How To Run A Taxi Business: What You Need To Understand About Your Employees

Operating a taxi business means having employees and usually it's a lot of employees: drivers, dispatchers, reservationists, mechanics, managers, salespeople, etc.

Now let's talk about what having all these employees mean. Fact number one: your employees do not own your taxi company. You do. The consequences of this are that your employees do not care about your taxi business. In most of the cases their agendas are very different from yours. If they were smart they would have the same agenda at least partly, because in many cases they're getting not a fixed paycheck, but a percentage from whatever they make.

For instance, I see all the time drivers that want to go home as early as possible, no matter how busy it is out there, who don't really care about the cars, don't talk about anything to the customers riding in their taxi and don't help the customers with their bags.

They think: "I'm a driver. I'm supposed to drive and not talk to passengers or help them with their bags." That's what you'll see if you look at what's going on in your taxi service. That's reality.

Fact number two about employees is that they're not your friends or your family. You should be friendly with your staff and you should encourage them to be friendly, you should recognize their birthdays, anniversaries, and other important events in their lives, but don't ever forget that they pretend to be your friend as long as you feed them and the minute that you stop paying them they will be gone.

Fact number three is a consequence of facts number one and two. It is the unavoidable resentment that comes from the huge difference in wealth and power between you and them. Your employees think that they're smarter then you are, they know how to run your business better than you do, that it's them who's doing all the work while you are not doing anything yet getting all the money.

The conclusion from all this is that, first, you got to understand and remember about all that at all times and, second, you've got to take it into consideration when you're dealing with people. For instance, if they can steal from you, if you let them steal from you, chances are they will be stealing from you.