I left Service Cab of Metairie in February and started driving for Carriage Cab of New Orleans. Had to take a written test and jump thru more hoops than in Jefferson Parish (Metairie). I had just paid $40 to Jefferson Parish for my 2010 Taxi permit. The $60 to Orleans Parish makes me able to drive in both Parishes. I was frustrated with the radio dispatch system with Service Cab. You have to stay sitting in your car waiting to be called on the radio for an assignment. There is hardly any street pickup work in Metairie; when you do get a street pickup you have to call it in, with all the confusion of trying to get an answer over the radio when it is busy.
In New Orleans one does not need to be checked in with dispatch at all. Many drivers never check in, they just sit at hotels, or the train station, or the Crusie Ship terminal. There is lots of street pickup work as well in the French Quarter and Business District.
My dilemma is that now I am driving a rented car and my investment in the Grandmothers Grand Marquis is sitting in the driveway. I cannot decide to put an ad up at Service Cab to sell it to another driver there. I could get it re-painted and re-radio'd to use it here at Carriage Cab.
I've been driving my Grand Marquis taxi for seven months. It is a very nice car. I drove it through water up to the door sills during floods and it kept going like a boat. Honda's and Chryslers and what all were dead in the water and the big panther platform just kept going. Ford has been trying to kill these things for years but people just keep buying them. The Grand Marquis (and Crown Vic) is a very good selling car down here in the south.
I've been getting 15 to 20 mpg driving around town, some freeway work. Not bad.
J.David has been driving a taxi in New Orleans in 2009. I actually started in November 2008 but couldn't make any money due to taking the kids to school, picking them up and trying to drive at night. Lucienne was working days at a hotel down in the Quarter.
I went back in February, desperate for some income. I've gotten used to it and now commence working at 4am; if lucky I get an airport run or two and make some money by 9am. If not lucky I stuggle on until noon with long waits in between grocery store and hospital runs.
The way that taxi'ing works is that you rent a car from the company and pay for insurance and dispatch service. These are technically two different bills as some people own their own cars and pay only the insurance and dispatch fees. For A Service Cab of Metairie the cost of renting my 15 year old police car is about $160 a week. I am a new driver so it is one of the worst cars; breaks down a lot too. So, I wanted to get my own car as I'll be doing this for a while; if I take my anti-depressants it is ok, I can talk to people and have a good time.
I wanted to get something besides the usual Crown Vic or Grand Marquis. These are the cars of choice because they are very reliable and durable. Roomy too. Mini Vans and Suburbans are also quite common. The big Fords get pretty good mileage on the highway, not so great around town. I average 15 to 18mpg in the 1994 Police Interceptor. Suburbans get less but seat 7 or 8 with luggage. Mini Vans seat 6 with decent luggage space, but get worse mileage even with smaller engines.
I was looking at a smaller car for economy, but something durable as well. The new Ford front wheel drive cars are what came to mind; the Five Hundred which became the new Taurus. These use a chassis from Volvo and are strong cars with even more room inside than the Vic if you ignore the center seat in front; the Taurus 500 has a console, it does not come with column shift. Chevy Impala's come with column shift which allows squeezing a sixth person in the middle front but their reliability does not rank with Buick, the best of the GM cars. The Impala is the same chassis as the Buick LaCrosse so I don't know why the reliability ratings are different. LaCrosse was rated the best car for sale in North America recently.
Part of this story is that I have/had an F250 SuperDuty diesel pickup in addition to the Dodge Dakota which I bought new in 2000. This F250 was bought in Lake Havasu in December 2007 to finish our trip hauling the Silver Streak to New Orleans. Everyone told me I got a fantastic buy on it at $10,000 and could sell it for more than $11K no problem. Kul. So when I got that freaking Dodge back with a new long block engine I started trying to sell the F250. For a year I was trying and lowering my price too slowly. I could have gotten $8K last year but could not get anyone to offer even $6K after the economy melted down in the fall of 2008.
The end of the story is that I gave the big truck to the Lincoln-Mercury dealer for $4000 trade in on a 2000 Grand Marquis.
This is a one owner 2000 Marquis with 100K miles. Less than 11,000 miles per year. A little old lady church and market car. It looks new. A shame that I'll have to paint over that beautiful paint job with a taxi job. I figure that getting rid of truck payments and insurance and the taxi rent will be worth a thou a month. Survival.