A TAXI RACKET

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 32, 8 February 1943, Page 5

A TAXI RACKET

SYDNEY CAB RENTING SOME FANTASTIC FIGURES (0.C.) ' SYDNEY, January 27. Taxi drivers are trying to make a living out of the 50 miles running a day which their petrol ration allows them, compared with some 250 miles a day before rationing. Some of them admittedly overcharge, especially when Americans offer them far more than the regulation fare for a trip, and most of them go in for "jitneying"—taking several fares, all bound more or less in the same direction, on one trip—but they have two main grievances. One is that the law still says they must not refuse a fare, although they may not have enough petrol to go where the fare wants to be taken. It is obvious that a driver might spend his day's petrol on one long trip, without back loading, which would not pay his expenses. But the chief complaint is the racket in taxi plates. It is illegal to buy and sell taxi plates (licenses), but there is nothing to prevent anyone selling a cab worth perhaps £200 for £1200, including the plate attached to it. The drivers allege that politicians and church dignitaries are in the racket—buying up cabs and then selling them or renting them at some fantastic figure to drivers from whom they demand a specified return for every gallon of petrol, which they also sell to the drivers at as high as 4/ a one gallon ticket, making his cost 6/10 a gallon. It is said that cabs are rented in this way at up to £8 a week, and that a plate, which in 1926 was worth only £25, is now in this black market worth up to £1200.