By Ed Reynolds
It’s a strange world between midnight and sunrise when you make a living driving a taxi cab.
The taxi industry’s unofficial slogan makes a whole lot of common sense: It’s cheaper to pay for a cab ride than it is to get a DUI. God bless taxi drivers— they really do make the roads safer after dark, a
notion reinforced for me after riding with Yellow Cab taxi driver Rod Walker all night on a recent weekend.
Walker started driving a cab in November 2010. His full-time job had become part time, so he decided to drive a taxi to make up the difference in income. “I didn’t know how it worked or if I could make any money driving a cab but I thought it would be fun, so I gave it a try. Still doing it,” the 52-year-old Walker said at one o’clock on a recent Saturday morning as I rode shotgun with him to the Lakeview district. Here Walker waits for mostly intoxicated customers in search of rides as they depart the bars.
Walker, who owned and operated the Downtown Trading Company, a cigar and wine shop in Tuscaloosa for 13 years, until 2009, admits that driving a cab is the oddest—and most adventurous —job he’s ever had. A taxi driver can never be sure what kind of scenario he will encounter when picking up a customer in the daytime, much less in the middle of the night. New drivers train for two days. If a driver gets a DUI while off duty in his own vehicle, he’s forbidden to drive for Yellow Cab.
I first rode with Walker in his Ford Crown Victoria taxi on August 1 because he said business is usually jumping at the beginning of the month. (The 100- vehicle Yellow Cab fleet is made up mostly of “Crown Vics,” which are often former police cars that have been converted to taxis.)
“The first of the month—especially in the daytime— when people get their checks and stuff is usually pretty good,” he said. “You’re taking out a lot of people to pay bills, going to the grocery store, going to the doctor, and stuff like that. And then it tends to slack off.” Walker pays an $84 daily fee to Yellow Cab when driving that includes leasing, insurance, and maintenance for the car. He also pays for his own gas. Any money made beyond those expenses, he takes home.. It costs around $65 to fill a cab with gas, which will last a driver all day and most of the night as long as no exceptionally long trips are involved.
“So much about making money on this job has to do with luck,” Walker said. “I’ll have days where my expenses are made [back] in two trips, then I’ll have days when I’m working day and night, still trying to make that lease fee and gas.”
If he’s driving multiple days in a row, he keeps the cab at his house on Southside. Once he surrenders the car back to the company, to take time off, there’s no guarantee that he’ll get the same cab when he comes back. The trick, he said, is to leave as little gas in the tank as possible before giving up the cab so as not to lose money. “Just about every time I pick up a cab, it doesn’t have much gas in it,” he said, laughing. “Usually, the gas light’s on and you cross your damn fingers and hope you get to a convenience store to fill up.”
On the Monday morning that I rode with him, at eight o’clock the first order of business was to take the cab to a nearby car wash for a scrub and vacuum. “I don’t clean it up every morning. But every couple of mornings I’ll check it out and look to see if it’s got dirt or crumbs in it,” he said. “I want to keep it looking decent.” There were only 136,000 miles on the taxi he had that first day I rode along. He has driven one with as many as 350,000 miles on it.
Our first call was to Bessemer. We encountered a traffic jam on I-59 north, so Walker called the dispatcher so that she could inform the customer that his cab was running late. When stopped in traffic jams or waiting for a train to pass while a customer is on board, Walker turns off the meter. A female voice (British accent) on the taxi’s GPS navigation system directs us to the Bessemer address. “I don’t know how drivers did the job before GPS,” he said. (Each driver has to buy their own GPS unit.) When we arrived at the address Walker blew the horn, which is the usual procedure. If it’s a high-rise apartment or condo building, he pushes a button on the dispatch computer attached to the dashboard and has the dispatcher call the patron to tell them the cab is there.
All dispatching is done through Little Rock, Arkansas, said Ellis Houston, who owns Yellow Cab companies in Birmingham, Little Rock, and
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. When you call for a taxi in Birmingham or Winston-Salem, you’re calling Little Rock. “Little Rock is our national communications center,” explained Houston.
We picked up a woman at a housing project who wanted a ride to purchase a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store a couple of miles away. “Every day I see why the poor stay poor, spending $7.25 on a ride to get a $3 pack of smokes,” said Walker, shaking his head. A $7.25 fare is not what drivers are looking for. He had been hoping the customer in Bessemer wanted a ride to downtown Birmingham, which is a $40 fare.
