Park Slope Taxi Tales, Part Three

Image via Flickr/JGNYThis is the third and final installment of a three-part series on my time driving a taxi out of the garage on 4th Avenue in Park Slope. READ PART ONE HERE and PART TWO HERE.

When you tell people you drove a cab for six months, they all pretty much want to know the same things. Here's a rundown of the most frequently asked questions (I promise I won’t mention urinating this time):

1)     How much of the fare do you get to keep? All of it. Most guys lease the car for 12 hour shifts. So you pay one big fee at the beginning or end of day. Roughly $100. Then anything you make in the car is yours.

2)     How much money a day do you make? Cab drivers hate this question. It varies wildly. You could make up to $200 profit on your day. The number could be a lot lower though. I made $50 one day. That’s $4 an hour.

3)     What’s the deal with medallions? Every NYC Taxi yellow cab needs a medallion in the hood. People own these medallions. Sometimes actual drivers. However, they are worth over a million dollars now. So they are usually part of large fleets. 11,000 were issued in the 1930’s and that number didn’t change until 2004. When a car breaks down the medallion is taken out and put in a new one.

4)     Why don’t cars go to Brooklyn? Cars don’t go to outer boroughs for three reasons. First, they aren’t as densely populated as Manhattan. So it’s harder to find a new fare. Second, the lower income neighborhoods are in the outer boroughs. They generally don’t tip as well or sometimes at all. Finally, almost all violence against cab drivers happen in the outer boroughs. There is a neighborhood in the Bronx they tell you in taxi school never to go to. “It’s not worth dying over.”

Click to read more ...