-up next to the Consuls and Granada. I can't remember what they all ended up getting replaced with as I moved away from the area soon after but I do recall it was something boring like Datsun Bluebirds or Peugeots. The other thing I do remember was that the owner's lad was doing up a 2 litre AC Buckland which got wheeled around the workshop around whatever taxi maintenance was going on.....

There was another fleet - Randall's - in a neighbouring village who ran dark coloured Farinas with usually a cream bonnet. The last of these didn't come off the rank until at least the mid-80s by which time an all-white fleet of Peugeot 405s was in use.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Hupdate

Post by brandersnatch »

Lovely stuff. Thanks.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Hupdate

Post by Warren t claim »

As I've been chastised recently for not maintaining this thread I thought I'd spoil you with an update.

Around 2005 I decided to move into the taxi rental business as a way of making a few more quid. At the time the most popular car used was the Peugeot 406 which was a problem as they're not a cheap fix back then bodywork damage wise. This was a problem for me as I had no intention of attending the regular diesel car sale at BCA Brighouse and putting my hand up to obtain stock, nope I was sourcing Cat C/D cars off the now defunct Blue Cycle internet salvage auction site.

I had a tame bodywork guy who could hammer straight a front and back damaged car for between a grand and fifteen hundred quid as long as the parts were cheap. For this reason I became a fleet owner of Mk2 Mondeos. I could get pattern parts cheap and buy a Cat C front and back five year old petrol hatch for about £350 plus delivery. For about two grand I'd have a decent looking car all checked and plated for work. Other than suspension bushes and the occasional clutch change (a cunt of a job) the Mk2 Mondeo was a superb tool for taxi work as long as the Zetec petrol cars were treated to the correct oil. The diesel examples seemed to thrive on taxi work, even though in civilian life they could fuck their engines at 100k in taxi usage with half decent servicing they were mostly totally reliable except for one problem, if the injection pump fucked up obtaining a decent used example was both tricky and expensive die to FoMoCo fitting three different types with no rhyme or reason to what car got what.

Also for some reason, Ford decided to treat the puny powered dizzler to discs on the back even though the 2.0 Zetec petrols were decent stoppers with drums on the arse end. The happy news is I never suffered an engine failure on either petrol or diesel examples. That's not to say they weren't without their niggles, flashing airbag lights were common (and not an MOT fail then) even though none of my cars had deployed them in their previous accidents despite what looked like some pretty serious damage when I bought them and they had another Ford issue at the time. Namely the Ford Motor Company cost cutting one piece exhaust system which made a holed back box either expensive or a challenge in fabrication. Usually the latter to be honest.

Anyway, due to the Warren T Claim unique selling point of renting them out including insurance for £130 a week for a petrol or £140 a week for a diesel usually to newly qualified drivers, they found happy hirers quickly. I'd like to say that my drivers were a fine bunch of lads but sadly some were better than others and all had their issues. Late payments and the associated excuses were the norm, sadly the knock on effect of this was my drivers not telling me about easily and cheaply fixed problems until it's too late and expensive because they were avoiding me. Think front pads that have been allowed to wear down to the metal and you've got the idea. 3am phone calls to my mobile were a weekly feature of my life, usually for a headlamp bulb replacement or because they couldn't find the locking wheel nut key but one whopper phoned me for the radio code in the wee small hours. It took a few bleary seconds for it to sink in to me and ask WHY THE FUCK HAVE YOU SEEN THE NEED TO DISCONNECT THE BATTERY AT 4AM???? Another driver called Vegetable Ken had domestic issues meaning he was thrown out by his missus and lived in the car dividing his time between working and sleeping, not that much sleeping apparently as he was clocking up an incredible 1600 miles a week! To put that into perspective I had a petrol Mondeo out on double shift with two brothers taking turns day and night that was only covering about 1300 miles a week.

The crowning glory was a lad called Alan The Student. He had a W plate diesel off me and although he was totally clueless he was a nice enough fella and only worked part time and only did about 400 miles a week. At the time Kwik Fit had decent offers on oil changes for Ford Zetec engines, about £25 including filter, so I had a Kwik Fit card to make life easier. I knew his car, W809*** was due to need tyres in a week or so and as that particular Mondeo was pride of the fleet and due a plate soon I left him the Kwik Fit card and told him to sort them himself as I was recently single and away in Manchester that weekend banging some Scottish bird called Joanne. Anyway, I returned on the Monday (fucking hell she was dirty! Not much in the way of tits but a slender body to die for and went like a rabbit on amphetamine) to be greeted by an £800 bill! The cunts at Kwik Fit had seen the card and given Alan the whole manslaughter speech meaning he'd agreed to have not just two tyres but pads and discs front and rear! Obviously I was well pissed off but by that time there was fuck all I could do. A lesson learned.

That's enough typing for now. I'll update later.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Update As Requested

Post by Warren t claim »

If I make the next post about my foray into hackney ownership and rentals remind to include the tale about when I was kidnapped at gun point over a debt.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Update As Requested

Post by fried onions »

May I contribute some of my friend Martin's tales about his time operating a small taxi fleet in the early 1980's?
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner Update As Requested

Post by Warren t claim »

fried onions wrote: Fri Apr 17, 2020 10:27 pm May I contribute some of my friend Martin's tales about his time operating a small taxi fleet in the early 1980's?
I'd be offended if you didn't.
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