Wow, no idea you could and still can make that much dosh driving a cab
Shot_Annual_4330 on
So they used to benefit from a market in which both supply and access was deliberately tightly restricted, but has now been blown apart by technology and exposed to general market forces?
Grumpy-Gaz on
We need a number once unavoidable car expenses are taken off. Otherwise it doesn’t sound overly bad. Barely 6 figures? So what, top 3% of earners? Much more info is needed, but his admission of how much some have made makes it very difficult to sympathise with them.
Alcalash on
Helps when they don’t declare most of it and don’t pay tax
5n0wgum on
Where I live taxi drive and drug dealer is pretty much the same thing.
rustyb42 on
Reckon my 60k a year job would have been paid an equivalent 200k in the 80 u/thetelegraph
Cultural_Tank_6947 on
Also they didn’t make £170k, that’s an upwards inflation adjusted number.
ouwni on
Back when they’d take unsuspecting tourists on what should be a 1 mile route over 4 miles cause they didn’t know any better
Cute_Ad_9730 on
Boo hoo. The job was full of opinionated assholes who would rip you off at the first opportunity. So sick of their‘rules don’t apply to us’ like they’re some kind of emergency service. Remember pulling in to take a phone call from the hospital where my dad had been admitted. Half empty taxi parking strip on a quiet morning. Fat twats descended on me like I was shitting sausage rolls.
mobjusticeCT on
We voted brexit to stick to these metropolitan elite types.
Medical-Zucchini-349 on
I work in a busy part of London with one of those flashing traffic signs (when cars can go IF there’s no one crossing) and I routinely see them actively threatening to hit pedestrians. They cause so much noise pollution, always extremely stressed and honking at everything. They actively accelerate if they see someone crossing the street near the end of crossing time. It seems like they would be happy to purposely cause an accident and injure someone if they’re crossing slowly or still on the street when the light turns green.
I honestly used to take them all the time because it’s convenient but this behaviour has absolutely put me off getting in one of those. I would not miss them one bit if they end up in museums and the drivers are forced to do an app instead where you can see their ratings and bad/reckless drivers get filtered out.
UuusernameWith4Us on
>Some people worked all the hours God sent and other people never went to work. That’s the deciding factor.
>My best year would have been in the late 1980s when I cleared £50,000 a year – in today’s money that’s about £170,000. Today, a black cab driver, who works six days a week, doesn’t take many holidays, will earn about £100,000 a year.
>One of the biggest issues in the industry at the moment is how many cab drivers are having to register for VAT because they earn over £85,000 a year.
>During a weekday, we are looking to gross £35 to £40 an hour. On weekends and at nights, I’d want to gross at least £50 an hour
>About 55pc of cabbies are owners and 45pc rent cabs. If you rent, you will probably pay about £350 a week. To buy a cab outright is about £70,000, so most people buy them on a Personal Contract Plan. That would probably cost you about £250 a week.
>The cabs are electric, so you have to charge them. If you have a home charger and you arrange a night tariff where after midnight you pay hardly anything for electricity, you can get away with charging it for a fiver. If you charge it on the street, you can pay anything up to £30.
£100k at £40 and hour is 2500 hours work. That’s 48 hours a week, every week, no illness, no holidays, no slacking off and browsing Reddit on the clock. Then expenses (at the low end): £13k for PCP on the car, £1.8k for the electric, hiring an accountant to do your tax return and claw back VAT on business expenses.
The money involved isn’t out of the ordinary for a skilled independent contractor working way over the average working week.
Desperate-Oven-139 on
Cabbies should be on about £60k after the car expenses come off, so barely six figures sounds quite reasonable.
Billoo77 on
Reddit when a train driver earning £100k a year strikes: 🥰
Reddit when a cab driver makes £100k a year with no employment benefits 😤
SecureVillage on
The amount of knowledge they had learn is really admirable. However, the knowledge has been replaced by reliable GPS. Technology has blown open the barriers to entry.
