Claim's Cabbies Corner. Kill crazy rampage imminent.

Talk about your cars etc here. Keep it sort of sensible and on topic please.
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Warren t claim
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by Warren t claim »

NoelTidybeard wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 11:05 pm "back in the day" having a friend who was a p/h driver could be quite handy to tax the car
1 car all in my name
2nd car registered to b-i-l so as to use my "not owned/leased/hired" bit of may drive other cars bit of insewerants
he borrows the company cover note meets me at post office and robert is my mothers brother! :o
The bike school had a similarly vaguely worded policy that I used with great success.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by DodgeRover »

My mum used to own lots of motorbikes for similar reasons
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by Warren t claim »

Time to crack open a beer or three and update this thread.

I'll start by writing about a couple of characters and their motors.

Up first is a bloke called Mike. Mike was/is a huge guy with learning difficulties who was given the nickname Bright Eyes. I really have no idea how he managed to pass the medical and knowledge test but somehow he got badged back in 2003. I believe his dad paid for everything including his nearly new Ford Galaxy which he worked days at the local hospital, usually stalking Mutha_Claim whilst doing so. Known for making his passengers feel a bit uneasy, he had a strange habit of stealing meat from the people he picked up at the supermarket for some reason. One day I walked into the office to see him there in tears getting a bollocking off his dad. Apparently, he called his dad into the office because the manager had suspended him for 24 hours for no good reason. Upon arriving his dad learnt that Mike had been banged off the air for a day for refusing account work, a big no-no back then and therefore gave Bright Eyes a stern telling off in front of all the staff! Mike was eventually asked to leave when a passenger accidentally opened his glove box and several porn mags fell out!
Upon leaving Mike, well his dad, got an operators licence and started an airport transfer business called Air Mike Travel. Now you'd think owning a seven seater would be perfect for the job but for some reason they sold it and bought a white Pug 306 HDi hatchback! Fuck knows how he managed but for about a year he did. The funny thing is, being autistic and therefore following the rules as he's told saved the life of a family. One day on the M56 after collecting a family from Manchester Airport his, probably well overloaded, 306 broke down in the middle of the night in the pissing rain. Due to him being told that the best thing to do in those circumstances is to get everyone out of the car and stand on the embankment he told his fare to leave the Peugeot. As it was dark and raining they refused. Bright Eyes then went into an autistic freak out which scared the punters into getting out which is just as well as apparently ten seconds later a Polish Willi Betz artic ploughed into the back of the poor Peugeot launching it several hundred meters down the motorway!
I think Mike handed his badge in shortly afterwards!

Next up is Peter, AKA Dirty Peter or Peter Files. A man still with our company to this day. Where do I start? Well to begin with Peter used to run a fleet of about 20 Xantias that he bought cheap, usually salvage, and fixed up to rent out to drivers at bargain prices. To his credit, what he doesn't know about keeping them on the road with no garage facilities isn't worth knowing. Servicing and routine maintenance are dirty words to Peter, he'd rather replace an engine a week than pay for oil changes. His Xantias were somewhat varying in quality and spec. He ran a couple of 1.9D non turbo examples, double shifted covering huge mileages that refused to die. Another had a fucking strange spec, it was a high end VSX model that for some reason the company that bought it new (either Maplins or Matalan, I can't remember which) had specced it with keep fit windows, fuck knows why! It was full VSX trim in every other way.
His own personal taxi was a white Xantia 2.0 petrol, auto, top of the range beast with full leather trim. I'll admit it looked nice but burned oil at a ferocious rate. Apparently, he'd bought it salvage after it was damaged in a flood at the general opinion was it'd sucked some water up and slightly bent its rods.
Anyway, Peter is one of those people who slides his way into making himself useful to the management of whoever he's working for at the time, he starts by fitting sets and radios and worms his way in further from there, usually by doing a bit of operating which is handy as he can see when and where the best bookings are coming up. Back in the day he had a reputation of feeding the best jobs to the lads who rented his cars just to ensure that they paid him.
To give an example of how much he really doesn't care what people think of him he would happily indulge in a bit of dogging and wouldn't even take the taxi signs off his car while at the dogging site. A fully paid up regular at the local swingers club meaning that he's the reason why Claim_Bird and myself refuse to visit there and I'm more than happy to drive 50 miles to somewhere else rather than having to deal with him! I know I'm painting a pretty bad picture of him but in all honesty I've not had an argument with him over the last 19 years.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by paulplom »

Great write up.
I had an 04 civic cdti that used to aqualock I think it blew it's head gasket. It would run okay with the expansion cap off but with it on it would pressurise and wouldn't start. Vauxhall engine innit.
I chopped it in for a year old 08 top spec fabia. I handed the keys to the salesman and he said great I'll just get our guys to check it over while we do the paperwork. I thought oh fuck but never heard anything.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by AutoshiteBoy »

paulplom wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 6:37 am Vauxhall engine innit.
Izuzu lump made in Indonesia I believe.

