Claim's Cabbies Corner. Repo Revenge.

[Warren t claim]

One of my favourite parts about being a cabbie is that my working day starts whenever I want it to. Well mostly, as occasionally I'll get an unsolicited alarm call from the office to cover a specialist job when all the other hacks or 6/7 seaters are tied up.

My Tuesday shift started at about 6pm so I could catch the arse end of the busy time at the rank. This was after taking the cab in to be fixed which I talked about in Part 1.After a few fares taking the Asda shoppers home and having to repeatedly answer the "what's happened to your E& Warren?" question from the other drivers things start to get a little quiet so I have a quick Google to see if there's a ferry due in from Ireland (quite often we get rich pickings there with foot passengers wanting to go basically anywhere on mainland UK) and see one isn't due to I make my way over to the station.
Although the station rank doesn't move as fast as the Asda rank the fares from there are usually better. After a few fares I get a job taking me past Prenton Park and I see that Tranmere Rovers are playing and the match finishes very soon. I sit tight outside the ground and grab a couple of the usual type of match day fares, one was a few home fans going to the pub a mile and a half away and the other was two away fans taking the opportunity to grab a cab to where they parked their car a mile away.

It must be about 10.15pm now and I head back to the station rank only to see about eight cabs in the queue before me. Rather than hang around I log onto the firm/circuit via the app on my phone and see what's on offer. Nothing local grabs my fancy so I then do what I always do when I log on for the night and phone the operator to see what overnight bookings there are for specialist vehicles. There's very few hacks and 5/6/7 seater drivers that work overnight so the firm tries to make sure that the right vehicle/driver will be staying out late enough to cover the job.

At this point I suppose I should explain that not all specialist vehicles are the same. It's not a pecking order, it's just trying to allocate the best vehicle for the job. Although the TX1.5 I'm driving this week has a jump seat in the front and is therefore plated to carry six passengers if an airport job was booked in for six passengers plus luggage I'd be the last driver they'd ask to cover the job as fitting six passengers plus six cases would be a challenge in a TX. Interestingly (to maybe 2 or 3 of you reading this) enough although that trip would be a breeze in my E7 it'd actually be a struggle in the similar E7 my mate owns as his E7 is fitted with a full size front passenger seat unlike the fold down jump seat mine has which allows me to carry 2/3 cases in the front next to me. On the other hand, his E7 would be chosen over mine if the job was say, taking 7 passengers to Chester Races. If the job was a 7 plus luggage airport run the oppo would try to find a LWB E7 first before admitting defeat and getting be to cover the run in my SWB E7.

Part 3 soon.

[Eddie Honda]

Boring.

Where's the shagging?

[Warren t claim]

Back to the story.

I phoned the base and I'm told that as there are three specialist bookings in the diary that any of the three specialist vehicles working overnight could cover he's not going to pre allocate any of the jobs and just let them go to the fastest finger first on the bid screen. The oppo lets me know that the 2am booking is probably the best of the bunch and the 5am booking isn't anything special. The last booking is an airport run at 6.30am but as there's a high chance of there being a couple more big cars out by then it wouldn't be fare to save it for the three of us, fair enough.

At 1.40 am I phone the base and ask if it's worth my while heading to the zone where the 2am booking is only to be told that one of the other specialist vehicle driver's has been sitting off in that zone for the last half hour. If he's that determined to bagsy the job then fair play to him. Anyway, I'm starting to feel a little tired by then as I was at the cab garage at 4.30 pm so I decided to park off somewhere quiet and have a couple of hours sleep on the back seat.

I wake up at about 4.40 am and check my PDA only to see the 5 am booking still swinging so I grab it. The job is picking up three golfers with their clubs and luggage from three different addresses and dropping them off at the coach stop. Still an easy £25 so I was happy enough.

At about 6.15 I see that the 6.30 am S.V booking is up for grabs so I grab it for myself. Wirral to Man Air. Cash job. The info on the booking says 5 people plus 5 cases. I'm a little worried. Not just about fitting them all in with their luggage, but more because the TX1.5 doesn't really like motorways. To say that it sounds strained at 55 mph would be putting it politely. I'm not one to throw a £100 for two hours work job back into the system, so I scamper over to the pick up address. I fit the mother and her four kids plus luggage in OK meaning that they can fly out to Cyprus to meet husband/dad who's out there working.

