Don't Vote For Bruce, Cut Him Loose
November 4th is election day. If you haven't cast your ballot yet, as I keep suggesting, Harrell should not be an option since he shafted the local taxi industry by not voting to cap Uber and Lyft at 250 operators each. There are about 45,000 Uber and Lyft drivers currently working in Seattle and King County. Slightly more than a combined 500, wouldn't you say? Thanks Bruce but no thanks. Please go away.
No, You Will Not Be Losing Your Taxi Medallion on November 1st
It was initially slated that all medallion owners in Seattle had a firm deadline of Nov 1, 2025 to have their medallion active on a working taxi, but what has happened in reality is that the City of Seattle did not issue "letters of intent" on Sept 1st as was expected. The plan now is for the these letters to be mailed out sometime next week, meaning all medallion owners will now have 60 days from that date, or from when the letter is received, to do something concerning their medallion. After that, all inactive medallions will be retired. Consider this a kind of bureaucratic reprieve, unintentional or not. If you are considering putting on a taxi, I suggest you get to it before January 2026 rolls around. And maybe you can thank the current mayor for his administration's inefficiency, another reason why not to vote for "his honor," his rhetorical effectiveness notwithstanding.
Taxi is Personal
After all these recent months of reporting taxi news and events, I've decided to turn to the personal, to relate taxi reality as it truly is, thirty-five plus years imprinted forever on my brain. If there is anything like an afterlife, I wonder if these memories are eternal, hundreds of thousands of miles tread deeply upon my once living fiber, tire tracks having penetrated my very skin.
What most don't understand is how personal driving a cab is, you the lone sailor set upon your city's particular cultural sea. It is a lonely business even though in a given day you might have shared your cab with fifty or more passengers. They are going somewhere while you are going nowhere at all, your day circular, always returning to the beginning. I think that is in part why I could not curtail myself from traveling around the globe, dropping off at the airport telling me that I too wanted join them, soon finding myself in San Francisco or the next day, Paris, out of the cab and up up up into the wild blue yonder.
Taxi then is a kind of mobile trap, and though perhaps for some, like me, a highly profitable trap but nonetheless a cage keeping you from touching life as it truly exists, your seat beneath the toplight equivalent to sitting in a movie theatre watching a big screen representing a world you can never enter no matter how hard you try. Don't wonder then if that cabbie taking you to dinner seems half crazy because he/she is, at best temporarily out-of-their-mind. And I guarantee that no one is immune, you too losing your mind once you jumped behind that taxi steering wheel. In a few hours you too will be howling at the taxi moon.
That is why, for the migrant cabbie, family is so important, impatient to finish "this damn business," ending their shift and getting back to what is real for them, the embrace of his or her family. This explains why Chinese food gained so much importance for me. Yes, I have been eating Chinese everything since I was ten but more, for me, the many pleasant dishes a kind of welcome to a better outcome than battling traffic and negotiating the myriad personalities entering the cab. I needed a smile and Tai Tung, 655 S. King Street, and the Honey Court, 516 Maynard Ave. S, always providing that kind of embrace, everyone happy to see me, an hour-long refuge from my living hell.
Thank you Harry and Milton and Mandy and Shelly and the many others who so graciously served me my Mapo Tofu. The Chinese normally don't like hippies but with me, that didn't seem to matter. Thanks, everyone, for the embrace and the thousands of great meals, those two restaurants in particular a kind of home away from home family. When I first started my taxi adventures on those 1987 autumn weekends, I would sometimes eat at Tai Tung twice a day. Back then you could still sit down and order at 3:30 AM, you and an odd assortment of night owls sharing that long white counter.
Working the Two-day long taxi single shift.
It was my routine for years, two days on, five days off. While working 42-44 hours out of 48 might sound insane and probably is, the tradeoff of nearly 120 taxi-free hours made the grind worth it. And the money I made was lucrative, because I usually had my lease and gasoline by 7:00 AM Saturday morning, that translating into the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday to pile in the dough. This was all before I won my medallion in a City lottery, and before Uber and Lyft essentially changed the association model, destroying taxi as I knew it.
