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Showing posts with label nett income. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nett income. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

day in the life of a cabbie.......

An actual account of what I do for a living.
Yesterday, Monday 4th of January, 2010, at 5.10pm, I picked up my first passenger from United Square taxi stand, a young lady who wanted to go to Leonie Hill, my metered fare was $6.70 after that, I drove to Great World City where I picked up another young lady going to Hong Leong Building, her fare was exactly $8.00.
Next, at Shenton Way DBS Building taxi stand, a caucasian man going to Sentosa Cove and his fare was $12.20 from there I drove out to Vivo City taxi stand, time was 7.00pm, sent this lady to Toa Payoh Lor.7 her fare came to $16.00. It was 7.35pm when I queued and waited at Toa Payoh Central taxi stand where I finally drove this young Malay boy to nearby Lor.1 for $3.80 by then it was already 8.05pm. This time, I started cruising slowly towards town and eventually ended up in the queue at Raffles City taxi stand at 8.45pm, imagine, all the way without a single passenger. About 10 minutes later, a Chinese couple boarded my cab to go to Hilton Hotel, fare was $8.30 and thereafter, also from Hilton, a young Indonesian mother with her daughter wanted to go for a ride on the Flyer, their fare was exactly $7.00. I then proceeded to Esplanade Mall taxi stand, time was 9.10pm, I waited till 9.30pm when a young Chinese couple with their two children wished to go to nearby Swisshotel for a fare of $6.00, and immediately after, two middle aged caucasian ladies boarded my cab to go to a Sembawang Road condo after passing Chong Pang area, their metered fare showed $19.60 but this paying lady insisted on giving me $22.00 which I reluctantly accepted. 
It was then about 10pm when I drove towards Mandai Zoo taxi stand to queue, and boy, it was a long, long queue. Anyway, I decided to read my New Paper as I slowly jogged along and finally picked up two European ladies wanting to go to Jalan Besar Road near Petain Road, their fare came to $14.60, it was then that I felt a bit hungry and decided to go to Syed Alwi Road coffee shop to have my dinner, a bowl of prawn mee soup $3.00 and a cup of hot barley drink 80 cts. After eating my meal, I ended up in the long queue at Clarke Quay, it was already 11.50pm when I fetched four young European ladies to Swisshotel for $6.20 and lucky enough for me, after a short wait I ferried this young Chinese girl to Ponggol Central at exactly midnight. Her fare came to $21.90, the time was about 12.30am, I felt quite tired and decided to call it a day. It was a rather unusual day for me as there was'nt much converstions involved throughout my working day. Despite the slowdown in taxi ridership, I still managed a fair but still quite low take home pay, can't complain too much though. 
Thank you for sharing this long journey with your friendly neighbourhood Cabbie and now its time for my cup of "Kopi".

Monday, November 23, 2009

lesser taxi ridership.......

Last night I started driving from usual time around 5.00pm. This was quite an unusual night because by 8.00pm I had only collected metered fares amounting to about $29.00. This amount was way too short of my daily takings and so I decided to take a break and at the same time have an early meal which lasted till 9.00pm. I resumed working non stop till about midnight and not feeling tired, I decided to do overtime after another short break. I counted my takings and it was really bad, only $82.00 I knew it would not be much because I did not ferry enough passengers from the time I started till now and also the trips involved were short ones. I had not driven overnight for quite a long time and so I thought why not continue driving and this time with additional midnight charges added and so by 6.00am, after one more coffee break I was a bit shacked and so had to call it a day. I did my usual taxi wash and clean up then headed home. The total gross income I managed to earn was only $132.00 this was very poor takings and after deducting rental, diesel and sundry expenses, my nett income was $62.00. Taxi ridership has indeed fallen drastically and the lot of us cabbies have to work extra hard to tide over this period of time till near Christmas to recover initial losses with some good bonuses, hopefully........have to go to work now, already 5.00pm.