1992 – THE GOOD OLD DAYS??!!


NO INTERNET, EMAIL, WEBSITES, APPS OR SOCIAL MEDIA. ROYAL MAIL WAS KING; COMPUTERS WERE RARE, MOBILE


PHONES VERY BASIC AND SAT NAV WAS A PAPER ROAD MAP.


In September 1992 PRIVATE HIRE MONTHLY issue 1, a twenty- four-page tabloid newspaper, was posted free of charge to the 15,000 operators in the UK; and it was at our first trade Expo at Donington Park in May 1993 that GPC, Guardian, Auriga and Norris Computing introduced members of our trade to the new concept of computerised booking and dispatch; technology which would ultimately revolutionise the taxi industry forever.


AVERAGE COST PENCE PER LITRE 1992 FOUR STAR PETROL


50.28 DIESEL 45.01


AVERAGE COST PENCE PER LITRE 2022 PETROL


171.30 DIESEL 182.80


Prior to this time, all bookings were taken over the phone, with the customer telling the controller where they were and where they wanted to go. The job was logged by pen and paper and dispatched using 2-way radios. The controller assured the customer the vehicle would be there in five minutes, but knew it would be more like twenty, and shared little information about the driver or vehicle being sent. Credit cards were a definite no go and other than account work, all fares - and even track payments were paid in cash.


On a Saturday night, taxi bases were noisy, smoke-filled rooms, staffed by a dozen people manually dispatching thousands of jobs before and after midnight, giving drivers on a typical hundred car fleet a lucrative 20 fares each. Drivers earned a reasonable living, cities closed at 2am, alcohol and drug fuelled passengers were


few and far between and Sunday was a day of rest as shops remained shut.


Vauxhall Cavalier, Rover Montego and Ford Sierra were popular PHVs until the mid 90s when the Skoda Octavia, Ford Mondeo and Peugeot 406 became the vehicles of choice; meanwhile wheelchair-accessible black cabs where either LTI’s iconic FX4 Fairway or the Metrocab taxi. Diesel was promoted as the ‘environmentally friendly’ favoured fuel, four-star petrol was still leaded, and the suggestion that electric vehicles would be the future for our trade would have been ridiculed as pure fantasy!!


September 1992


MONTEGO


FX4


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