DR MIKE GALVIN: Was the radio circuit a friend or foe of the taxi industry?

Mobility Services Limited's Dr Mike Galvin continues his series of articles based on his Doctoral Dissertation; Culture, Change and The Management of London’s Taxi Drivers. In his previous two articles he discussed the Knowledge and Culture, in this article he considers the impact of radio and what he discovered in his research about this phenomenon.

As the editor is unlikely to allow me to write a book in one edition of TaxiPoint this will be the first in a short series about how radio both revolutionised and divided the London Taxi Industry. Please bear in mind when you read this that my research and therefore the narrative is set in a period largely before the internet, social media and of course apps. Mobile phones were in their infancy and resembled large house bricks. Minicabs were still unlicensed in London.

Radio taxi companies were institutions within the industry. They were both powerful, empowering and ground-breaking. Their function was to provide taxi drivers with additional income and they provided value as a tool with which to fight the incursion of minicabs into the industry. Some drivers I know loved radio circuits and others hated them. It appears that every driver had an opinion as to whether they had been a valuable contribution to the industry or had damaged it.

During my research, London taxi drivers I spoke to had decided to join a radio taxi circuit for a number of reasons, chief amongst these was the opportunity to earn more money or the same amount of money quicker and/or easier. Many also joined for altruistic reasons; to help what they viewed as the fight against minicabs and to win back business for the taxi industry.

Often drivers were prompted to join a radio taxi circuit as a consequence of being recommended to do so by another taxi driver - this was what happened in my case. The recommendations from other taxi drivers to join a radio taxi company were often based on increased earning potential, often expressed as having two irons in the fire.

In effect a driver on radio [the colloquial term for belonging to or subscribing to a radio circuit] can trap a fare from the street or through the radio, thereby potentially doubling the chances of picking up a fare. Fares from the radio circuit were also promoted as being higher value than street hails and typically involved travelling longer distances. There were additional benefits in that payments were guaranteed by the radio circuit, every fare included an automatic gratuity and, as was often the case, waiting time was involved and a supplement was paid for the time the taxi and driver were kept waiting. There was also a going home feature which could shorten a driver’s working day significantly. Due to the nature of radio trips drivers used less diesel and benefited from frequent breaks rather than expending energy (physical and mental) and fuel driving around looking for fares.

Radio circuits appeared to engender a tribalism in taxi drivers not dissimilar to that of football supporters. Whilst many taxi drivers and certainly most football supporters have little real say in how the circuit/football team is managed they none the less expressed ownership, pride and would in some cases defend their circuit to the death if needed. Drivers I had spoken to have uttered those immortal words ‘I love my circuit’. This feudal perspective manifested itself in almost a hierarchy with Computer Cab being seen as easy come, easy go, and Dial a Cab and Radio Taxis were considered somehow much better as there was a two year waiting list to join versus Computer Cab’s perpetual six week free trial. Dial-a-Ride and Radio Taxis were the oldest, they gave drivers destinations and therefore a choice of work whereas Computer Cab was a ‘no refusal’ circuit when voice was used and a ‘view you do’ circuit when they moved to digital. Computer Cab when it started was called the catchy (sic) name of London Wide Radio Taxis and was known variously as the Mickey Mouse circuit or the Lollipop circuit due to the shape of the mics that were fitted in the taxis.

During the boom years of the late eighties after ‘Big Bang’ when the giant American banks and consultancies poured into London, law firms boomed and ‘radio work’ went through the roof, the cooperatives found their structures limited their growth (they had to have an AGM to agree to increase the fleet size) whilst Computer Cab was able to grow almost exponentially and did. Very quickly the smallest, Computer Cab, became larger than the other two put together and never looked back.

Channels were like gold dust in the 80’s and 90’s, motorbike couriers boomed before the advent of email and PDFs when every document had to be moved around physically. Minicabs proliferated and the big three taxi circuits needed more and more channels. Clever technologists split channels, moved from VHF to UHF and introduced Vehicle Identification (VI) so instead of a despatcher needing to hear a call sign they saw the first successful one to bid for a job on a small screen. Paper dockets were replaced by VDUs (Visual Data Units) an early and primitive version of PCs and gradually conveyor belts carrying paper dockets handwritten by telephonists to despatchers were a thing of the past. Computerisation was at this point in its infancy – Computer Cab’s first computer needed Woodfield Road to be closed to admit a massive lorry and crane that lifted a vast cabinet of technology into the building where a wall had been removed for the purpose. A couple of years later the replacement was carried in under an engineer’s arm and provided something like 100 times the power!