Toward the end of the month, Walker tends to drive on weekends only, as business can fall off when customers’ money runs low. It costs $3, known as the “jump fee,” just to begin a trip. That’s what appears on the meter as soon as a driver turns it on. This helps cover the expense of driving to pick up a customer. After that the cost is $2 per mile, and $20 an hour for the driver to sit and wait for someone to take care of whatever business they are tending to. Each vehicle in the Yellow Cab fleet has a credit card machine attached to the back of the front seat so that customers may swipe a card to pay for their ride. The city of Birmingham sets local taxi rates.
After taking the woman in Bessemer back to her home, Walker decided to drive to a zone in Birmingham where there were no cabs at that moment—information learned from the dispatch computer screen. There are approximately 35 numbered zones in the greater Birmingham area that Yellow Cab drivers navigate for fares. The dispatch computer alerts the driver when a customer needs a ride by emitting a long beep. The driver can accept or reject the call. The dispatch screen indicates which zones are “open” (meaning no Yellow Cabs are present in that zone) and Walker can “bid” on a pickup. The dispatcher usually gives the trip to the cab closest to the customer’s location. Another screen shows how many Yellow Cab taxis are in each zone. The driver knows which position he’s in when entering the zone (first, second, third, et cetera, depending on how many cabs got there ahead of him). Here he must wait his turn for a car ahead computer alerts the driver when a customer needs a ride by emitting a long beep.
The driver can accept or reject the call. The dispatch screen indicates which zones are “open” (meaning no Yellow Cabs are present in that zone) and Walker can “bid” on a pickup. The dispatcher usually gives the trip to the cab closest to the customer’s location. Another screen shows how many Yellow Cab taxis are in each zone. The driver knows which position he’s in when entering the zone (first, second, third, et cetera, depending on how many cabs got there ahead of him). Here he must wait his turn for a car ahead of him to either pick up a fare or leave the zone. Drivers will stop for people hailing cabs on the street if they’re not on a trip to pick up a call, though some drivers believe doing so is more dangerous than going to an address where someone has phoned for a ride, as they at least know a little about the person. “In a way, hanging out in a zone is kinda like fishing,” Walker explained. “Troll for a while and see if I can’t pick up a straggler or something.”
My night ride with Walker took place on a Friday, beginning at 10 p.m. As he drove, he talked about the disparity in customers. “You see the huge social divide between the rich and poor,” he noted. “Sometimes I enjoy the job but other times it’s sad. I get the impression that a lot of folks I pick up, when they’re going to pay bills or to the grocery store, that’s the only time they ever leave the house. You don’t realize how bad it is for some folks until you see it. You go down to ‘the projects,’ sometimes you go down to Greystone and get ‘em from a big mansion. So you see the entire society—not just one segment. You get pretty much everybody.”
Some of Walker’s anecdotes are hilarious. “I took some folks to Walmart one time. Two of them went in and the other one stayed in the car waiting for them to come out. She told me how to steal from stores. She said [imitating a woman's voice], ‘You got to have your baby with you because they won’t f*** with your baby. You got to have that diaper bag. First, you got to get them tags off and then put them in your baby’s bag because they won’t f*** with the baby.’”
Several weeks prior to my rides with Walker had been the first time a drunk customer had vomited in his cab. “Got a call to pick up a girl at a bar on Second Avenue North. When I got there a girl was lying on the ground, didn’t have on any pants but she did have on a thong,” he recalled, laughing. “A couple of guys picked the girl up and put her in the cab, she couldn’t walk. Her friend got in with her, they were just going three or four blocks. When I got halfway there, the damn passed-out girl let loose [threw up] in the back of the cab. I raised a little hell and said, ‘That’s gonna be 50 bucks! It’s a busy Friday night, I got to quit what I’m doing and go clean this shit up.’ Her friend paid the clean-up fee. [Some drivers charge more to clean up such a mess.] She had to drag the girl out and she was behind her lying on the ground, didn’t have on any pants but she did have on a thong,” he recalled, laughing. “A couple of guys picked the girl up and put her in the cab, she couldn’t walk. Her friend got in with her, they were just going three or four blocks. When I got halfway there, the damn passed-out girl let loose [threw up] in the back of the cab. I raised a little hell and said, ‘That’s gonna be 50 bucks! It’s a busy Friday night, I got to quit what I’m doing and go clean this shit up.’ Her friend paid the clean-up fee. [Some drivers charge more to clean up such a mess.] She had to drag the girl out and she was behind her holding her up trying to kick her legs with her legs to make her walk, hollering, ‘Walk! Walk!’ I left them and went to a car wash, vacuumed it up and put baking soda on it, vacuumed it again and sprayed Lysol, and then drove it down to Lakeview to let the other drivers smell it. They said, ‘Naw, man, you did a good job. I don’t smell anything.’ First time it had happened to me, but other drivers have told me stories.”
