Mcars Taxis

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Our Story

Mcars Taxis, the story so far.

Hi and welcome to Mcars, My name is Mitch Hill, I am the founder and owner of Mcars taxis. So, what is the story of Mcars? Well, if I start at the beginning I would have to go back to the summer of 1989 when I was just fourteen years old. Back then both of my parents, Martin and Janet Hill, were working as taxi drivers. Mum as a driver for Alpine taxis in Hockley and Dad as an owner-driver for Bestax taxis in Rayleigh. One afternoon my mum asked me if I fancied earning some money covering a shift in Alpines office. Alpine was such a small firm it was quite common for them to not have any staff on hand for some shifts leaving just the drivers to man the phones and service the clients. I agreed and for a few months, I worked as a controller for them, albeit in a very casual way. Time passed and eventually, mum and dad set up their own taxi firm “R.T. Taxis”. This firm was based in Rayleigh, though initially our office was run from our home in Hawkwell. We started out with just eight cars. Mum and dads own cars, (referred to by their licence numbers aka plates as ) 28, 40, and 55, along with with with my brother-in-law Andy's own 41. By now I was about 17, I had left school and was working in a furniture store. Seeing my parents new business as something far more interesting than selling wardrobes I offered to come and work for them as a controller. My parents accepted and thus I began work as a controller, mainly covering early mornings. While controlling was an interesting and surprisingly challenging job. (never enough cars for the work on hand) I wanted to get on the road. Being only a teenager I was too young to drive a cab and so instead I found myself doing meal deliveries, (aka Curry runs). Our firm used the curry car as a training device. Trainee drivers were put out on the road in it, equipped with a radio and a callsign and were effectively working as a taxi, only with their fares being popadoms and egg fried rice. I did the meal deliveries almost from the moment I could drive right up until I took my taxi licence, it was fun and a good way to learn the ropes. In 1996 when I was 21, I finally took the dreaded “knowledge” test. I had turned 21 in 95 and would have taken the test there and then, but my parents insisted I train up a replacement controller to take over my shift before I could go. So I spent several months training a lady called Vicky, who eventually managed to take over my hours. By the time Vicky was finally ready, it was 1996. Back in the 90’s Rochford council didn't have a Hackney carriage officer so all such testing was done by the Southend Hackney carriage. The two officers there, a pair of retired policeman Ian Swift and Pat O’keefe. They were very fine old gents, fair and honest, though quite intimidating to me as a youngster. On the day of the test I went to the tower block that housed the Southend Hackney carriage and with both “Swifty” and O’keefe” in attendance, I took my knowledge test. Thanks to the years spent working in control, and all the time on the road working the curry car I passed with flying colours with a perfect score. I then did a brief test on Hackney carriage Byelaws and tariffs. (all of which i had memorised beforehand) I then took the dreaded driving test. Back then, in the days when Southend ran Rochford's hackney Carriage, the driving test was a feared part of the exam. Ostensibly it was mainly to ensure you were a safe and smooth driver, though I feel it was also a chance for the two officers to winnow out those they felt unsuitable. The hardest part of the test was a three-point turn on Leigh hill. (a very steep and narrow road usually clogged with double-parked cars) By this point, I was a pretty competent driver having almost four years of driving experience, but I was a bundle of nerves. These nerves were not helped by the fact that the car I had borrowed that day (my brother-in-laws Peugeot 405) had a broken handbrake cable. this made the three-point turn very very difficult. Somehow, I managed to pull off the turn and I was duly passed as a hackney carriage driver in April 1996. I am not certain that I was the youngest cab driver in the area, but I probably was. At 21 years old my insurance was pretty horrendous and so it is unlikely that anyone else that young was on the road working. At that time, under the rules of Rochford council, new Hackney carriage drivers were not permitted to own a plate (a vehicle licence) until they had driven for someone else for three years. this was a flexible rule with drivers often making private deals to buy or rent plates but for the most part, when you passed for your badge you had to be what was called a forty percenter, or more commonly a driver. what this entailed was an owner-driver (someone who already had a licensed taxi) would allow you to drive their cab. They would pay for all the expenses, fuel, repairs, road tax, insurance etc. and the driver in return would give them sixty per cent of what they earnt. It wasn't a bad deal. It gave newly qualified drivers a chance to try the job without having to invest in a new car, and at the same time giving them the means to make a living and raise the funds needed for when their three years was up. The first cab I drove was plate 34, for a guy called Gary. I was only on the car for a couple of weeks however before I found a more permanent position driving for one of our owner-drivers on plate 78. I drove that car for about a year and did pretty well. I mainly worked the early shifts and overtime got to know the ropes and managed to get through the year without crashing it. Then I drove for Mary.

