History of The Taxi Industry

The  Worlds first Professional Taxi Company

The world's 1st taxi cab was manufactured by Gottlieb Daimler in 1897 The taxi came equipped with the newly invented taxi meter developed by Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn. On June 16th 1897, Mr Daimler delivered to a Stuttgar entrepreneur Friedrich Greiner his Damiler Victoria cabs fitted with taxi meters. Mr Greiner became the first person to create the world's first motorized taxi company.


The Birth of the Taxi Industry in the US
Harry Nathaniel Allen, the owner of the New York Taxicab Co. imported the very first 600 gas-powered taxicabs in New York city from France. Harry Allen's gas-powered taxi cabs began operating in New york city in 1907. He had his cabs painted yellow after learning that this is easiest color to see from a distance. This color became the standard color for many large taxi fleet owners in the industry.
Taxi cabs had grown popular throughout the world during the early Twentieth century. The 1st major innovation for the Taxi industry after the taxi meter occurred in the late Nineteen forties, when 2-way radios very first used in taxi cabs.Radios allowed cabs and dispatching locations to speak to one another in the car and better serve customers more effectively as opposed to old methods, for example utilizing call-boxes. The next major advancement took place the Nineteen-eighties, when computer system assisted dispatching was initially introduced.


The Taximeter
The name taxi cab was in fact derived from the phrase taxi meter The Taxi meter is a device which calculates the distance and time an automobile moves, and makes it possible for a precise fare calculations. Wilhelm Bruhn invented the Taxi meter in eighteen-ninety-one.Taxi meters had been initially mechanized devices mounted outside of the taxi cab, over the driver's side front wheel. Taxi meters were in the near future transferred to the inside of the taxi cab. In the 1980s Centrodyne and Pulsar developed and  an electronic Taxi meter.


Taxi Cabs
In 1907, Taxi cabs were hardly as comfortable as modern cars are today due to their Narrow tires and poor suspension design. In the US, in the Nineteen thirties, typically taxi cabs were usually a Desoto and Packard. General Motors temporarily provided a special car referred to as the General.
In 1922, the check motor company began production of the Checker passenger car almost exclusively for the taxi industry. However do to tough economic times, checker stopped production of cars in the 1980s. Another contributing factor to checkers decline in market share was the changes to New York cities taxi ordinances. These changes required taxi fleet operators to have long wheel base vehicles such as the Crown Victoria made by Ford Motor company or the Sienna minivan made by Toyota.


The Future of Taxi Industry
The future for small independent taxi operators is bleak. The cost of buying a taxi in 2013 is somewhere between $3,000 and 18,000 dollars plus the cost of outfitting the vehicle with the proper taxi supplies. . If you add in the cost of expensive insurance,repairs plus fuel,only the large fleet owners will be able to handle those low profit margins due to the sheer number of cabs they have on the street. So do you still want be a Cabbie?

Lean more about how to save money on Taxi Supplies and Taxi Meters.  Be sure to read my future articles how how to lower costs and increase your companies ROI.