The common theme amongst radio taxi operations was that they had no cash. Drivers were paid frequently and long before money was collected from customers which caused huge cash flow gaps. Meanwhile growth in demand was high double digit, staff were growing and technology was incredibly expensive. Frequently circuits were on the edge of insolvency but in a booming period of demand. Innovative schemes were developed to get drivers to shoulder some of the pain – the Roller Bond was born. For those who were not around then, a Roller Bond was a system whereby 10% of a driver’s account work was rolled up until it reached e.g. £500 and then repaid. This meant that on average every driver had £250 on account that could be used to smooth cash flow somewhat. The £500 moved up over time as demand continued to grow and cash became more stretched.

I will pause the history lesson here to talk about one of the concepts of Managing London’s Taxi Drivers that was one of the themes of my research. This was a major change at the time and its path was not an easy one. This was partly due to management’s belief that their role was to manage, and a theme I spoke about in my last article that within the industry a strong cultural belief amongst London’s taxi drivers was that ‘we are all equal’ – ‘we are all taxi drivers’. These simple statements set the scene for a number of very real battles where tempers frayed, and power was wrestled between management and driver. Another concept was that probably the majority of taxi drivers considered themselves to be small business owners and expected, not unreasonably, to be treated as such.

So, the cultural battle lines were drawn. Management felt it their duty to manage the company’s balance sheet, to generate as much business as possible and to grow the company at the fastest rate possible. Drivers also had views, and many believed that they were doing okay and did not appreciate this race for growth, especially if they were not to see the benefits personally and instead were disadvantaged by in effect being paid later through a Roller Bond system. Soundings were taken, informal conversations took place and kite flying was frequent and meanwhile cash was running dangerously low whilst turnover and profitability grew albeit EBITDA rather than net profit due to continual investment in technology. So, look at one example, Computer Cab, a meeting was arranged at the Queen’s Head Hoxton Street where in an upstairs room the LTDA branch meeting for the North East Branch normally attracted 6-8 diehards.

On the evening of the Roller Bond discussion, where messages had been issued to drivers that the meeting was important, some 300 people turned up. The regular attendees wanted their normal meeting and to hell with Computer Cab and its drivers. So many drivers in fact turned up that they could not get in the room where meetings were normally held, they queued up the stairs, filled the bar and stood outside. A couple of regular attendees stormed (as best they could through the crowds) out. The temperature was high (not, I might add, the ambient room temperature), tempers were stretched, management battled valiantly to present a logical and sensible solution, but with a hue of insistence which was not appreciated. The more logical the argument that was being presented the more petulant and annoyed the drivers became. There were demands to move the meeting outside into Hoxton Street.

Messages were verbally passed up and down the stairs and to those outside – the accuracy was dubious. Harry Feigen, MBE the General Secretary of the LTDA (owner of Computer Cab) stood on a trestle table to try to be heard and to calm things down so order and a reasonable discourse could be established.

Suffice it to say a change of tone, a cards on the table, a dismissal of the experts (the company’s accountant was trying to explain cash flow to an angry mob), and a ‘we are all cab drivers here’ let’s sort this problem out, resulted in a proposal or two, a majority in favour and management walking out, hardly able to believe what had happened with not only a Roller Bond scheme having been accepted but a scheme fully supported by the drivers that was double the value they had tried to introduce earlier in the evening.

So, from an academic perspective what did this episode tell us about the culture and management of London’s taxi drivers? My perception was that London’s taxi drivers, members of the circuit, wanted to be treated as businessmen not flummoxed by accountants talking about cash flow, not management telling workers what was good for them (in truth they didn’t do that), but instead a flattening of any perceived hierarchies and a ‘we are all cab drivers here’ approach to solving a business problem. I also believe that it demonstrated that drivers really did ‘love their circuit’ and were not going to see it fail even if it meant that 10% of radio work was going to be held back for six months or a year.

The Roller Bond quickly became a means to save for tax, for Christmas, for overhauls and holidays and when the circuit no longer needed a Roller Bond it continued for consensual reasons.

The end of the meeting ended very much as many often did with management applauded and a queue of people keen to shake their hand and tell them they were doing a good job. It also showed that whatever your job title, however important your staff thought you were... you were a cab driver... like us!