If anyone wonders, I much preferred leasing to owning because I was free of the financial penury umbilically attached to cab ownership. Pay the lease and that was it. At the end of my taxi ownership years I was paying nearly $5000.00 for insurance. I estimated that I needed to earn about $18,000, or more or less two plus months before I earned a real penny of profit. Screw ownership! The only advantage I found was being in complete control of maintaining the cab, never having to worry about bad brakes or worn tires.
Poor association maintenance caused me a couple of accidents that would have never happened if I had owned the cab. BYG (Seattle Yellow Cab) was pretty good but not perfect keeping its cabs running. But even Yellow had its issues. Taki, who ran the garage, was a friendly tyrant making it hard not to like the guy, Taki keeping all those cars running though try a spare tire after 6:00 PM? No way! The garage was Taki's fiefdom, Taki BYG's mechanical Grand Duke. At its height, the co-op had over 550 cabs.
Since I could always pick up my cab early, I usually got to the cab lot at about 12:30 AM Saturday morning in anticipation of hitting the 1 AM bar rush. In those good old days I was guaranteed waiting customers almost everywhere in the greater Seattle area. The lot was near the 1st Avenue Bridge allowing me entry to South Park and deep West Seattle. Or nearby Georgetown had its string of bars. If nothing close was waiting I would hit I-5 northbound and head toward Capitol Hill unless I was waylaid to the Medical, with some poor soul more than ready to leave Harborview and get home, often miles away north or south. Suffice to say suddenly, where ever I went, it was non-stop busy busy busy, dropping off and instantly picking up, crazy taxi with every kind of early morning denizen---sober, half-drunk or over the edge---in they came and out they went all over the city and Eastside across Lake Washington.
This alcohol-fueled melee continued to about 3:30 AM, where a brief pause allowed me to catch my taxi breath before the Sea-Tac (airport) time-calls starting rolling in. My preference was the north-end, longer the fare the better payoff but 2-4 airport-ers where ever they started were usual, it not mattering to me, though some guys preferred the hotel stands, and if finding myself downtown, and seeing an empty prime stand, I was on it, knowing I'd soon be whistled in, closing my eyes for a few peaceful minutes.
For those interested in keeping score my personal record for Sea-Tac trips on any given day, is nine. More usual was between two to five. Some cabbies concentrated on the hotels, bragging about their daily airport totals. Me, I didn't care, only interested in keeping that meter ticking. $300.00 more or less was my 7 o'clock AM goal and I always made it.
If I hadn't already, around 7:00 I would head to one of many favorite coffee shops for a cafe latte and a pastry, each neighborhood holding a special place, giving me something to look forward to. Keeping your spirits up is utterly important when driving that cab. The psychic desolation is very real. Add in the physical exhaustion of getting up early, then pushing it hard to six hours, you can feel like crap even though your pockets are stuffed, and all you want to do go home and curl up but the day had in reality only begun, having another 14-16 hours of taxi fun and games ahead.
The rest of the day was just keeping on with what I was doing, paying attention to business hot spots throughout the city. If there was a University of Washington Husky football game, that would become my next focus. Business related to the game came in waves. First wave is taking fans to the game. Second wave is halftime. If the game is a blowout, streams of fans will be looking for a cab. If the game is close, I get into the area just before the fourth quarter, then boom! a flood of fans emerge from the stadium, and chaos reigns.
Depending on my luck, I usually made about $200.00 alone from the Husky games, and sometimes a lot more, not bad for about 3-4 hours of my time. Traffic was always crazy, and the cops a pain but there was a rhythm to it all, and usually I found myself in and out the area minus not too much trouble. Sometimes you could depend on post-game fan action proceeding into the early evening hours, especially if it was a big home team victory, fans lingering in the bars, getting drunker by the hour.
By that time, after the game, I was hungry and would usually head south to Chinatown, telephone ahead for takeout, then sit at the train station chomping away. I tell you I can eat my chicken almond subgum chow mien with chop sticks at any speed. Late afternoon would bring grocery shopping runs and sometimes an airport trip. Maybe a "personal" would call and I would do that run. I once had a personal that bought in $2100.00 per month. Another personal, an elderly couple in Ballard, would take me all over the place, often round trip with the meter running, with a $20-40.00 tip on top. Early evening dinner runs would commence, and they could come from any part of city. If during the summer Pier-69 and the Victoria Clipper was the place to be, producing lots of airports and often a jackpot fare $60-70.00 taking me somewhere far.
