04/04/2024
Good day folks, Tony here, the owner of Sumter Taxi. I lost a great guy, driver, and really great worker in one tragic event. He moved from beautiful Sumter SC to some place up north where white fluffy stuff falls when it gets cold. I am going to miss you Brian. You really helped Sumter Taxi and Sunshine Taxi of Camden get off to a wonderful start. Best to you and your family. May the good Lord be with you through your travels.
Now for the lesser news, Sumter Taxi and Sunshine Taxi of Camden have lowered their prices. As Brian has stated in his post previously, $12.00 to get in now covers 5 miles included, where as before the ticker would start right away. Why are we doing this? two reasons, one we are here for the community and if we can save you money, we are going to save you money! Reason two, everything is up in cost, so let Sumter Taxi Co. start a trend downward. This will not put us out of business, will it hurt, a little, but we need to tighten our belt a bit, then so be it. If any of you seen me, I could use some belt tightening. I don't get on Facebook too often, Sumter Taxi is one of five companies that I run. Sunshine taxi LLC operates in Camden, Newberry and now....wait for it....... in Manning, SC. Yes, after many months of trying and speaking with Manning officials we received authority to operate Sunshine Taxi of Manning in their fair city. As I am not a Facebooker, I leaned on young Brian to do this work. And he did it well. I want to thank at this time our followers, who were thrilled when we rolled into town. According to Sumter we are the first legitimate Taxi in Sumter in 8 years. Sunshine Taxi of Camden is the first official Taxi there in 20 years, and Manning stated about the same since they had a legal cab service.
Let's talk Uber and Lyft for a second. They are cheaper then us. Yes that's a fact. Except when demand for service goes up then the price escalates to higher and higher amounts. They drivers may or may not see this increase, but it comes out of your pocket book. Our prices are the same no matter what. Demand hi or low it is always the same. A famous tale is that an Uber executive in California paid $57.00 to go two miles. He was shocked that the charges were so high, so the story says. They do not go through the hurtles that we jump over because they are not a taxi, they are rideshare. Their drivers are in business for themselves. The Uber and Lyft drivers have the right to cancel a job that they accepted because a higher paying job became available, but you still need to get where you need to go. What is scary is the fact that Lyft and Uber drivers will ask for cash and take your phone number and work independently of Uber and Lyft. Then people will call the driver directly to order a ride. This violates the State of South Carolina law concerning transporting people. Understand, when they do this, they are operating with no commercial insurance, and, God forbid, and accident happens, the general insurance that the driver has may not cover IF they find out they are operating as a Gypsy Taxi (Illegal Taxi Company). We are legitimate, legal, and here to serve you. We will never do that to you. There are times we are backed up here is Sumter and we will send our Camden Taxi in to assist and we can do the same thing with the Manning cab. But we will not raise our prices to compensate for the higher demand.
Thank you, citizens, of Sumter, SC for your patronage and standing up for the old time art of hacking a cab. (old time slogan for cab driver).
May the good Lord bless us all through these times.
Sincerely,
Anthony Falzon
Sumter Taxi Co.
