Taxi Driving Experiences

I first tried to get my class four in 1988 while working in Banff. I was 20 years old and had just completed my first year at Bible college. I did not do very well when it came to grades. My goal was to go to college to find myself a wife.

I rode in a taxi car in Banff one morning. The taxi driver was a good-looking girl who told me the money with Banff Taxi was pretty good. She was stunning, and I enjoyed taking her taxi as a customer.

I managed to arrange to use an old car from somebody at work so I could do my taxi four test. I passed my written exam with flying colours. Well, on the way to my test, a Model T Ford drove into the back of me. I turned left when it was not safe to do so. So, I got a ticket for that violation. That did stop my efforts until I started again in 1993.

I did my written, and like before; I passed it with flying colours. Then I tried my driving test. I failed it so very badly. I can not remember whose car I borrowed to do my test. I did not own a car anymore. My first car was a 1976 Dodge Arrow. I got the car as a gift for graduating twice from Bible school. The car had a little spot of red paint, with the rest covered in orange, rusty paint primer.

I was so proud of this old colossal junk. It was my car. Soon the car began to fall apart. There was a hole in the floor of that car. The hatchback hinges wore out. So, I, who knew the car as Frank, sold it for $200.00. I used the money to buy an Amway kit for $250.00.

Now, remember that in the past, I tried being a salesman for a job. I could not sell anything, even if it meant saving my life. So, you can guess how far my Amway career went.

Well, I got a hold of Peter, the owner of Courtesy Cabs, who took me out driving so I could pass my driver's test. How I got the license was Peter followed the examiner around as I was doing this class four Drivers test. To make a long story shorter, because Peter made the examiner so nervous of being watched, I was just handed the license after a short test. I was advised to tell my boss to never follow him on a test ever again!

I began my taxi career on June 1, 1993, with Decker’s Cabs. Now, my driving skills were not as good as they are now. Whenever I parked the taxi, it looked like the car stalled. I was still single but was dating a real girl. My parents were rather impressed at my progress in my dating ability.

One time I had picked up a chicken order, but I could not find the address for this order. To make a long story short, I had a lot of chicken to eat which lasted me for a week. One of my fellow taxi drivers never did let me forget that embarrassing incident.

I got married to my best friend the following year in Barrhead. We are married to this very day almost 29 years ago. I drove taxi full time from 1993-2005. If you did the math, it was 12 years of full time driving. I went bankrupt two times.

We moved to Grande Prairie, for three years and for two taxi companies. I started with Decker Cabs in 1993. I worked for two months then I quit and moved over to Greyline Taxi. Then I worked for six months for this company and then quit and started to work for Camrose Courtesy Cabs.

One of the reasons why I had left Greyline Taxi and went over to Camrose Courtesy Cabs was because I did not appreciate Dale, the owner swearing on the radio. My wife and I were taking other taxi companies which made Dale so very angry. He claimed there was only room for two taxi companies and not for three.

Then in 1995, we rented an Uhaul trailer and hooked it up to our old grey car which was pretty old and moved to rent a room in a new outfit just outside of Grande Prairie in Laura Eastates. The house was new and we had use of a hot tub. We put our stuff in Storage and lived in one bedroom. We used their kitchen to cook our meals and their table to eat at.

I applied for a job at Swan Taxi where I worked until a new company, Royal Cabs opened. At Swan Taxi, I was paid 40% of the sheet plus 100% of the tips. When I moved over to Royal Cabs, I got paid 45% of the sheet and 100% of the tips. I worked for Swan Taxi from January 1995-June 1996. Then for Royal Cabs June 1996-January 1998.

Our time in Grande Prairie was a very interesting time in our lives. Princess babysat for different families. I also worked for Smittys Restaurant for a few months. Princess also worked there as well. Then I worked for McDonalds as a lobby person for just over a year. I also tried to get a job at the post office as a carrier. I passed the mental exam but failed the physical test. Back in those days, I was over 300 pounds and not in good shape. Plus I talked too much. I got distracted very easily back in those days.

Then interesting events started to happen at Royal Cabs. My one boss was just about killed in an attack on him right in his home. They were trying to sell me a taxi for a ridulous rate. I was to pay a percentage for the cost of the taxi and a percentage for the fee for having a taxi on their fleet. Rod, a friend who worked with me told me that it would be unwise for me to take that offer.

Then when I tried to quit the job, the managers tried to stop me from leaving the company. Nothing made sense to me and I had a hunch that I better get away from these people.

So the only way that I could get away from Harper and Thundal was to just move. Away from the city to another city. I wanted to protect my wife from these evil men, so I did not say anything but we have to move.

