Claim's Cabbies Corner. Repo Revenge.

[borniteidentity]

Contains ingredients known to cause cancer in the state of California...

No such worries 5 miles down the road in Nevada, so just consume it there instead

[Warren t claim]

Started at 7.30pm last night. Stuck in Stoke now and won't be back home for at least two hours.

[Hooli]

Serves you right for going to Stoke.

[brandersnatch]

Some wounds are self inflicted.

[DodgeRover]

Started at 7.30pm last night. Stuck in Stoke now and won't be back home for at least two hours.

Is that one kid late to school then?

[Warren t claim]

Where the fuck do I start?

7pm yesterday the cab arrives at my home. This was later than I had wished for because I'd rather have had the handover during daylight hours as there are plenty of strange switches that no longer illuminate. Also, the main interior light in the driver's compartment needs a new bulb. First issue. It turns out that on Friday night the o got into the cab only to find the clutch on the cab on the floor. He has it recovered to his garage and orders a new master cylinder. It turns out that a nut had sheared off somewhere and his mechanic bodged it. The clutch has something like an inch of movement and four inches of free travel. This is something that I'm going to have to get sorted sooner rather than later.

After a short walkaround I drop Martin the former owner around the corner at his brother's house. I have with me my as yet unused hackney badge, a cup of change for a float and my circuit's PDA. Having the PDA would be essential even if I'm working the ranks or streets as it contains my LOPAY chip and pin card reader.

I was going to head straight for the ranks with my FOPR HIRE, top hat light on but had a l;ast minute change of heart. I decided to start off with what I know and turn the PDA on and ease myself back in by doing PH jobs. Soon enough my PDA bungs me a job. Due to the sliding doors on my E7 needing some fettling, on this and every subsequent job, I'm playing the polite cabby and hopping out to let people get in and out. I can see the fun of this getting old rather quickly. Job jobbed, she paid via the app, I set off again to find my next adventure.

I look at the bid screen only to see sections that I had never seen before that were only viewable to certain vehicles, namely hacks and six seaters of which I'm both. This is like getting promoted to staff on an old car forum and the moderator section suddenly becomes visible with an extra section full of juicy gossip about the members along with their bank details. Anyway, on this secret section is a job at my local hospital so I bid and win the fare. It's a six seater job running asylum seekers from the hospital to the 4* Holiday Inn Kings Gap hotel in Hoylake. Let it be known that Tetleysmooth is right! This job would normally be about a tenner in a normal car but I was paid a fixed price of £16.80 as a six seater. As a bonus, the Albanian interpreter fucked up and there were only four of the boat parasites to carry. En route one of them demands that I stop at the garage half a mile from their hotel for him to get smokes. He's most pissed off when I tell him that there's no way that's happening as I'm paid to take him to the hotel, not to go on a shopping trip. When I get to the hotel I spin it around in the car park so my offside is facing the lobby and hop out to open the rear door. Boat wog is already out and makes a comedy attempt to slam an already stiff sliding door shut without any success!

(MUCH) more to come after I've poured another glass of a rather cheeky Merlot.

[Eddie Honda]

after I've poured another glass of a rather cheeky Merlot.

You're a fucking gaynard!

[Warren t claim]

I've been asked in the past what is is like behind the wheel of a hack and what are they like to drive? With regards to the FX4, Fairway, TX!/2/4 there was an easy answer, the "classic" London taxi feels and drives pretty similar to a Series or Defender Land Rover of the same vintage. In fact, on more than one occasion they've shared a common diesel engine. The Metrocab, as I've said before on the beige, is a Reliant Scimitar Grande Scenic Diesel. Obviously, they sound like a Transit as they're powered by the 2.5Di Ford engine, but they don't drive like a Transit. They feel very "kit car" in their build quality and driving manners. All purpose built hacks have very vague steering due to them having to have a 25' turning circle, the Metrocab more than most.

Used cabs in Merseyside, and probably elsewhere in the provinces, are sourced from a couple of places. The best has to be ex London. Other than the registration prefix, these are always autos and have been very well cared for. Many are also Silver and Gold spec models that makes them a nicer place to spend a shift. The other source is Scotland. Although Edinburgh taxis are generally well cared for, Glasgow cabs get beaten to death in the first three years.I believe that this is due to their council not insisting that a brand new cab gets retested until three years old when it'd be due its first MOT. At this point, the base model, three year old manuals get exported south of the border. For this reason, it is better to buy a used cab with a registration number that begins with an L nd not an S.