Depending if I caught a nap in the cab or not, I would take my serious break of the day in Chinatown, chowing down for a good hour and read the newspaper, having already rolled in a bunch of money, knowing pretty much what my final weekend total would now be. Sometimes that would be it, and I would head north toward my sister's house in the deep north Broadview. For years her basement was my Seattle bedroom after I sold my last Seattle property. First Bremerton, White Center, then Tacoma for almost ten years were my abode. But when I was taking Gloria the bartender home, which I did for years, the day would stretch to 22 hours or so. By that time I was beat and certainly tried to avoid temptation taking a last bell, creeping into the house and throwing myself on the bed. Five hours later I was up, a quick shower then out the door. Sunday I made a short day, usually 16-18 hours. Same kind of routine as Saturday, especially if the Seahawks were playing home. I would stay in the north-end and get a fan going to the game.
At Sunday night's end my total would be between 42-44 hours, dead tired but first I had to get the cab back to the lot, and because of the late hour, often having trouble finding a parking space. I'd say hello and goodbye to the night Supt, for years Barry the retired Seattle cop.
After allowing myself to sleep in, I would head on up to Capitol Hill, my old longtime neighborhood, check my PO Box, do my deposit at the Chase Bank with Mary, my favorite teller, then pick up my disabled brother and out to an early dinner we would go. There were many variations upon a theme but this my normal for a long time. I cherished my five days of freedom from the cab, everyday taking long walks, and when living in Tacoma, each day going to a favorite coffee shop, reading the news online and working on whatever current writing. After coffee I was head to local parks for walks along the South Puget Sound.
This routine changed when Uber and Lyft officially arrived, forcing many changes, including taking on an all-week leased cab before I won my medallion. A couple of drivers shared my cab during the week but I still did my long weekends. That continued even when I was an official owner until I gradually starting driving days, and Rick, another longtime veteran, drove nights on the weekdays. I didn't enjoy all the added expenses of ownership but the money remained good to the end, with me finally quitting in early 2023. Those were the days.
(Note: When writing this description, I feel I didn't truly capture the experience of those long weekends. I skipped over much detail. Maybe sometime I will breakdown minutely a couple of hours as it really was. A lot can happen in a 120-minute span.)
A Conversation with One Taxi General Manager Daniel
Big changes have, and are happening in Seattle/King County's cab world. The once dominant Yellow Cab (Puget Sound Dispatch) is now in second place in terms of sheer numbers, with One Taxi at about 275 cabs and counting, expecting another 10-15 to soon join its association of independent owner/operators. Yellow, until recently had over 450 cabs but it seems that at least 200 cabs joined the exodus to One Taxi. Why? Part of it is a simple matter of costs asked by the rival associations. Yellow's current weekly dispatch fee of $195.00 plus the newly instituted 75 cents per meter drop has convinced many cabbies that alternatives like One Taxi is a better deal, a lower monthly lease and quickly expanding customer and account base suggesting a more advantageous future.
For the privilege of driving at Yellow, a cabbie is looking at a yearly dispatch lease of $10,120.00. Though difficult to believe, One Taxi's GM said that their dispatch fee is $140.00 per month. Whether that low of a rate is sustainable, $1,680 vs over $10,000 annually, who would want to remain at Yellow? And while $.75 may seem an insubstantial amount, it adds up quickly, making a high fee request even more onerous. 75 cents times 20 meter drops adds up to $15.00. If the cabbie works seven days a week, averaging 20 fares a day, that means an additional $105.00 to the $195.00 dispatch fee, making for a "real-time" $300.00. That, my friends, is REAL money, and given that Seattle is facing an depressed market, one can expect One Taxi to grow exponentially.