We should all keep an eye on the barriers to entry for our jobs and, when they start to drop, re-evaluate our position before it’s too late.
It’s certainly something I’m concerned about as a software dev.
kin_nell on
Took a black cab from central London to Heathrow last year and the driver spent the first half of the journey telling me how the country was doomed and what a terrible time it was to be a taxi driver. Second half of the journey was all about his big house in Essex and his holiday cottage on the Norfolk coast plus he’d just got back from a family holiday in Dubai.
I don’t think he saw the issue….
fn5011 on
All the other reasons, plus now due to digital payments they are in the formal economy so have taxes to pay
Vondonklewink on
What even is this article? Cabbies, afaik, never made six figures. £170K is insane, consultants make less than that. The average wage for a black cab driver in London today is £40K, which is barely a liveable wage in London. The UK national average for cab drivers is between £14K and £30K, with London predictably being markedly above average. Where are these figures coming from?
ThreePeaceSuits on
Some real nasty right wing, classist takes on this. Yikes. Not surprising with what this sub has become. Shame
NuttFellas on
Good, they can fuck off. My Uber in Manchester cancelled on me, so I got a black cab for convenience and it was more than twice as much as the already surcharged Uber!
ydykmmdt on
We choose cut throat capitalism as our economic model. London taxi drivers should count themselves lucky they did not end up like New York City taxi medallion owners.
millyloui on
I last used a black cab in London in 2003 , It was a 15 min run , no traffic from Heathrow to my place in Chiswick right off the M4 it cost me £55. Minicabs at time charged around £18 , I was new to the city & had no idea how to get minicab from Heathrow in those days . No ranks I could find. The cabbie was a miserable grumpy old shit – that’s why I have never used them since or will again. Yes Uber etc prices shot up – but I will stick with them . Never had a miserable bastard always friendly & helpful with luggage.
CarlMacko on
I love that it’s *barely* six figures like this doesn’t put you in the top 5% of earners.
chiefgareth on
Good. They made that kind of money by ripping people off.
[deleted] on
[deleted]
gogul1980 on
Back when Black cabs began emerging in London there were articles in newspapers about how horse and carriage services were complaining about the “new cabs service pushing them out of work”. They were suggesting the new cabbies were all drunks and it was dangerous for people to use them. Truthfully they were just aging out and becoming obsolete. Same is happening again.
Modern technology blew the gates open. Sure, uber did some real sneaky tactics but black cabs were so out-dated that they had absolutely no hope of catching up. They were figuratively caught with their pants down. Also modern tech allowed for anyone to navigate london and not have to do years of “the knowledge” which was a real barrier to entry. Now it’s saturating the market with people able to do side jobs with zero navigation skills. As tech moves forward we’ll find a lot more older services will age out too. Black cabs is just another in a long list of outdated services no longer needed like lamp lighters or chimney sweeps.
Creepy-Bell-4527 on
It’s amazing how much money you can screw out of customers by engaging in illegal price fixing and _how fucking fast_ it comes crumbling down as soon as you have competition willing to behave as unethically as you.
The_Nunnster on
“Now it’s barely six figures” as a complaint is hilarious.
Woe is me, I’ve gone from the top 1% to the top 4% of earners.
New-Blueberry-9445 on
Learning the entire streetscape of London is no mean feat, and I say this in slight jest, but that ability to visualise maps in one’s head could make them even more money if they gave up their taxis and trained in coding.
AssumptionClear2721 on
For anyone wondering about the £170,000 claim, here’s the relevant part of the article. I’ve highlighted it in bold:
>You can earn very good money as a black cab driver. I’ve got friends who have put their kids through public school and university and have multi-million pound houses – and they’ve done all that driving a black cab. But it all depends on you.
>I did the Knowledge with a guy who lived in a council flat in Hackney and he’s still in that council flat. Some people worked all the hours God sent and other people never went to work. That’s the deciding factor.
