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Some reflections from a recent conversation with a taxi driver.
Last week I booked a taxi home after work via my CDG ZIG app as I was carrying a lot of equipment home and it was troublesome to take public transport bag with all the heavy gear.
The amusing incident was that my scheduled taxi arrived at my office, only to pick up a wrong passenger (yes, it was not me) before speeding off. Fortunately, the taxi driver checked with the wrong passenger about the destination and turned back to pick me.
As a former journalist/writer, I am always curious about how people ended up doing the jobs they do and how long they have been doing it. The topic of taxi drivers and private hire drivers came about quite naturally and the taxi driver (let’s call him uncle) said he had been driving a taxi for more than two decades. So from a cost perspective, a taxi driver has to pay about $120ish rental per day and uncle said that the taxi company will continue to provide a 15% rental subsidy till March 2023 (presumably to retain the current crop of taxi drivers), so that will be about $108 a day so he has to earn at least $200 a day to ‘break even’ after deducting fuel costs.
The rental for private hire vehicles can be as low as $50 daily, so private hire drivers may not feel the need to ‘chiong’ or rush to complete jobs as much as…