“You see the huge social divide between the rich and poor, sometimes I enjoy the job but other times it’s sad.”
When waiting for fares, the drivers faithfully abide by a “first come, first serve” code.
“If somebody comes out and gets in my car and there are two other cabs in front of me, I have to tell them to go get in that first car. It’s kind of cab-driver etiquette,” explained Walker. “The others would get pissed off as hell if you take one out of turn.”
This also works in reverse. One customer told the driver from another cab company at the front of the line that he needed a ride from Lakeview to a downtown hotel, but the driver balked and tried to pass him off to cabs behind him because it was not a lucrative fare. Drivers in line shouted him down, reminding him that he was aware of the “etiquette rules.” As they leaned against their taxis smoking cigarettes and joking with one another, some shared tales of life as a taxi driver. Two drivers on this night were women who told how difficult it is for a female to stick with the job very long. One woman had been driving for a decade and seemed to take special pride in doing what many assume is a male job. Another driver told me he was a third grade teacher who was studying to obtain his master’s degree in education. He fretted that cab drivers sometimes get a bad rap, informing me that most are good people from all walks of life. Another said that he keeps his phone with him at all times and will get out of bed to go pick up a fare. “Driving a cab is like a drug. It gets in your system and you get addicted,” he said. to stick with the job very long.
One woman had been Carraway Hospital. Walker grimaced and lookeddriving for a decade and seemed to take special pride in doing what many assume is a male job. Another driver told me he was a third grade teacher who was studying to obtain his master’s degree in education. He fretted that cab drivers sometimes get a bad rap, informing me that most are good people from all walks of life. Another said that he keeps his phone with him at all times and will get out of bed to go pick up a fare. “Driving a cab is like a drug. It gets in your system and you get addicted,” he said.Walker drives when it doesn’t interfere with his part- time job. If he’s not working his regular gig one week, he’ll drive most weekdays and then on weekend nights. “The weekend nights are when you make money. During the week driving in the daytime you may make a little bit,” he explained. “You may luck up one day and make a lot. But most of the time you’re just spinning your wheels through the week. Because there’s a lot of other cabs out there and you’ve got to compete with all these other cabs.
There’s actually more competition within Yellow Cab than there is between me and other cab companies. A lot of times it’s really slow and you have to sit around and wait for a long time to get a call. If there’s nothing going on I’ll go to the airport but at the airport it can take two-and-a-half hours to get a trip. It may be a good trip but most of the time it’s not.”He explained that coveted rides from the airport are those to Atlanta or Tuscaloosa—anywhere out of town. In his eight months on the job, Walker has made three trips to Atlanta. Delta Airlines pays around $360 for such fares, a deal they have worked out with Yellow Cab to take customers whose flights are cancelled in Birmingham to Atlanta to catch a plane. Trucking companies and some hospitals have accounts with Yellow Cab, as well.“The weirdest thing I ever picked up was a container of leeches from a lab for a hospital,” Walker said, laughing. “They had leeches in two of these little clear containers. And they apparently had somebody that they were going to do leech therapy on.”
After taking a group of drunk friends to a downtown hotel from Lakeview on this particular Friday evening, Walker got a call to go to Hoover. A man and woman needed a ride to the Birmingham Race Course. The male passenger, pool cue in hand, explained that sometimes there are pool tournaments on the weekends that last until 2 a.m. When we arrived at the Race Course, the fellow’s car was the only one in the parking lot. We stopped on the way back to Birmingham to gas up and chug a 5-Hour Energy Drink.After cruising through the Lakeview district at 3 a.m., we got a dispatch signal for a fare in a housing project in north Birmingham, a couple of miles past Course. The male passenger, pool cue in hand, explained that sometimes there are pool tournaments on the weekends that last until 2 a.m. When we arrived at the Race Course, the fellow’s car was the only one in the parking lot. We stopped on the way back to Birmingham to gas up and chug a 5-Hour Energy Drink.