49-52 mph seems to be the happiest cruising speed but we make it there without any complaints. One important thing to mention is the fuel consumption issue. Before I collected them I decided to throw £35 of diesel into the tank just to be on the safe side. After £4 the pump starts to cut out. I gently squeeze the trigger and after £4.80 diesel starts to appear at the top of the tank pipe! The tank was full! Fucking paranoia induced Brucie Bonus! Once I dropped them off I scamper over to the BP Airport Village service station and brim the tank again. I manage to squeeze £8.37 in. Not too bad for a 50 mile trip.

[Warren t claim]

Being a wheelchair accessible vehicle I get plenty of jobs during the day covering hospital account jobs.I was covering such a job at 10 am taking two OAPs from their residential homes to the main hospital when en route the office phone me.

Office. Hi Warren. When are you planning on staying out until today?
WTC. I'm not sure. It depends on what you're offering me?
Office. You're the first S.V due to drop at the hospital and therefore we have to offer this job to you first. Are you willing to take a wheelchair passenger to London?

[Warren t claim]

Now if I was in my E7 this would be a total no brainer. Wheel them in and I'll see you later. Sadly, I'm not currently in my E7. I'm in a tatty TX1.5 which I can't drive over 50 mph in. It's a 500 mile round trip and to make matters worse, if I get a flat tyre then I can't even change the wheel as the boot key is missing!

Let's weigh up the options. I'll happily admit to being a dickhead, but as an owner driver who covers specialist overnight airport work I'm not a fucking dickhead, so therefore I signed up with the RAC for specialist taxi recovery. The only issue is that it's linked to my E7. Never mind, I'll be going past Claim_Garage so I'll grab my RAC handbook out of the E7 and phone them to change vehicles.

Knowing that I've got some sort of back up if things go tits up, even if it is just to request an RAC patrol to bring me a slide hammer to barrel the boot lock, I agree to take the job on as long as they'll wait 15 minutes for me to nip home to feed my cat.

[Warren t claim]

I collect my passenger and agree to return the wheelchair the next day. We set off and I once again brim the tank so I can get some sort of meaningful fuel consumption figure. I explain to my passenger that I'll have to make a hands free call on the way to change my breakdown cover over as this isn't my regular cab.

Once on the M53 I phone the RAC and that's when the fun begins. I explain what I want to do and their call centre can't find me in their system anywhere. I tell them that I must be as they've sent a patrol out to me twice and despite searching they say I'm not a member. I offer to tell them my membership number and they reply that I won't have one as taxi cover doesn't have a membership number. After getting pushed from one department to another it seems that I was miss-sold membership and not only am I not covered, they shouldn't have attended to me in the past! So far this conversation has lasted as far as J16 on the M6!

I eventually get put through to Louise from the RAC Customer Retention Team who tells me that the best she can do is cancel my current membership and transfer me to the RAC Business Sales Team. I tell her that when I took out membership I clearly stated what vehicle I was covering and surely it being a Peugeot E7 Eurocab should've rung alarm bells. Her reply was something like it's hard to know what make and model is a car these days. I responded with maybe, but the A in RAC stands for automobile! When I told her that I was recorded by the salesman's iPad during the sale she puts me on hold and returns telling me that upon consideration, I'm now covered although not for recovery for another 24 hours. Fair enough. As long as I can make it to Tooting then I'll be fine. I'm driving a LTI and if it fucks up in London then I'm sure there's plenty of specialist local cab mechanics who'll be able to repair it blindfolded.

[Warren t claim]

So what was the drive like Warren?

I must say that it was a journey of two parts. The first 235 miles were utter 50 mph misery. Watching the arrival time on Waze getting later every half hour or so was totally soul destroying. EVERYTHING overtook me! I'm trying to think of a more miserable motorway drive that I've ever endured during my 36 year driving career and I can't honestly think of any that even come close.

But once we arrive at London this changes dramatically. The cab seems to know that it's home and becomes the perfect vehicle to finish the journey in. It almost seems to know the way to St George's Hospital by itself! It knows that it's home and every feature designed into it starts to make perfect sense. Even though I work in an urban conurbation, I've never experienced a taxi so happy to be driving where it is!

[Warren t claim]

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[DodgeRover]

Don't forget the ULEZ & CC tolls, did you manage to pick up a return ride?
How much was the ride down?

[FhakeConcern]

I thoroughly sympathise with you, I once hired a Transit to move my daughter from Eastbourne to Norwich and it turned out to be limited to 56mph. What a pain in the arse!
And that’s only about 180 miles each way...