Getting to my telephone talk with Daniel, I can say it is always refreshing to speak to a "real cab man." I truly appreciated his sincerity and his enthusiasm, saying "we are a cab company owned by the cab drivers." repeating that phrase more than once. What that speaks to is the frustration many cabbies have felt over the years, that they were not in control of their own destiny. One Taxi's goal is to be completely owner/operator friendly while creating a competitive environment where everyone is making money minus the yoke of tyrannical forces controlling your daily fate. All these years later, I remain furious with the late Yellow General Manager Frank Dogwilla, who was little better than a human monster, dominating all the cabbies with a dictatorial iron fist, where BYG Co-op's (Seattle Yellow) primary focus was profit taking. I cannot forgive the abuse directed and sanctioned by BYG's then Board of Directors. One Taxi is an outgrowth and response to that legacy of exploitation and maltreatment. All of the cabbies remember being pressed down by Dogwilla's unkind thumb. We work damn hard for our money. We don't like being ripped off. Or abused, treated little better than trash.
I tried to pin Daniel down about more operational specifics, like how many dispatched calls they are averaging but he proved to be elusive, not wanting to reveal business statistics to a mere stranger, but upon encouraging him to access my blog, he exclaimed, seeing my photograph, "I know you!" which I thought he did. Most Seattle cabbies know me by sight if not by name. Let's just say, I can read and decipher between the lines, Daniel's hesitation providing me with lots of information. Sometimes I shock myself concerning how much I know about damn taxi, gasoline not blood flowing in my veins.
I ended our conversation by offering to be available for any insight that might be sought form someone who knows the industry "inside and out." My one true wish is for the Seattle taxi industry to both survive and succeed, regardless of association. If I was still in Seattle, I would try to encourage an industry-wide confederation of associations that would share dispatch, accounts and insurance costs. I told Daniel that One Taxi should seek a fleet-wide insurance rate instead of individual owners paying for separate policies. The insane truth is that while the American taxi industry is in danger of disappearing altogether, the insurance companies are asking for higher premiums more than ever before. A friend who is thinking of putting his cab back in service is facing rates of $11,000-12,000, and this with a clean MVR and no at-fault accidents. And the following paragraph is my comment upon how we got to this sad juncture.
As I alluded to, the American taxi industry across the country was run by exploiters only interested in milking the cabbies for every possible penny. A good/bad example of this attitude comes from my first days driving for a large Seattle association, Farwest Taxi. I was working the "extra board" and found that I had been given an unsafe cab. I drove back to the lot and demanded a different car, telling them that the car required some repairs before it could be put back on the road. Not an hour later, now in a different cab, I saw the same defective cab back on the road. Because of this kind of operational emphasis, where profit ruled over commonsense, it created an institutional weakness that allowed Uber and Lyft to take over. The industry also permitted itself to be regulated by bureaucrats, who no matter how well meaning they were, had never for a minute driven a cab. And unfortunately, most taxi companies never learned their lesson, because what was true in 1969 when my father driving cab in Denver, Colorado, remains true now in 2025. Voices like mind were barely tolerated, warning everyone, like what was happening in 2014, that we were in big trouble and if we rolled over, Uber and Lyft would kick our ass. And of course our buttocks were kicked into taxi outer space.
Given all this, it is why I hope One Taxi maintains a clear vision forward. As for Yellow/Puget Sound Dispatch, I fear that their days could be numbered, clinging to a business model that never was completely fair, wishing for a world that is now an illusion. It simply no longer exists.
(Note on my father's cabbing experience: After screwing up his teaching career to where no one would touch him, he started driving cab and making $600. a week in 1969, far more than he ever made teaching.)
Recommendation for the Metro King County Council District Five Seat
If anyone lives in South King County, namely the towns of Sea-Tac, Normandy Park, Kent and Des Moines, I say voting for Steffanie Fain is a better bet than her opponent, Peter Kwon. Fain helps run Harborview Hospital and Kwon is a City of Sea-Tac council member. By being on the board of directors at Harborview, she understands chaos. She would have my vote.
Quick Doggerel Anti-Waymo Poem
Waymo, Waymo we won't ride
They are safe, Dara Khosrowshahi lied
With millions of dollars cushioning his backside
Screw everyone is his approach
Dara a human robotic cockroach
Instead go to the airport in a taxicab
Pretend you're English and exclaim "How fab!"
Be it Black or Yellow or Blue or White
Take a human driven taxicab
TONIGHT!
Another Taxi Doggerel
Hear the poor cabbie cry and weep
Exhausted wishing only to sleep
But on and on down to the next bell
The cabbie cursing his toplight hell
Though the polite paying passenger
Always will be king
A big fat tip making the sad cabbie
sing!