Mary was a very challenging woman to work for. known as "Lancashire Mary" she was a big and tall blonde woman in her late fifties. A formidable woman, she had a reputation for toughness and a prickly nature. Several drivers had been sent to her and she had either sacked or frightened each of them away. Eventually, I was tapped to drive for her. Now I must be strange because I really liked Mary. Yes, she was cranky, and yes very demanding, but i knew where i stood with her and so long as paid in sufficient amounts of cash she was content to leave me largely to my own devices. It was at this time that I started to work not only mornings but also night shifts. I routinely did sixteen-hour days, starting at 04:00 for the "early" earlies and working through till 1800, Monday to Friday, then going out on the weekend and working through till 0300 Friday and Saturday nights. It was while I was driving Mary's cab that I had my first runner, (also the first one out of four that I caught). In general driving, her cab was a real learning experience for me and I found that though I had overdone the hours, I had found a job I truly enjoyed doing. Eventually, after two years my parents let me have one of their licence plates (84,) and I bought my first cab. It was an old J reg Peugeot 405 that was already a taxi. Its owner "Bob Shephard" was selling it on so he could buy a newer car. I paid about £2000 for it. It had about 150 000 miles on the clock and was somewhat tired, but it was mine. I drove that car for about 130 000 miles in around two years before finally retiring it and giving it to my then-wife Claire as her own runabout. After that, I got married, and eventually took on a second plate giving me two cabs and allowing me to employ drivers. 84 and 88. I ran both these plates up until about 2005 when finally tired of employing drivers I let one lapse. I had found that, while on paper drivers were a good way to increase your income, the reality was that I had to be on them 24 hours a day making sure they didn't try to fiddle their pay and expense while at the same time making sure they didn't wreck the cabs. In the end, it was just easier for me to have just the one cab and one driver. Eventually, by 2009, things were changing. Rayleigh had suffered an explosion in the number of cabs. Our own firm had been hit by a combination of an extremely hostile council and the general reduction in our car numbers, falling from about 30 cars at the high point down to under twenty. Eventually, my mum decided she didn't want to work in the office anymore and in 09 my dad, whose health was already failing sold the majority of the company and withdrew from taking a prominent role being content to go back to being just an owner-driver. It was at this time I gave up on Rayleigh. The fun I had once found in driving the cab was soured by too much politics, increasingly bad traffic and an out of control hackney carriage. (we had gone from two part-time officers to four full-time ones by the time I left.) For me, Rochford was done, so in early 2009 I sold my plate and walked away.

It had been my intent to give up the taxi trade completely. so soured was I after my latter experiences, and for a while I did. I went off to work in the film industry, starting out as an extra. To my surprise, I did really well, and in just a few years I worked on about fifty mainstream movies, working with stars like Russel Crowe, Johnny Depp and Clint Eastwood. But Though it was fun and the money was ok, it was not a steady income, it being a case of feast then famine. I needed something to iron out the bumps, Returning to the taxi trade was really the best answer. Not wanting to return to Rayleigh with its politics and hateful council, I decided to look elsewhere and settled on Maldon. I applied for and got a licence, (no knowledge being required in Maldon back then) and after passing a medical and CRB check I was up and running. Working Maldon was my first real taste of being an independent taxi driver. I had spent some time learning the area and had briefly investigated the local firms with the idea of maybe joining them. However, they didn't impress. Bear in mind I came from an area where there was a cab war going on. Firms were either good or they went to the wall. R.T. at its height had been very very good. so my standards were quite high. I think the problem came down to a lack of decent competition within the area. Without the spur of competition, there is no real need to try hard and so the local firms were somewhat lacking. Things have definitely improved since then, but I still see lots of room for improvement, but that's by the bye. For me, I decided that I was just going to be independent and do my own thing. So, having gotten my badge, and licenced up a new cab (a 03 plate Picasso) I went out one day in May 2010 and sat on Maldons high street rank waiting for my first fare. My first Maldon fare was a walk-on at the high street rank, an old gentleman going to Warwick road, it netted me £4.00 It was very hard to start off. I knew no one in town, I didn't know if there were unspoken rules on the rank (ie taking fares off the back etc) and without an established customer, base progress was painfully slow. I had early on decided that I didn't want to advertise, preferring to build up a client base by recommendation, thus making the job a lot safer for a lone guy working out in the sticks on his own. That first year. I took just £10 000 in total. After expenses, I cleared less than half of that. If it hadn't been for the movies I would have gone under. luckily I worked on several big films that year and the money from them saw me through. Christmas 2010 was where it all changed. I had over the previous few months built up a small circle of clients and had been helped out by some of my fellow independents, Jay and Jaul who had kindly sent work my way. slowly my turnover was slowly rising. But that December, the slow climb became a rapid ascent. People who couldn't get booked in elsewhere came to me. I carried them and generally did a good job of being on time and in the right place. After that things just kept on improving.

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