After cruising through the Lakeview district at 3 a.m., we got a dispatch signal for a fare in a housing project in north Birmingham, a couple of miles past Carraway Hospital. Walker grimaced and looked over at me. “It’s up to you,” he said. Suddenly, I got nervous, but nodded that it was okay with me. Walker admitted there are some places drivers refuse to go at night. “In the daytime I’ll go anywhere, I don’t care,” he said. “At night, there’s certain areas that are high in crime, higher than in other areas. And I just don’t want to take that chance. Sometimes I do. Ninety percent of the time it’s probably going to be fine and it’s not going to be any problem at all. But there’s always that chance. So why take that chance? I feel sorry for a lot of the good people that are in those zones that want a ride because it’s hard to get one. But nobody wants to get robbed or anything like that. As far as I know, we haven’t had a robbery in a long time. And, of course, another reason not to take ‘em in certain zones is just because they’re too far. You have to worry about driving all that distance and the person not being there.”
The customer who called is a woman needing a ride to work at Jack’s Hamburgers in Irondale at 4 a.m Walker expressed relief when he saw that the passenger was female, considering the area of town we were in. As he does with most customers, he asked her if she had a preference for the route to her destination. She promptly gave directions as we rode, as if she were the cab’s GPS unit. It cost her $22 to get to work.“One time I picked up a drunk guy at a nightclub on Highway 280 who told me he lived on Morningside Drive in Mountain Brook, gave me a street number,” Walker recalled as we drove from Irondale back to Birmingham. “I put the address into the GPS and got Morningside Drive, Mountain Brook, but not his street number. So I decided to drive to Morningside Drive and told him he could show me where he lived. Just before we got there, we were passing the Botanical Gardens and he said he had to stop to throw up. He got out and went over and laid down in the grass. I said, ‘Man, you got to get up and get back in the car.’ He said, ‘I just want to go to bed.’ I said, ‘Well, you can’t go to bed here.’ He asked why not and I told him because he was lying in wet grass on the side of the road. So I helped him up, he got back in the cab and we went to Morningside Drive and drove around the area several times and he couldn’t identify where he lived. I looked in the back seat and he was passed out.
So I called the Mountain Brook cops to wake him up to find out where he Botanical Gardens and he said he had to stop to throw up. He got out and went over and laid down in the grass. I said, ‘Man, you got to get up and get back in the car.’ He said, ‘I just want to go to bed.’ I said, ‘Well, you can’t go to bed here.’ He asked why not and I told him because he was lying in wet grass on the side of the road. So I helped him up, he got back in the cab and we went to Morningside Drive and drove around the area several times and he couldn’t identify where he lived. I looked in the back seat and he was passed out. So I called the Mountain Brook cops to wake him up to find out where he lived. Well, he was a little bit more coherent with the cops. Turned out that he didn’t live on Morningside Drive in Mountain Brook, he lived on Morning Sun Drive in Meadowbrook, which was just a five-dollar ride from the bar I picked him up at on 280. By the time I got him back home, his bill was $46.”Walker estimates that 20 percent of his calls are “no- shows,” or calls where whoever requested a ride is nowhere to be found. The downside of driving to an entertainment district is the possibility of the caller grabbing an immediately available cab. “Nothing makes you madder than going to an address and the person who called is not there,” he said.
Drivers have the right to refuse each customer after arriving to pick them up. “If I pull up and a person starts mouthing off to me, I’ll say ‘Forget it, call another cab.’ That’s probably happened twice. I had a guy at [an expensive Southside restaurant] and he was drunk as hell. The place had been closed for a while, it was like one o’clock in the morning. I was cruising along up to the restaurant and he opened the door before I could stop, the damn door flew open. When I stopped, he started cussing the hell out of me saying I wouldn’t stop for him. I said, ‘Man, I came to pick you up. Are you ready to go?’ And he had to stand there and cuss me for a while. So I said, ‘Forget it’ and left him there.”So never forget: No matter how drunk you might be, a taxi cab driver is your best friend in the middle of the night, as long as you behave yourself. Treat them with respect. &
Originally published in Black & White Magazine September 01, 2011