>**My best year would have been in the late 1980s when I cleared £50,000 a year – in today’s money that’s about £170,000.** Today, a black cab driver, who works six days a week, doesn’t take many holidays, will earn about £100,000 a year.
>One of the biggest issues in the industry at the moment is how many cab drivers are having to register for VAT because they earn over £85,000 a year.
>During a weekday, we are looking to gross £35 to £40 an hour. On weekends and at nights, I’d want to gross at least £50 an hour. I only go out in my cab about one day a week now – last year, that made me about £20,000.
As to be expected from what is now a tabloid newspaper, the Telegraph is spinning their headline.
Marlobone on
170k in the 80 is insane, 100k today is also insane
king_duck on
Fuck’em. Along with Builders Taxi drivers have approximately the reputation they deserve.
primoristhegreat12 on
Boo boo, I feel really bad for the cabbies… barely 6 figures, how about living like the rest of us for a change! I’d be lucky to earn 6 figures….
SimilarWall1447 on
Damn cabbies.
Charged my parents £200 from Heathrow to Victoria. Loathe them
Jon_Demigod on
Cabbies used to make over a hundred grand but not over two hundred grand. Now they make over one hundred grand but no over two hundred grand.
Okay..?
theoriginalredcap on
You dont need The Knowlege anymore – the rise of the smartphone has replaced the need for it.
EqualDeparture7 on
They’re still earning £100k for sitting on their backside driving a car. I’m sure with enough time a chimpanzee could be trained to do it semi-competently. Imagine complaining about that situation.
Rosetti on
Barely 6 figures? So still easily in the top 10% of earners in the UK?
SittingBull1988 on
Idk how cabbies make money at all, seeing them parked up in taxi ranks for an hour at a time with the engine running and then somone comes in for a £10.00 journey to then rejoin the taxi rank queue again.
palewretch on
So they get paid more than train drivers then.
Interesting, especially as the Telegraph is running the story.
_Ottir_ on
Lots of sneering types popping up on this thread giving it big licks about laziness and dishonesty in the London cab trade and seemingly enjoying the idea of yet another industry buckling under the pressure the current economic environment. Why?
My dad was a self-employed cabbie for most of my life and the most hardworking, honest and cheerful person you could meet. He near broke himself working 12-15 hour days, 6 days a week well into his 60s to provide for us and, because of him, I was lucky enough to grow up in relative comfort in a nice part of the country.
What’s so offensive about working class people making a success of their lives and providing for their families?
clubfootbaby1 on
I’m a London cabby, these earnings claims are nonsense.
42 Comments
Wow, no idea you could and still can make that much dosh driving a cab
So they used to benefit from a market in which both supply and access was deliberately tightly restricted, but has now been blown apart by technology and exposed to general market forces?
We need a number once unavoidable car expenses are taken off. Otherwise it doesn’t sound overly bad. Barely 6 figures? So what, top 3% of earners? Much more info is needed, but his admission of how much some have made makes it very difficult to sympathise with them.
Helps when they don’t declare most of it and don’t pay tax
Where I live taxi drive and drug dealer is pretty much the same thing.
Reckon my 60k a year job would have been paid an equivalent 200k in the 80 u/thetelegraph
Also they didn’t make £170k, that’s an upwards inflation adjusted number.
Back when they’d take unsuspecting tourists on what should be a 1 mile route over 4 miles cause they didn’t know any better
Boo hoo. The job was full of opinionated assholes who would rip you off at the first opportunity. So sick of their‘rules don’t apply to us’ like they’re some kind of emergency service. Remember pulling in to take a phone call from the hospital where my dad had been admitted. Half empty taxi parking strip on a quiet morning. Fat twats descended on me like I was shitting sausage rolls.
We voted brexit to stick to these metropolitan elite types.
I work in a busy part of London with one of those flashing traffic signs (when cars can go IF there’s no one crossing) and I routinely see them actively threatening to hit pedestrians. They cause so much noise pollution, always extremely stressed and honking at everything. They actively accelerate if they see someone crossing the street near the end of crossing time. It seems like they would be happy to purposely cause an accident and injure someone if they’re crossing slowly or still on the street when the light turns green.
