Extracts from my first solo book which I have recently published about the two years I spent driving a private hire car rather than being a clergyman. It began life as a piece of auto-catharsis and turned into a project. If I can sell some I can start recouping my costs!


The Collar and the Cab
Follow this link to buy from publisher, or you can order direct from me. Amazon also have it as well as a number of independent retailers.

24
Burley – Personal Fuel Surcharges and
other means of making a bit extra

 At least one section of the “notice wallpaper” with which the
drivers’ office was decorated was permanently devoted to the
retribution likely to be visited on those who were willing to
line their pockets at the expense of hapless customers. A typical
example ran something like this: –
ANY DRIVER CAUGHT OVERCHARGING WILL BE
DISMISSED IMMEDIATELY. NO EXCEPTIONS.
These bleak pronouncements of certain and terminal
retribution for miscreants almost always followed the same
pattern; printed in large capital letters, accusatory, intimidating,
all-inclusive and usually containing at least one error of
grammar, spelling or syntax that served to encourage the
moderately literate to take them with a pinch of salt. One such
notice adorned the door from the area drivers were allowed
in to collect keys to the main offices where they were less than
welcome: –
NO DRIVER’S ARE ALOWED PASSED THIS POINT
UNLESS THEY HAVE PERMISON FROM THE
MANAGMENT. NO EXCEPTIONS.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
 Some words, like “warned”, “dismissed” and “exceptions” were
such common verbal currency that those who typed the notices
had learned the correct spelling, but someone in the office
with a GCSE in English language would probably have been a
worthwhile recruitment move.
Such auguries sometimes rivalled the descriptions of the
plagues that befell Egypt at the behest of Moses, portending
dismissal from the bosom of the company as if it were on a
level equivalent to being evicted from a plane half way across
the Atlantic with nothing more than a large handkerchief and
a bit of string for a parachute. No shift would be complete
without encountering at least three or four pronouncements
of this nature, provided courtesy of another piece of rain forest
or on the datahead.

Most of these threats, if not entirely empty, were as likely to
be carried through as the promises in a political party’s election
manifesto; containing the broad thrust of the intentions of those
who ran the show possibly, but likely to represent little more
than a vestige of practicality. For one thing it was technically
impossible for the company to dismiss a driver since they all
worked for themselves; the worst damage that could be inflicted
was a refusal to allow access to company vehicles, radios and
dataheads. If the management felt particularly vindictive they
might make the odd ‘phone call to other companies to warn
them against taking on this particular individual should he
materialise on their doorstep; not that that was likely to make
much difference in anyone’s recruiting process.

On the odd occasion when draconian action was taken
and drivers were removed from the company’s books by far
the most common cause was because they had been trying to
charge customers too much. Of all the complaints made by both
customers and management against private hire drivers this is
by far the most common. At a conservative estimate at least 50%
of private hire drivers indulge in this practice, some to the tune
of 10% and some far more. The absence of meters, of course,
makes it easier to be creative about fares, and customers rarely
ask to see the car’s trip meter and compare it with a fare chart. In
any case those who habitually overcharged invariably suffered
a sudden bout of acute but temporary amnesia just at the point
when they should have reset their mileage. I was frequently
treated to stories of overcharging by customers keen to tell me
that they knew what the fare should be and “don’t try it on.”
Of course on one level this practice did no direct damage
to the company, but indirectly it had the capacity to cost them
a great deal. In an age of diminishing brand loyalty private
hire companies tend to lie in the relegation zone of the lowest
division in the league. Customers who were overcharged would
frequently take their business elsewhere, and a drop in the
customer base led to a fall in the quantity of drivers wanting to
work for the company and a consequent fall in rental income.
Conversely a private hire firm that could establish even a modest
reputation for employing honest drivers was likely to be on the
receiving end of a steady flow of new custom from victims of
previous sharp practice.
I resisted the not infrequent impulse to add a bit onto the
fare of customers who made my life difficult, or as one of my
colleagues put it, ‘include my personal fuel surcharge.’ To be
truthful this was less out of any sense of moral principle and more
out of a fear that once I started such a practice I would probably
find it difficult to stop, and would one day find myself having
to account for it on the carpet of a director’s office.

Some of the stories of passengers being overcharged made
me angry, particularly when they involved elderly folk or those
on a limited income who had no option other than to use cabs.
Many accounts, though, were hilarious, and caused me to
wonder about the place on the evolutionary scale of the brains
of some of my fellow drivers. The most vital ground rule if you
intended to add a few quid to the fare was to pick carefully the
customers you victimised, and particularly to make sure they
didn’t know what the fare should be. One woman I picked up
quite regularly to take to a bingo hall a little over two miles from
her home had been using the same company for ten years, took a
cab at least twice a week, and knew the fare to all the destinations
she frequented. She told me one day that the new driver who
had picked her up a week previously had tried to charge her £2
extra for a trip she made every week. She presented him with
the normal fare, and added to it a mouthful of choice verbal
abuse and a whack with her not insubstantial bag, reported the
incident to the company and asked not to have that driver again.
One of the more jaw-dropping attempts at overcharging I
heard about was during a night shift towards the end of my time
in the business. I was fortunate enough to pick up the manager
of one of Leeds’s manifold nightclubs catering for the student
market at the time of night when work is quite hard to find. It
was a good fare – out beyond the boundaries of the city, and
worth a good £12, but reachable in no more than fifteen minutes
at that time of night courtesy of the M621. Not only was it a
decent fare, but the customer was sober, engaging and interesting
– attributes that were all at a premium after midnight – with a
wealth of entertaining anecdotes. It was the kind of job you really
appreciate in the middle of a quiet night shift. He paid happily, 
added a small gratuity in appreciation of my promptness, making
it even more worthwhile, and then told me about his previous
driver, whose stupidity really beggars belief. Having completed
the same trip he announced the fare as £26; he had picked on
the wrong customer. Instead of arguing about the fare he told the
driver to hold on a minute and called the company office on his
mobile ‘phone. Having been put through to the night manager he
simply asked why it was that for a journey he made two or three
times a week at a cost of about £12 his current driver had asked
him for more than double that sum. The manager promptly
asked to speak to the driver, told him not to collect a fare, and
return to Base immediately. The customer had a free ride, and
the driver lost both his fare and his livelihood.
I had no sympathy with him whatever – or others like him;
not only was he giving the rest of us a bad name he succeeded
in exhibiting amazing stupidity in his choice of stooge. It also
made life for the honest drivers more difficult. Almost every
customer I collected had at least one story of extortion at the
hands of a private hire driver they wished to divest themselves
of, and I always knew that the subtext of such conversations
was either a plea not to rip them off or a threat of non-payment
should I try.