What Your Normal Taxi Driver Won't Tell You

1. “We love to overcharge...”

Cab Drivers New York begin every day in the hole. In most cities they’re independent contractors who pay to rent their cab, which in New York, for example, costs $150 to $180 a shift. Drivers may work four or five hours before breaking even.

So many have plenty of incentive to squeeze a few extra bucks from a fare. The easiest way: Take the long way to a destination. It’s so common in Las Vegas that Gordon Walker, administrator of the Nevada Taxicab Authority, says they have a name for it: long-hauling. Creative cabbies can add $10 to a $15 fare by taking the highway from the airport to the strip, says Duane Hempel, who has been driving a Vegas cab (and never long-hauling, he says) for nine years. Another ploy: claiming not to have change when handed a $20 bill, says Anil Polat, a travel blogger at FoxNomad.com.

Indeed, overcharging is one of the top complaints filed with New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, says Matthew Daus, the agency’s commissioner. But the problem shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, says Alfred LaGasse, CEO of the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association. “There are bad drivers, but the majority are very good.”

2. “...but we want to avoid traffic as much as you do.”

When your cab New York gets stuck in traffic, it’s hard not to wonder whether the driver sought out the most gridlocked route to boost the fare. But that’s rarely the case. In most cities, taxi fares are determined by the meter: When the taxi moves, the meter runs; when it sits in traffic, the meter runs much slower. “The whole nature of the business is to get you in and out of the cab as quickly as possible,” says Melissa Plaut, a New York City cabbie and author of Hack, which chronicles her experiences. “I’d rather not sit in midtown traffic with someone getting all huffy and puffy in my backseat.”

Usually, the more trips a cab driver new york takes, the more money he makes. In San Francisco, for example, taxi meters start at $3.10. The more short trips a driver completes, the more initial $3.10 fares he’ll collect and the more tips he can bring in. Even in Vegas, where drivers share revenue with the cab company in addition to getting a small hourly wage, sitting in traffic is no way to earn money, says Hempel. When driving 60 miles per hour on the freeway, he says, his meter will ring up $2.40 per minute, while one minute in traffic nets him about 50 cents. “No one likes traffic,” he says.