Latter, in Camrose I found out that my bosses were in jail along with the owner of Swan Taxi. They were running an illegal car ring. Now, it made sense that they had the company in an old drunk’s name. His name was Gabe. His name was clean. The other owners had criminal records. Somehow, they built brand new houses on the wage of a taxi company and towing company. I was told this by these guys who were visiting from Grande Prairie while I was driving taxi for a Camrose company. They told me that I got out just in time because I would have ended up in jail with all those bosses. I am so glad that I did listen to my small voice which is from God.

Then I joined Freedom Taxi in January of 1998. I was fired by Ray in July of 1998. He claimed that I was too hyper and too excitable to be a good team player on his team. I was not used to having to be dispatcher and driver all in the same role. In Grande Prairie, my dispatcher looked after all the time calls as well as all the call ins. So, I had often forgotten many time calls which was annoying for the other drivers. After I lost my job at Freedom Cabs, I joined Camrose Courtesy Cabs for a year and a half. I bought my own taxi which I sold to a guy, Lonnie. He was drunk too often but we made a great team.

At $3.00 per ride, that did not pay very well. I was not that good at looking after money. I often bounced cheques because I was poor at keeping track of how much money we had in the bank. I once worked 32 hours and I grossed $158.00 on my sheet. I did pay the insurance on my taxi car. I was the only one at the company who paid their insurance on time including the boss. I made at first $50.00 guarteed per shift until I started to buy my own taxi from the company. After, I sold the car to Lonnie, I left the company and joined Armand’s Cabs. That was in September of 1999.

I worked full time for Armand’s Cabs from that date until February 2005. I decided to get a job from a security company, Paladin Securities out of Edmonton, Alberta. Our friend, May drove me to Edmonton to the interview. I was hired on the spot. I had worked for Armand’s Cabs for six years.

The years at the university was very interesting. I worked with my trainer, Suzanne until I was fully trained. She worked my days off and I worked five days a week. I worked Monday through Friday, 10-6 night shift. Then they hired Joe who was on Aish to work my days off. The arrangement went very well and then without warning he quit. I had started working for Eastview Taxi which started May 7 of 2005. Princess was let go of her new price checker job that very morning which I was to start my new job. She was very heartbroken and I could feel what she was feeling due to the fact, that the very thing happened to me when I was let go of Freedom Cabs in 1998.

The difference was that I had two jobs which covered our bills and I told her not to worry about her losing income. When I lost my job, I had to scrabble to replace the job which I lost.

The new job was very good. I worked for Paladin Securities and drove taxi when I was off from that job. In the summer, I picked up extra taxi shifts which was based around my reduced security shifts at the university.

The security job gave me a uniform to wear which made me feel very important. I had a huge yellow jacket with badges on the side of my sleeves. This made me look and feel like a police officer. My father made it very clear that I would never be as good as a police officer. He thought that this was a huge improvement over the low life taxi job which I was doing. He said statements like, “You will never be as good as me.” Then he would add, “That is because you are not me.”

I went with my wife to the Full Gospel Businessmen’s banquet all dressed for work. I was scheduled to work that night around 10 pm. I later heard through my friend, May that there were some people who thought that I was bringing attention to myself. She advised me to maybe not to wear the yellow jacket to Christian events.

Then at the Teddy Bear disco which was held at the Camrose Regional Exhibition Grounds, I wore the jacket to that event. At the time we had a day home running out of our house. So we took the kids to the disco dance which was for children. The announcer called me a mascot “The dancing security guard”. They had two other mascots walking around the dance floor with me.

Then they hired Ash. Ash was really a very interesting person. At first, it was an answer my situation. Joe, who was a guy on Aish, without warning quit the job. I was so dedicated to this job that I always checked in at our office. All was left was a note in the door stating that due to health reasons, he could no longer work for our company. Now, I had a ride along scheduled with a police officer. Because I lost all my days off, I lost my ride along appointment and never was able to reconnect with that officer ever again. He was so angry that he refused to answer my phone calls.

I worked for three months, seven days a week with no breaks. I received the employee of the month award for 20 sites here in central Alberta.

Now, one day some guy who I never met before, showed up in a yellow Paladin security jacket. I was so delighted that I no longer had to work seven days a week. It was a dream come true.

This was in the spring of 2006 when all of this occurred. I had two jobs which I was working. I was driving taxi for Eastview Taxi and for Paladin Securities as a security guard.

Soon, with the help from Ash, we hired Chris as a third guard. He was an interesting person with a lot of interesting stories from when he was in cadets. Stories of parachuting from a airplane into the ocean by a submarine surfacing near by.