You do know that for 11 glorious years, GM's second biggest administrative head quarters in Europe was in North Shields? And I was there, and I loved it.
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by Warren t claim »

As I've not posted on this thread for a couple of months I thought it was long overdue for an update so here goes.

Let's talk about Frank, one of the last true independents and a friend who I had the "pleasure" of working for several times.

Frank had a long and illustrious record with the local licensing authority. His dad (RIP) bought the company from a woman called Sheila back in 1980. Oddly enough I actually remember Sheila taking my family to an 18th birthday party back in 1977 in her light blue (Monza Blue?) 1977, P reg Cortina 1.6L Estate. Frank's dad already owned a small taxi company called Square Deal Cars and he was keen to expand as a way to find a slightly less violent living than the bouncer company he ran with Frank.

The best way to describe Frank is that he's an "old school hardman" with fingers in many pies including property, construction and pubs. Back in the late 80s his taxi company was the biggest in town and he did very well for himself. Sadly he had one big weakness, women. I used to regularly run his sister about and according to her he's always had a couple of women on the go at the same time since his teenage years but more of that later.

Although I wouldn't describe Frank as a control freak, he did have a business model based on having two drivers double shifting his cars and having his properties occupied by his drivers. A few years ago a smackhead wandered onto the base trying to sell whatever he'd shoplifted and I advised him to fuck off before the boss gets back or he'll leave with a Focus diesel, a night shift, and a flat in Birkenhead!

I'll be back in a bit with the story of Frank's "quality" fleet!
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by Warren t claim »

Now Frank really doesn't give a fuck about quality, if something will just about do the job then it's OK as far as he's concerned. Whether it be a chair in the office, a working comms system, or a bit on the side if it'll just about fulfill its chosen function then he didn't give a fuck about either fixing or replacing it.

Back in the late 80s one of Frank's cars was a light blue Mk1 Fiat Strada. Said Fiat had suffered corrosion in the floorpan meaning that he had the driver's seat welded to the floor! Poor Steve hopped into it on his first day, tried to adjust the seat, discovered what was wrong, and promptly fucked off to rent another car off someone who rented slightly higher quality taxis out. Needless to say, Steve was branded a cunt in Frank's eyes for doing so!

Owner-drivers who's cars had fucked up leaving them with a large repair bill could always rely on Frank to bail them out, just sign the car over to him and he'd pay the bill and rent you what was your own car back to you for £70 a week for either a day or night shift. One driver in such circumstances tried to pull a fast one and secured a Logbook Loan against his car before handing it over to Frank. As you can imagine, he got himself a slap for his dishonesty!

As you have probably guessed, the cars he owned were never serviced! As luck might have it, Frank discovered that Protons, both the early Saga type and later Persona petrols, were pretty much indestructible and would happily tolerate being driven around the clock without fucking up. Sadly the same couldn't be said of the later Proton Wira which wasn't quite so tolerant of neglect.

One car that did manage to survive until its 8th birthday, and therefore had to be pensioned off, is the GDI Mitsubishi Carisma. It lasted four years being double shifted without even an oil change with the only breakdown being the need for a new distributor. The only other survivor I can think of is a Montego diesel estate that defied the odds and made it to retirement before being donated to an operator who was in need of wheels.

It will probably come as no surprise to you to learn that Frank had a tab with several mechanics that he dodged paying for as long as he could! Even his own taxi was neglected. On the subject of that, when he fancied a change of car he'd pass his old car down the line to whoever was his favourite driver at the time. As an owner-driver working there I never got to enjoy that perk but others did. His own cars were whatever he could get a good deal on and were a cut above what his drivers had. I remember him having a Pug 406 that he ran for a year without a back box on the exhaust because when it rotted and fell off made not much more noise than normal! This was passed down to the late Geordie Mick who was the flavour of the month at the time. Sadly because the battery went weak coupled with Frank refusing to buy a replacement due to Mick living on a hill (in one of his houses) Mick had to leave it running outside the office with the entirely predictable result of it getting stolen! Whoever nicked it was only interested in getting it far away enough to steal the money Mick had in it. Frank should've expected this as a decade earlier, Charlie The Iranian (real name Mohammed Al Iqbal, but as Frank couldn't say that he renamed him, Charlie) had parked frank's Lada Riva with similar starting issues outside a tough boozer with the engine running to go in and shout out for a punter and when he came out discovered that his Lada had been stolen!

More to come soon if you want it!
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by mercrocker »

Of course we want more!
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by Chodweaver »

Hell, yes!
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Re: Claim's Cabbies Corner I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Post by brandersnatch »

Up all night waiting.
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