Saturday 01/17/09

Well tonight was rather interesting.

I booked a total of $229, of which $105 made its way to the base and of course I spent enough on gas tonight around $32 to be exact.

Yes, it seems the car I was driving tonight is now getting bad fuel economy, my estimates are roughly 9-10MPG.

Any who, I think the best part of my night, was the ride to Jersey City.

I picked up a young girl going out to Jersey City at around 4am.

She was a very nice young woman, very talkative and at least somewhat intelligent.

She had mentioned that she was supposed to go home around midnight but had fallen asleep at her boyfriends house.

She had requested a driver with a GPS (yup I'm the only guy on the job with one) because she doesn't know the way to her house from the Bronx, which is fine.

I got the call about 25min before the pickup so I was lucky enough to charge my GPS at the base as it was already dead.

Doing this gave me enough juice to go there and back.

Tonight was the first night I got beat for a fare.

So there I was in the Square driving around, there were two young black girls hailing down cabs, since no one stopped for them I thought I would be nice and do so.

They got in my cab and told me to go to 205th and Mosholu Parkway.

I told them it would be $12 and they agreed.

So they had instructed me to drop them off on the corner of their block and that way I could jump right back on the parkway to go back to my base.

Here is where it gets interesting.

They both get out of the cab, the girl tells me oh theres my mom in the car in front of you.

I say fine, they walk over to the van and they were talking to the people in the van like they knew them, then they walked away.

I assumed that someone from the van would come over and pay me.

LOL WAS I WRONG!

A Hispanic woman got out of the van and walked away from me, I asked the woman for the money for taking her daughter's home , she turned to me and said sir these are my only kids, at which she pointed to 2 little girls by her side.

I was pissed to say the least, I reversed it down the 1 way in an attempt to find the fuckers.

Sadly it was too late.

I decided to cut my losses and drove off.

Remember folks get the money up front.

Any who on my way back from Jersey I filled up for $1.60/gal, that ended up costing me 25 + $2 tip for the guy.

Also tonight was the first night Joe Solomon dispatched to me, it wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be.

With him on he got me up to around $100 booked before 11pm.

So all in all the night was half decent.

Any who I'm off to bed ciao!

Thursday's Shift

Hello again,

So yeah I worked thursday night, I booked a grand total of $245.

I spent around $32 in gas.

I had a 6am VIP JFK run which was pretty nice, it was on the charge so my company paid for it since the guy knew my owners.

He threw me a $20 which was pretty nice of him.

I worked from 3:11pm to 7am, talk about a long ass shift.

I spent about 3 hours of the night in the office hanging out with Vito.

Around 4am it picked up, I had an $11 call to edgewater from pathmark, then on the way back I picked up a guy off the street going to W 57th and 8ave which yielded me a $10 tip.

In the end I came home and slept for a good 7 hours.

Glad that one is over, now on to saturday night which hopefully wont be bad.

I will see you all sunday morning.

Home Sweet Home

Well today is my day off and I decided to spend the day home and relax.

I did work last night, it was some what decent.

I did ok tonight wasn't too bad.

One of the many reasons why I never stay late during my other scheduled days is because of Joe Solomon.

He for some weird fucking reason will just not dispatch to me.

For example, last night after I filled up and booked out I told them I needed a ride home, so Vito was dispatching and couldn't get me a car for about 10min.

This was cool I waited talked to my wife on my cell and then went into the office to just remind Joe I needed a ride home.

So I told him and he goes no one is around sorry, after I told Vito with Joe sitting right there.

So I eventually got fed up of waiting and called Alex on the radio and told him to come scoop me up, he couldn't resist a $6 glom since it was close anyways.

So Home I arrived and watched TV and went to sleep.

So far the trip to FL is hopefully still on, I think.

I have about $80 saved for spending money, I am shooting for around $300-400.

Tomorrow is another day I work, I will probably go in early around 1pm to get a car or maybe hang out till I can relieve a day driver.

Any way talk to ya later.

Boring Monday....Brr very cold!

Evening all,

Well today was not as bad of a day as I thought it would be.

I started my shift rather early today around 2pm and I left around 11pm this evening.

I didn't do too bad tonight.

There was almost 0 street work this evening as everyone was home.

As it turns out I spoke with the PVB today and sadly I owe them about $500 which definitely puts the breaks on me getting my TLC this month.

However on the upside, my wife and I are going down to Florida for about 11 days, lol don't worry were not paying for the trip her step dad is.

Any who, so it looks like ill be working my hardest to save up some spending money for Florida.

Ill have to work on paying off those tickets when I get back.

The Road to the TLC

As most do not know in order to drive any type of vehicle with TLC type license plates you need the appropriate licensing.

For driving a cab there is 2 distinct license's.

There is the Yellow Cab TLC License and the For-Hire TLC License.

Since of course I do not drive a yellow cab I need to posses the For-Hire TLC License.

There are many steps to follow in order to get to that very sought for License.

For me, I have already started the process.

