Conversations with taxi drivers: Eighteen

This is the eighteenth in a series of posts relaying conversations I have had with taxi drivers. The first of these posts appeared on 6 June 2018. 

5 August

I had a car service today, though when 8.30am came by I only just realised I was already late for the appointment due to a scam phone call that alerted me to the existence of my phone. I found the place and then talked with a man for about 20 minutes about batteries and E10 fuel, then called a cab on the 13 CABS app. The driver when asked told me to pay at the end of the trip – the app usually does this transaction for you – and I took a receipt just in case I was double charged. I ate some lunch after they called me to let me know the car was ready to pick up, then when the food was finished I summoned another cab.

The driver was chatty. I told him I was getting my RAV4 serviced for the first time and he said he was trading in his Camry for a RAV4 when it arrived in the country. The service staff had told me there’s an 8-month wait at present; my wait last year was 6 months. The driver estimated that it’d take two weeks to take delivery of the vehicle, which would be a Cruiser (like mine) as Silver Service, which would be badging the car, only took that model on. 

He said he normally gets 130,000km a year for regular cab use, but due to Covid it was about 85,000 to 90,000km. A new battery costs about $2000 because the car maker gives you a trade in for the old battery. He said a person he knows who just bought a RAV4 for cab use paid $45,000 (mine was $52,000) and the different prices reflected the fact, he averred, that for cabbies there’s less tax and no registration charge. I was surprised by the price differential and said I should’ve told Toyota I was a cab driver – but he said I’d need taxi plates (he also said they drop the car off at the depot, rather than it being picked up from the showroom).

He himself drives a 2015 Lexus but he’s only done about 22,000km on it because it only gets used on Sundays – he normally drives his cab for six days a week.

This time the app charged me via my credit card. The Toyota charge was $215 for the service, and also involved driving down a ramp to the street! I felt quite proud due to working out how to get down the ramp – even how to approach it! But just to prove how impractical I am at the exit I went "out" the "in" gate.