Some of you who've seen the picture of my cab will now be frantically typing a reply to the last paragraph pointing out that my new cab was registered in Haggisland with its SD prefix plate. There's one exception to the Scottish registered rule. The largest supplier of Peugeot E7 cabs in Britain is a company called Cab Direct which is based in Scotland. Pretty much all E7s in the UK are supplied on Jock plates. Cab Direct doesn't sell LTI vehicles, only the E7 and whatever Skodas they can get at the right price.

[Warren t claim]

After 1982 (of which I'll talk about later) in Wirral, our hackney vehicle regulations used to mirror those of the PCO in Penton Street London. This meant that the hack choice was limited to either LTI or Metrocab. In 2001 a few lads appealed and got some of these plated.

pugexpert2.PNG (164.8 KiB) Viewed 214 times

Then in 2003 the council refused to allow them to be plated. We were wondering why. At thew time we only had 124 taxi plates on Wirral and 24 of those were on the shelf of Billy Kelly, a man who I have talked about previously on here who was happy to pay for lawers to fight his case for a "significant unmet demand" for hacks on Wirral meaning he should have some more plates. Just after what we drivers called "The Breadvan Ban", we were all sent out a taxi questionnaire from Wirral Council regarding hackney demand. We were being what is called "buttoned". The name comes from this...

https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/ ... 780434933/

To cut a long story short, Wirral was doing a box ticking exercise before delimiting the number of hack plates allowed in our borough. Overnight they were willing to give a free hackney plate to any driver willing to buy a cab under three years old. The reason for banning the breadvan was to hopefully appease the local taxi trade as the breadvan was ten grand cheaper than a TX2 and hopefully avert the borough getting flooded with hacks. Before delimiting, a Wirral hack plate was worth about £11,000 and the people that owned them weren't happy.

Let's rewind to a similar local scenario back in about 1982. Back then Wirral Borough Council insisted that all hacks had to be wheelchair friendly. This wasn't to help the disabled, it was because they knew that they could cheaply outsource mong transport to the local taxi fleet. The local hack plate owners took the council to court and lost, but the legal bill was paid for by a firm who stood the most to lose by this change of local legislation, one of our local Ford dealers who at the time was happy to offer bent finance on a new Cortina 80 to anyone with a hack badge. The relevance of this will be made clear in the following paragraph.

Moving forward a couple of decades and the local cab trade hadn't learned its lesson. They refused to contact the dealer that at the time had most to lose. In this case Stoneacre, the Kia dealers. At the time the Sedona was selling in huge numbers to PH drivers and had about 50% of the seven seat PH market. The cost of a new Sedona at the time was about the same as a three year old TX1. It was pretty obvious to anyone with a double digit IQ that no fucker is going to buy a new Sedona when they can buy a hack and also have the chance to work the ranks and streets. Instead they started a fighting fund for legal costs called COAD, cab owners against deregulation. Needless to say they lost their legal challenge.

[Warren t claim]

See the black early Peugeot E7 hack pictured above? That's the way to mount a legal challenge!

In 2006 Cab Direct decided to launch a legal challenge to have their new E7 approved by WBC. Plenty of us drivers of shitty LTI and Metrocab products were keen to get it passed. Also this would offer via finance a chance for journeymen people renting cabs to finally become musher owner drivers. I and a few cabbie friends attended the licencing meeting at the local town hall to show our support. This is despite at the time my cab plate was number 28. At the time any cab plate under 84 could be transferred to any other wheelchair hack regardless of age unlike plates 85+ which couldn't go on an older vehicle.

We arrived early and started chatting to the rep from Cab Direct who'd driven a new pointy shaped E7 down from Scotland on trade plates to state their case. I tipped him off that he'd be expected to answer questions from not just the licencing panel, but also anyone else attending. I told him that I was going to play the concerned cabby worried about downtime off the road due to trim damage and worried about being able to get replacement E7 specific parts. He thanked me and phoned his masters in the land of the battered Mars Bar so he could answer me confidently and without hesitation. One wheelchair bound councillor who was a member of the licencing committee was most vocal about her support for more hacks saying that in Liverpool she can flag down a wheelchair accessable hackney within minutes on any main rd but has to phone for one and wait when she's here in Wirral.

He stated his case admirably. One point that impressed the licencing panel was the fact that Cab Direct had driven a TX2 and E7 in convoy around Glasgow and the TX2 has managed 22mpg and the E7 44mpg. The bunch of local councillors went out to inspect the E7 and retired to discuss their findings in secret.To many whoops of joy and high sixes (this is Wirral) the E7 was passed for service as a hackney carriage.