In order for me to get my TLC For-Hire License I have to do the following:

Get my Class E NYS DL - Check

If arrested get a court disposition (sadly I was arrested however not convicted and did not even go to trial so in my case I needed to get a declined to prosecute letter). - Check

Take the 6 hour defensive driver course - Scheduled for next week

Check with the Parking Violations Bureau for any parking violations that are not paid - Spoke with them and guess what I owe $500 in unpaid tickets wooohoo!!

Get Child Support Letter Notarized - Just waiting for a friend to get some free time.

Once I get these things in order I can then make my way down to LIC in Queens to apply for my TLC For-Hire License.

After applying I am going to have to take a Drug test, which I will pass, (no drugs here).

Once that is reported back to TLC and I have waited 4 to 6 weeks I will then be the new proud owner of a TLC license.

The Driver's and Dispatcher's

Being a "rookie" in this company of course I was taken under the wing of a few seasoned guys.

Since working I have met almost all of the Driver's both on the day shift as well as the night shift.

The night crew I am usually working with are:

Frankie
Ronnie
EJ
Alex
Kenny
Joe J.
Andy

I would consider these guys the regulars, ones who usually work 5 to 7 nights a week.

There are also other night driver's who don't usually work every night, in fact there's a few who only work Saturday and Sunday night.

Anyway, these are the guys who I work with at night and depending on the night sometimes i work a 12 to 16 hour shift like I do on Saturday and for some weird reason Thursday.

Out of this group I find that Andy, Ronnie, and Frankie have sort of taken me under their wing to show me the different way to do things, like the best routes around town, where certain place's are and for overall conversation.

I must say that Frankie is probably one of the best Human navigation devices out there, Although he does have his faults he is usually dead on.

Now on to the dispatchers.....

LOL

You've got Bruce, Vito, Joe "Scooter" and Joe Solomon.

These are your dispatchers which cover the 24hr a day 7 days a week operation.

On my shifts I see more then often Scooter and Joe Solomon.

Bruce only dispatches me during Saturday night and Vito is only on my Saturday, and Thursday nights. Also Vito dispatches during Tuesday afternoon until 11pm.

There are a lot of things that can be said about the dispatchers and their practices however that is not really meant for this type of a forum.

However I do enjoy working whenever Scooter and Vito are on. Bruce is somewhat of a desired taste to describe it.

Anyway that's it for the people I work with.

Vito and Scooter:



Call Board:

A little about the company

I thought it only right to have a blog describing the cab company I work for.

I will not say the name of the company I work for as I am sure it violates some privacy law lol.

However, lets just say our fleet includes 9 Vehicles, 8 Crown Victoria's 2003-2004 model year, and a very run down 1994 Green Lincoln Towncar, dubbed the "45" car with about 275k on the odometer.

The base is simply a little door that you walk into, and on your left is the window where the dispatcher sits along with a phone guy.

This window is where the driver's book out at the end of their shift and pick up the Keys, Insurance & Registration, and Nextel cell phone that allows us to talk to the base.

Our company in a sense is basically a sit and wait to get a call type of operation, we are not "allowed" to simply pick up people off the street like the yellow cab drivers can.

However there are many that do take the risk and pick up pedestrians off the street from various spots around town.

Some of the guy's call this Gloming.

The word in and of itself is strange but rather fitting.

First Entry

Hello, and Welcome to my blog about being a NYC For-Hire cab driver.

Seeing as this is my first post I thought I would describe myself and the steps that lead me to become a cab driver.

My name is Jerry, I am 22 yrs old and I have been driving a cab now for about 2 and 1/2 months, at least that's what my new Class E license says.

I work for a local company based out of Westchester Square.

I was not always a cab driver, ever since I graduated High School, I have been working in various IT positions.

Yup that's right I am a computer geek.

Not only am I a computer geek, I am also a certified computer technician.

Anywho....

My last job was being a NOC Technician for a VoIP wholesaler out of LIC making $12 an hour, no benefits until after 3 months and a somewhat shitty commute.

Sadly I was let go from that job.

So there I was unemployed and broke as a joke.

I didn't think to start driving a cab right away, I thought perhaps unemployment would help me out or at worst welfare....

After filing for unemployment they contacted me only to say that I was ineligible, oh well there goes my safety net!

So there I was all options exhausted for 6 months I was without a job and desperate.

I always used craigslist to look for jobs and things like that, and occasionally I would stumble into the transportation portion and just look at job listings and I found it very appealing the thought of making money again by doing what I usually enjoyed anyway, driving!!

So I spoke with my father who helped me to get my Class E license, which in NYS is the first step in getting your TLC License.

So one day went go up nice and early and went to the DMV on Commerce st. right by Lehman High School and the Westchester Square 6 Train station.

Walked in, filled out the forms and 1 hour and $35 later I had my NYS DL Class E which is the equivalent to a chauffeurs license.

Since I was already in Westchester Square I decided to walk over to the Cab's home base and apply for a Driver position.

I spoke with the main dispatcher Bruce and was on my way to driving a cab.

He explained to me the things that I needed to do before I could start working and since I had never driven a cab before that things would be pretty slow at first before I would start making real money in this "business".