The work was going very well. I always made an attempt to meet with Chris Blades, the manager of maintenance at the university. At times, Ash also came with me to these meetings. I always wanted to keep a good relationship with our contract to make sure that our services was up to their standards.

I wrote a record of my daily activities in a police note book. Then I wrote up a daily report from this book and would hand it in to the university. I was asked to reduce my 11 page report down to four pages. They did not have the time to read this daily report.

By the Summer of 2007, there were events which were questionable. The sports manager office was broken into and over $3,000 was stolen. Somehow through finger prints, some guy was arrested and charged with theft. The suspicious thing was that Ash seemed to know how the guy broke in and how the deed was done. He all of a sudden got a huge amount of cash to pay his bills. He might have gotten half for providing the master plans how to pull off this robbery.

Then he was attacked by some random guy when he tried to interefere with a fight between a guy and a girl. Then when that did not result in a two guard system, somehow the master keys of the Summer coordinator went missing. The university had to rekey the whole university at thousands of dollars cost. When I asked Ash if we could half the extra hours, responded that he needed the extra money and that he would be taking the extra hours. Later when I asked him, he told me that he never did care about getting extra hours.

When my wife and I would go pick Ash up, he would never be at his rental where he lived. He would phone into the field manager without even stepping on to the property.

In November of that year, Ash gave a very serious chat about us getting a long with each other. This was the last straw and I applied at Bethany for a full time position as a Nurses Aide. I got hired and I put my notice in at Paladin Securies which I did my last shift on December 2, 2007. December 3, I was in orientation at 8 am for my new position as a Nurses Aide.

I kept my job at Eastview Taxi and worked full time as a Nurses Aide. I had also convinced Paladin Securities to put in a swipe in system to make sure that the Security guard was actually on the site. Ash had a problem of not showing up at the site while phoning in to the field manager that he was on site. The contract actually banned him from the site after he stayed home for a week demanding a raise then he brought a knife to work to threaten one of his co workers.

Ash was never fired from Paladin but transferred to another site. I approached one of the security guards at JAG securities knowing the university was very unhappy with Paladin. As a result, Paladin lost that contract for a few years. The university hired an ex police officer to look after the site and somehow he got the contract back when it came to renewing that contract. The university has had Paladin ever since then.

I continued on with working for Bethany and Eastview Taxi until they closed the doors April 29, 2012. Then after that I started working for Rose City Taxi which was a company of ex Eastview Taxi drivers. I worked for them until Armand’s Cabs convinced me to join them. Armand himself wanted me back because I took a lot of business away from his company.

I worked with Armand’s Cabs from 2015-2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic happened. My wife and I were also working with Skip the Dishes since October 2018. Skip the Dishes is a delivery company out of Winnipeg where you can deliver orders using your own personal car. I had a debit machine which I paid three hundred dollars a month for which was a huge expense for a person doing the business casually. When I made $45.00 a shift, that was very bad but when it dropped to -30 a shift, it was not worth my time. When I paid out the contract, I took a loss of $3,500 with my taxi driving. March 28, 2020 was the last shift with Armand’s Cabs.

Then my wife and I worked more for Skip the Dishes from March 29-January 2022. I did a couple of shifts with Choice Cabs which was a new company which just opened. I did not do too well with them since they insisted on charging almost 15 dollars per ride. He would pay the driver $6.00 and you have to pay the fuel out of that.

I tried again in July of that year and found that I still did very bad financially for that company. My wife and I took more shifts with Skip which helped pay our bills.

In November of 2022, I was hired by Tag Along Taxi which I started in the middle of the month. I now get to drive a 2013 taxi getting paid 60% of the sheet which I have to pay the fuel out of it.

The taxi in the picture is of my Tag Along Taxi. I am still driving for this company on my ninth week. I am making between $8.50-$13.60 per hour after fuel has been taken off. For the month of December, working three shifts a week after fuel, I made $1350.00. This was not counting tips. Over Christmas, I only drove one shift of 12 hours. My wife and I went to my in-laws for Christmas. This was the first Christmas without my Father in-law being a live. He had passed on the day before our anniversary which was quite sad for us.

I have been driving taxi for twenty eight years. June 1993-March 2020 and January 2022 until now. I took one year off in 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. My father passed away December 15, 2020 during this pandemic. He had lost the will to live because of all the restrictions which was placed on our society. I do wonder if he would still be alive today if it was not for his third wife dying in January 8, 2020 and for the restrictions on traveling which would have made his life worth living. This is my story of how I started driving taxi and I hope to write many more articles as I continue my taxi career going on this day forward.