Claim's Cabbies Corner. Repo Revenge.

[xtriple]

Did some work for a Dartmouth based taxi driver, he paid a bill of several thousand all in pound coins!

[Warren t claim]

Sorry for rambling, but one memory sort of leads to another.

Please don't be sorry! This entire thread is based on my ramblings!

[Hooli]

We likes ramblings!

[Warren t claim]

I know this is deeply sad but my biggest regret in driving taxis is that I didn't start ten years earlier!

As fun as it is to have the Bailiff thread on here I wish I'd started on the cabs sooner so it didn't have to exist at all.

[Warren t claim]

I suppose as NNW has posted about the cars on his system I should too.

When I first started I joined the largest outfit in town. The reason for this was purely down to insurance as they had their own fleet policy I could join for about £44 a week. If I'd gone elsewhere I would, as a new starter, have had to stump up £96 every week as back then Merseyside was a hot spot for personal injury claims.

Although we now have something like 800 drivers back then we probably had about 200, most of whom worked days as opposed to me who's always done nights. I'd gathered from driving around town earlier that a local car park (that has now had a community centre built on it) was a meeting place for drivers from my firm, as I learned that was due to it being in the zone for our local casino and therefore a decent turnover of jobs.

Not knowing anyone I pitched up there on my second night in my heap of a 405 and another driver soon turned up. He was in his green Mk4 Astra estate and introduced himself as Mick as he'd never seen me before. Seeing that I was freezing in my heaterless 405 he offered me a coffee that I happily accepted! Mick looked and sounded like a slightly camp 1980s TV comic, always with a quick quip and was a popular guy. He was a builder by trade and had about eight kids to feed so worked hard. A year or so later he told me that while on holiday he'd suffered a heart attack and needed a sludgebuster injection to keep him alive. Sadly Mick died of another heart attack about five years ago. I remember back in 2002 Mick's Astra was hit from behind so he was given a credit hire car while his was being fixed, a brand new Laguna 2! We were all pretty jealous at the time and gossiped about it having a starter button! Unfortunately, Mick managed to write off his credit hire Laguna later that week!

Next to pull up was one of "the brothers". One of three lads who drove for us at the time. I can't remember his name but he was the most sane out of all of them. He owned a 1997 Mondeo diesel saloon and worked hard to keep his Thai bride happy. All his siblings looked and acted differently, one looked like a hippy, drove a '97 FSO Polonez diesel and worked hard for three months, fucked off to Thailand for three months, came home and repeated the cycle. He had a white TR7 that he was most proud of. The last brother rented a Citroen ZX estate and had a strange taste in women. The last time I saw him he was with two six foot black Amazon type women and pissed out of his mind! Sadly he lost his badge due to being caught driving pissed.

Next to pull up was Alan. Alan was a former bank clerk and despite his young age of 23 owned his own home in a decent area (his 35 grand palace) and owned his 51 plate Vectra B saloon. As he'd bought his Vectra from the main dealer he'd bungee'd his taxi plate on and had the taxi radio and datahead powered through his 12v cigarette lighter socket so he could pretend to be a civvy if/when it needed warranty work. About a year later I saw him driving a Mk1 Mondeo diesel rental car, I asked him why and he said that he can't drive his Vectra anymore after picking up a lady who, and I quote, "spent the entire journey picking scabs the size of cornflakes off her legs and flicking them all over the back seat, carpets and rear door bins". I never saw him drive that Vectra again.

Then Brian 35 rolled up in his N plate Vectra diesel. Brian is still with us now and still has the kind of attitude that means he's proud of his dozen ongoing complaints. At some point after Brian bought the Omega Elite that he managed to seize before it was fixed and bought by me. Before the Omega Brian ran a 2.1 406 diesel that went like hell before he killed it. It was a nice car other than the fact it was in that flat, non metallic green that Peugeot painted their cars in back in the late 90s. He was always complaining that parts costed twice as much as they do for the 1.9 diesel.

The last guy to pitch up was Paul, better known as Stowie, in his seriously quick Rover 600 turbo diesel. I remember that weekend having to do a two car job with him to a bar in Liverpool called the Hog's Head that I'd never heard of, let alone knew where it was. I wrung the neck out of my poor 405 trying to keep up with him without success. In the end I had to shout through to Mark the operator that night for him to tell me it's location. I asked him where I could find the Hog's Head and he sternly replied that he'd do his best to find out for me. A few minutes later he shouted me on the radio to tell me that he'd asked around the office as to where the Hog's Head is and the general opinion is that it's the opposite end to it's arse! Yeah, I learned an important lesson that night!

[paulplom]

Just read the thread from start to finish. Very entertaining.

I remember about 20 odd years ago in the back of a sierra Blyth Valley taxi. I started to wind the rear window down when the driver shouted 'Don't!'.
Too late the window shattered covering me in glass. He remained very calm and I was expecting a bill. He told be it does it fairly frequently.
I've always wondered why he didn't sort the problem or even take the handle off. Surely when it happened he'd be working the shift for nowt.

[bub2006]

My dad is a cabbie. Started working for A line in sutton back in 1998. His first car was a ford sierra 1.8 LX on a G plate with wonky central locking. He then progressed to a N registered vectra GLS that was written off by another driver who everyone had nicknamed brain dead due to how many accidents he had.
His mondeo on a N reg followed that and that's when he was attacked on a call early hours one weekend.
I remember getting woken up by screams downstairs from my stepmother and my dad had has face cut wide open from top of eye to chin.
He had a pick up from a club in mansfield to a rough housing estate. He was on his guard but that was that. Pulled up at adress provided,1 bloke and lass got out the back while the other guy was messing about with his wallet. As my dad picked his bag up out footwell to sort change for him one bloke grabbed dad through open window while other grabbed his bag and all three scarpered.
my dad used to have a wooden rolling pin with bit of string through a hole he drilled into it that came as quiet an effective kosh so he went after them.
The bloke who had the bag was twatted at back of the head and went down. Other bloke pulled out a craft knife and sliced my dad down his face,grabbed his bag and ran,the female had gone by this point to who knows where. The jitty way had 1 escape route so he jumped in cab and floored it round to the other side while he called through to base. The guy ran out in front of my dads cab a few yards from end of jitty and sadly my dad couldn't stop in time, officer.
Police turned up with ambulance,found one guy at the start of the jitty with a suspected fractured skull after tripping over running away and the other guy had I think a broken leg after being hit by a "speeding driver" just before my dad came round the corner. He got his money back,had his face sewn up and ended up on page of ashfield Chad. I was paid 50p to deep clean the taxi.
A short while after that there was an electric issue with the mondeo that basically killed it off. He then had a 2.5 this automatic mondeo hit was cost ineffective,then a 2.0 ghia manual mondeo which in turn was replaced by a nearly new 56 plate ford tourneo diesel. He like that as the air vents in the back on a winters night could sober up most folk. That met its death when after 9 or 10 years the tide mark was up to the windows and had over 500k on click admittedly with 2 or 3 engines and a gearbox replacement.
It was about that time too the owner of company wanted to pass it on to his sons which caused a family feud because 1 brother wanted cash.
A line was sold off but the brother who wanted to keep business going started up pirates and took the best drivers,cars and nearly all contracts and regular customers with him so basically hit the ground running at startup.

[Nibblet]

So many questions about the above I wouldn't know where to begin. What is a 'Jitty'?

[brandersnatch]

So many questions about the above I wouldn't know where to begin. What is a 'Jitty'?

Who knows? Northern stuff probably

[paulplom]

It's Geordie for Southern shandy drinking pufter.