Own Account Driver:
Number of people with a car licence = virtually every working age adult with a hole in their arse.Number of people class 1 HGV = much, much less working age adults.
It’s not going to take a rocket surgeon to work out which vehicle you’re gonna earn more driving.
Exactly that.
Own Account Driver:
dieseldog999:
what time did you start
what time do you finish
don’t it bother you to be working the weekend
I couldn’t work weekends,i like my weekends off
do you make much money doing this
I had a sheet of A4 paper laminated with the 20 questions and answers and handed it over to the cretins that started asking that pish.
just told them I was a terrible driver and needed to concentrate or id crash…the soon shut up.
I did progress to wearing small headphones unplugged and ignoring everything they said until they said it 3 times…busy tonight driver?..silence
busy tonight driver?..silence
busy tonight driver?..silencelet them tap me on the shouldner and…WHAT??
r u busy tonight driver?..no…this would be after they have waited over an hour to get picked up etc.
if they couldn’t take a hint and started gobbing off,id have entoned that the only reason for me to be sharing the same air space was because they were paying for it,
I was taking them from A to B and if they needed to talk to someone so desperately best call the samaratins…I could survive quite happily on living without big tips…Next we’ll all be pondering the unfairness of how truckers have a public reputation for poor social skills.
id say my own personal social skills are admirable,the diference is i have the ability to use them as i see fit and not be 2 faced about it…i dd get plenty of tips working from airports with reasonable people,but ive no time for to be sharing airspace with cretins unless they were paying for the priveledge…the clue is in the occupational name,taxi driver,not taxi companion/chat buddy. 
Tony Res:
Mugs game long term, can be alright for a short time in between proper jobs if you already have a badge, experience plus flexibility in your hours as long as you already own a suitable car, dealing with the public is a nightmare cos most of them are ■■■■■■ otherwise they would just drive their own cars.Long term an absolute waste of time, especially if you have to buy a car to do the job, fuel, insurance, repairs, accidents, fines all add up, unsocible hours, no holiday/sick pay/pension, competition from every direction especially at weekends, rows with the public/other drivers, not worth it, work out your hours/expenses over a year and you will find yourself earning about £3 an hour…
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switchlogic:
Ive liked into it, the economics do stack up
Now I have a little more time, I’ll explain why I think your idea is a non-starter, and you can pay as much or as little attention to it as you want.
The biggest problem will be that your fixed costs will be the same as a part-timer as a full-timer. I’ll give you some figures which, as any of the ex private hire drivers here will confirm, are entirely realistic.
Your hire and reward insurance will be about £2,500 pa, driver and vehicle licences will be around £500 pa. You’ll need an accountant, say £300 pa and let’s say another £200 for various bits and bobs, so that’s £3,500.
You’ll need a car. You’ll hope to average 200 miles a shift, two shifts a week will add 20,000 miles a year to this. The Licensing Authority will have a minimum age requirement for the car, and it will get absolutely trashed. It will need two MOTs a year, you will get through brake pads and tyres like they are going out of fashion, with running costs and massive wear and mileage related depreciation you are looking at £1,500 a year and that is probably a woeful under-estimate.
So we have £5,000 a year to operate, or £100 a week.
So you go to work, have an incredibly busy shift, and after 12 hours you have clocked up £200 in fares. 25% goes to Uber, so we are down to £150. Take off your £100 a week costs, and then the £50 fuel it took to earn that £200- your fuel consumption figures will be eye watering- and you are left with nothing, all you have done is covered your costs.
So you do a second shift, again it is incredibly busy and again you take £200. Again, Uber take £50, and again you have spent £50 on fuel. The rest is yours. You have earned £100 for a total of 24 hours work or around £4 an hour.
Now it’s up to you whether you think these are likely projections, it really is no skin off my nose either way. But as I said at the beginning, anyone here who has done private hire will say these figures are entirely realistic, apart from the fact that it is highly unlikely that you would take £200, twice a week, every week, even Friday and Saturday nights can be as dead as a dodo and there are many where you would struggle to take £100.
Comments from other ex private hire drivers about these figures are welcome. 
Figures are pretty much correct, what you get in a lot af areas id the monthly pay cycle so 1st weekend of the month really busy, 2nd week busy, 3rd weekend ok and 4th weekend dead, your weekend off if you have any sense…
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If I had the benefit of Harry"s wise counsel 20 years ago I would have saved myself £2 K and a lot of grief.What the O.P. does next is his own affair but I certainly wouldnt go down that road again.
alamcculloch:
If I had the benefit of Harry"s wise counsel 20 years ago I would have saved myself £2 K and a lot of grief.What the O.P. does next is his own affair but I certainly wouldnt go down that road again.
Well you would go down that road again but hopefully in a larger more profitable vehicle
Friends dad had a crack at it after being made redundant, which other posters have said many do which probably goes to explain why he didn’t do it for long!
The thing is, if a man + car combo could generate post-expenses revenue of (say) £15 per hour, then cab firms would own and operate the vehicles and employ the drivers.
I certainly do not doubt Harry’s figures, but if that is the kind of money that they are earning then why on earth would anyone bother?
There was some scandal around here a while ago where the taxi drivers were carrying non-passenger cargoes around, that is, those made of white powder that is typically ingested via the nose. I wonder if such ‘extras’ are common.
I was a cabbie in Manchester(Stockport) and I gave it up 3 years ago to become a hgv driver. Taxi drivers are getting to many now and it’s harder and harder to make money. You will lose your social life because you will find that most parties you get invited to fall on a weekend but that’s the only time you have a chance of earning any kind of money. So before you know it you stop going out because you need to work all the time. Personally I would say don’t do it, you need to be making £500/£600 a week to make it pay, plus no sick pay and no holiday pay most of all now more new years eve parties.
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