I honestly used to take them all the time because it’s convenient but this behaviour has absolutely put me off getting in one of those. I would not miss them one bit if they end up in museums and the drivers are forced to do an app instead where you can see their ratings and bad/reckless drivers get filtered out.
>Some people worked all the hours God sent and other people never went to work. That’s the deciding factor.
>My best year would have been in the late 1980s when I cleared £50,000 a year – in today’s money that’s about £170,000. Today, a black cab driver, who works six days a week, doesn’t take many holidays, will earn about £100,000 a year.
>One of the biggest issues in the industry at the moment is how many cab drivers are having to register for VAT because they earn over £85,000 a year.
>During a weekday, we are looking to gross £35 to £40 an hour. On weekends and at nights, I’d want to gross at least £50 an hour
>About 55pc of cabbies are owners and 45pc rent cabs. If you rent, you will probably pay about £350 a week. To buy a cab outright is about £70,000, so most people buy them on a Personal Contract Plan. That would probably cost you about £250 a week.
>The cabs are electric, so you have to charge them. If you have a home charger and you arrange a night tariff where after midnight you pay hardly anything for electricity, you can get away with charging it for a fiver. If you charge it on the street, you can pay anything up to £30.
£100k at £40 and hour is 2500 hours work. That’s 48 hours a week, every week, no illness, no holidays, no slacking off and browsing Reddit on the clock. Then expenses (at the low end): £13k for PCP on the car, £1.8k for the electric, hiring an accountant to do your tax return and claw back VAT on business expenses.
The money involved isn’t out of the ordinary for a skilled independent contractor working way over the average working week.
Cabbies should be on about £60k after the car expenses come off, so barely six figures sounds quite reasonable.
Reddit when a train driver earning £100k a year strikes: 🥰
Reddit when a cab driver makes £100k a year with no employment benefits 😤
The amount of knowledge they had learn is really admirable. However, the knowledge has been replaced by reliable GPS. Technology has blown open the barriers to entry.
We should all keep an eye on the barriers to entry for our jobs and, when they start to drop, re-evaluate our position before it’s too late.
It’s certainly something I’m concerned about as a software dev.
Took a black cab from central London to Heathrow last year and the driver spent the first half of the journey telling me how the country was doomed and what a terrible time it was to be a taxi driver. Second half of the journey was all about his big house in Essex and his holiday cottage on the Norfolk coast plus he’d just got back from a family holiday in Dubai.
I don’t think he saw the issue….
All the other reasons, plus now due to digital payments they are in the formal economy so have taxes to pay
What even is this article? Cabbies, afaik, never made six figures. £170K is insane, consultants make less than that. The average wage for a black cab driver in London today is £40K, which is barely a liveable wage in London. The UK national average for cab drivers is between £14K and £30K, with London predictably being markedly above average. Where are these figures coming from?
Some real nasty right wing, classist takes on this. Yikes. Not surprising with what this sub has become. Shame
Good, they can fuck off. My Uber in Manchester cancelled on me, so I got a black cab for convenience and it was more than twice as much as the already surcharged Uber!
We choose cut throat capitalism as our economic model. London taxi drivers should count themselves lucky they did not end up like New York City taxi medallion owners.
I last used a black cab in London in 2003 , It was a 15 min run , no traffic from Heathrow to my place in Chiswick right off the M4 it cost me £55. Minicabs at time charged around £18 , I was new to the city & had no idea how to get minicab from Heathrow in those days . No ranks I could find. The cabbie was a miserable grumpy old shit – that’s why I have never used them since or will again. Yes Uber etc prices shot up – but I will stick with them . Never had a miserable bastard always friendly & helpful with luggage.
I love that it’s *barely* six figures like this doesn’t put you in the top 5% of earners.
Good. They made that kind of money by ripping people off.
