The Economic Reality Of Driving A Cab In Seattle: Paying $18,000 Before You Have Made A Dime & Puget Sound Dispatch Remains The Same & I Am Officially Out Of Taxi: I Sold My Medallion

 I Still Can't Believe I Didn't Understand What I Was Paying to Own and Drive a Cab

It is pretty straightforward.  Each year as a taxi owner aligned with Seattle Yellow Cab (Puget Sound Dispatch), I had to earn $18,000 dollars before I made a penny of profit, insurance and dispatch fees eating up all that money.  That I did that for years, and and that over two hundred Yellow cabbies are still throwing away their time and money says nothing good about us and the industry in general.  While agreeing Uber is immoral, what the hell is moral about working yourself to death, filling the pockets of insurance companies and Puget Sound Dispatch board members who could care less whether we live or die?  It is a ridiculous scenario requiring a serious rewrite, freeing the taxicab owners from a senseless routine.  How can this madness continue.?  Looking now from the outside, I realize I was insane.  No argument.  I was insane.

And dividing $18,000 by $30.00 per hour gives you 600 hours to make that $18,000.  Further dividing 12 (as in 12 hour days) into 600, it comes out to 50 days; in other terms, nearly two months to earn all that money flushed down the taxi toilet.  Again folks, this is nuts, making me a walnut, an almond but certainly not functionally human, instead only a kind of mindless machine.  Welcome to the Age of Robots.

Nothing New at PSD

Last week a taxi buddy took a call in Zone 125, on NE 75th.  Turns out the passenger was instead waiting in Zone 135, on NW 75th, some miles away.  The customer, desperate to get  to Bellevue, convinced my friend to pick him up.  Upon dropping off at an Eastside hotel, he found another Yellow Cab customer desperate to get downtown,  having waited too long for a never arriving taxi.  Of course, this is all old news, a dysfunctional dispatch and not enough cabs to handle the available business.  Does the City of Seattle or King County care, let alone do anything about this?   Of course not. 

Cheap But I Don't Care

I sold my 1092 medallion for only $1000.00 to someone who really wanted it.   Remember, before Uber and Lyft destroyed the local cab industry, those medallions were worth $325,000.  Funny, huh?  Are you laughing?