Are you about to start a taxi business and you want to become a successful taxi driver? If YES, here are 10 tips to help boost your business as a taxi driver.
Driving a taxi is a very good business that has the potentials of yielding thousands of dollars in profit annually if done right. Granted, a lot of people do feel that the taxi business is only suitable for people who just lost a job and are down on their last dollar, or people who have no other source of income, but this theory is no longer viable today.
That in fact maybe how the business starts for some people, but the truth remains that the taxi business is a full business on its own that has the ability to do more than pay bills for the driver.
Before you start driving, you have to consider whether there is a demand for a taxi service in your area, or if the area is quite saturated. If it is saturated, you may have to look for another location. You also have to make sure to apply for all necessary driver’s and business licenses and insurance.
With all these in place, you have to find a way to make your taxi business strive amidst the stiff competition provided by other taxi services, especially e-hailing options.
How to Boost your Business as a Taxi Driver and Be Successful
As a taxi driver, it is your sole responsibility to drive your business to profitability, as no one else would do it for you. Of course, can be working under a taxi company that provides you with clients, but you have to know that you are not the only one on their lineup, other drivers have to be considered as well.
Relying solely on company calls may never allow you to make ends meet. To avoid this pitfall, you have to fashion out ways you can boost your business and make it more profitable. Here are a few tips you can apply;
- Offer to help
In a bid to boost one’s taxi business, a taxi driver has to cultivate the habit of helping his or her customers get in or out of the car fast. If your passengers are carrying trunks and boxes they want to be loaded in the car, get down and help out, and if they have a lot of groceries they want to unload when they get to their stop, alight and help take it to their doors.
While this may sound like you are being overly kind, but the help is actually to your advantage as the faster a customer gets out of your car, the faster you can get to another customer. If they waste a lot of time loading their stuff into the car, they are actually killing your time.
- Know the area like the back of your hand
To be successful in the taxi business, you should ensure that you scope out your entire route. You should know where to be at certain times of the day in order to make more profit. Learn to avoid areas with heavy traffic gridlock and only ply such routes at nonrush hours. Even if you have to ply such routes, learn alternative routes that can help you bypass heavy traffic – that is if they exist.
- Be eager to make friends
Another way to be successful in this business is to make friends with everyone. Almost everyone would need a taxi at one point or the other, and if you are able to make friends with a lot of people, you would come first to their minds when they need to get a taxi
Again, you must ensure to make friends with your customers. When you as a cab driver reach the point where the customers are asking for you to come pick them up, then you will have truly begun the process of a much larger clientele base and a bigger paycheck.
- Get your customers in your cab as soon as you arrive your pick up point
This is another tricky point because some clients have a knack for keeping taxis waiting when they arrive. One way to get around this is to call your customer when you are like two minutes away from their destination telling them that you would arrive in the next two minutes, that could they come out and wait for you.
When you arrive, help them load their bags in the car. A good taxi driver never sits in their car watching the customers load their stuff into it. Asides from the obvious fact that it wouldn’t speak well of you, it would still waste your time.
- Always be on the go
Granted, some days are slow, but that should not be an excuse to sit around chatting with other cabbies or spend the whole day surfing the web while sitting in your cab. No, no, you should look for a way to make every minute of your day productive. You are always in competition with other cab drivers, so look for ways to best them at the game. And again, anytime you do not have a passenger in your cab is a time you are losing money, so get creative.
- Do not miss a job for any reason
It is a fact that some taxi drivers pass on some calls because the clients do not tip well, or because the trip would not earn them much. This is a very silly habit that a cab driver who wants to be successful should kick. It reeks of laziness all around.
Know that by just taking that trip you feel is unprofitable, you can end up getting another better trip at the end of that one because you happened to be at the right place at the right time. The goal is to always have a passenger in your cab whenever you are on the move.
- Never use your work hours to take care of personal business
Taxi drivers set their own hours, and as such it is easy to divert from running your routes to doing personal chores. Know that doing this would easily eat into your work time and at the end of the day you would find out that you are going home with little or nothing. You should schedule your time in such a way that nothing would interfere with your business hours. Fix your personal chores during your break or at the end of your workday, except it is something very crucial.
- Do not depend on your company for your daily runs
A smart driver does not depend on any company to line their pocketbook. You should find a way to keep yourself very busy without relying on company calls. One way to do this is to give out your numbers to a lot of people and to position yourself in a place where you can get clients frequently.
It can be in a business district where people are always on the move. The bottom line is that your company cannot give you enough clients to get you to profitability because there are other people and rules to consider too. So get your calls coming in from other sources.
- Use your social networks
Social networks work every time when they are used right. As a taxi driver, this is one way you can boost your business without relying on your parent company. Put your business out on social media and continue reminding your followers that you’re available to take their runs. Set your routes and your fares, and you might even throw in a discount if you can afford it. You would find out that you may be getting more calls than you can handle in a day.
- Use taxi affiliates
Affiliate marketing is well-loved by entrepreneurs, small and big businesses around the world because there is simply no risk involved in it. But do you that you can use affiliates to boost your taxi business?
An affiliate program does take effort and time to build the relationship, but if you get it right, it can serve as your goldmine. This is one-way drivers outsource excess calls instead of losing them. Though the revenue gotten through this method may be shared, it is much better than staying idle.