[deleted]
Back when Black cabs began emerging in London there were articles in newspapers about how horse and carriage services were complaining about the “new cabs service pushing them out of work”. They were suggesting the new cabbies were all drunks and it was dangerous for people to use them. Truthfully they were just aging out and becoming obsolete. Same is happening again.
Modern technology blew the gates open. Sure, uber did some real sneaky tactics but black cabs were so out-dated that they had absolutely no hope of catching up. They were figuratively caught with their pants down. Also modern tech allowed for anyone to navigate london and not have to do years of “the knowledge” which was a real barrier to entry. Now it’s saturating the market with people able to do side jobs with zero navigation skills. As tech moves forward we’ll find a lot more older services will age out too. Black cabs is just another in a long list of outdated services no longer needed like lamp lighters or chimney sweeps.
It’s amazing how much money you can screw out of customers by engaging in illegal price fixing and _how fucking fast_ it comes crumbling down as soon as you have competition willing to behave as unethically as you.
“Now it’s barely six figures” as a complaint is hilarious.
Woe is me, I’ve gone from the top 1% to the top 4% of earners.
Learning the entire streetscape of London is no mean feat, and I say this in slight jest, but that ability to visualise maps in one’s head could make them even more money if they gave up their taxis and trained in coding.
For anyone wondering about the £170,000 claim, here’s the relevant part of the article. I’ve highlighted it in bold:
>You can earn very good money as a black cab driver. I’ve got friends who have put their kids through public school and university and have multi-million pound houses – and they’ve done all that driving a black cab. But it all depends on you.
>I did the Knowledge with a guy who lived in a council flat in Hackney and he’s still in that council flat. Some people worked all the hours God sent and other people never went to work. That’s the deciding factor.
>**My best year would have been in the late 1980s when I cleared £50,000 a year – in today’s money that’s about £170,000.** Today, a black cab driver, who works six days a week, doesn’t take many holidays, will earn about £100,000 a year.
>One of the biggest issues in the industry at the moment is how many cab drivers are having to register for VAT because they earn over £85,000 a year.
>During a weekday, we are looking to gross £35 to £40 an hour. On weekends and at nights, I’d want to gross at least £50 an hour. I only go out in my cab about one day a week now – last year, that made me about £20,000.
As to be expected from what is now a tabloid newspaper, the Telegraph is spinning their headline.
170k in the 80 is insane, 100k today is also insane
Fuck’em. Along with Builders Taxi drivers have approximately the reputation they deserve.
Boo boo, I feel really bad for the cabbies… barely 6 figures, how about living like the rest of us for a change! I’d be lucky to earn 6 figures….
Damn cabbies.
Charged my parents £200 from Heathrow to Victoria. Loathe them
Cabbies used to make over a hundred grand but not over two hundred grand. Now they make over one hundred grand but no over two hundred grand.
Okay..?
You dont need The Knowlege anymore – the rise of the smartphone has replaced the need for it.
They’re still earning £100k for sitting on their backside driving a car. I’m sure with enough time a chimpanzee could be trained to do it semi-competently. Imagine complaining about that situation.
Barely 6 figures? So still easily in the top 10% of earners in the UK?
Idk how cabbies make money at all, seeing them parked up in taxi ranks for an hour at a time with the engine running and then somone comes in for a £10.00 journey to then rejoin the taxi rank queue again.
So they get paid more than train drivers then.
Interesting, especially as the Telegraph is running the story.
Lots of sneering types popping up on this thread giving it big licks about laziness and dishonesty in the London cab trade and seemingly enjoying the idea of yet another industry buckling under the pressure the current economic environment. Why?
My dad was a self-employed cabbie for most of my life and the most hardworking, honest and cheerful person you could meet. He near broke himself working 12-15 hour days, 6 days a week well into his 60s to provide for us and, because of him, I was lucky enough to grow up in relative comfort in a nice part of the country.
What’s so offensive about working class people making a success of their lives and providing for their families?
I’m a London cabby, these earnings claims are nonsense.