Taxi driver

Briefly explain what you do for a living.

I drive taxi for a living, which means that I take customers by car from one place to another. Many of my customers are people having a night out, doing their shopping, or tourists. Old people, persons with disabilities, sick people and schoolchildren are a customer group whose transport services have been contracted by a municipality or well-being services county. Transporting them often requires different accessories or aids.

How have you ended up in the profession of your choice?

I originally ended up as a taxi driver because of my desire to try new things. For almost 10 years, I drove a taxi as a taxi worker, i.e., for another entrepreneur. After this, I set up my own company about five years ago.

Describe your typical working day or week.

The working days vary greatly. When going to work, you never know what will happen during the day and where you can find yourself. The first thing I do is switch on all work-related devices in my car. They include the terminal for relaying rides and the phones required for transport tasks in accordance with the Disability Services Act. Then I wait for customers and transport them to their desired destinations.

During a shift, there may be 10 to 40 customers. On weekdays, a typical number is approximately 20 and on a weekend night shift it may be up to 40. Some customers are very talkative, while others don’t talk at all. It’s all right to keep quiet in the car, but usually there’s some kind of conversation with customers during the journey.

What kind of work environment or working hours do you have?

I spend all my working hours in a car as I drive about 100,000 kilometres a year. I work alone, but taxi drivers have a close work community. While waiting for rides, we interact a lot with each other. We chat and have coffee. Other drivers provide a lot of support in work situations.

In principle, taxis are always at work, i.e., on standby for 24 hours a day. Day and night shifts are different, and the atmosphere at work varies depending on whether you work in a night shift or in daytime. When doing a night shift, many of the people you drive are partying. The day shift customers are, for example, older persons or sick people on their way home or to a hospital.

What kind of competence or qualities are required in the profession?

The starting point is that you like driving and know how to operate in traffic and plan routes. Fortunately, today, there are tools available for planning routes. Being self-motivated is an advantage, as, if any problems arise, you need to solve them in the car by yourself.

Nowadays, the work requires some IT skills, as you must know how to schedule rides using a mobile application. A taxi driver must be patient and calm as you spend a lot of time waiting. And you often hear the same things again and again during rides. You must be service-minded, as you need to help customers a lot with, for example, their shopping bags. Sometimes you need to help a customer all the way home. If the customer is drunk or an old person, I also follow a little how they are doing after getting out of the taxi.

What is the best thing about your profession?

The best parts of this work are diversity and variability, as all working days are different. You can do your work fairly freely according to your own rhythm of life.

What are the downsides of the profession or what seems challenging?

The most challenging part of the job are customers who do not want to pay for the ride. It’s annoying because it means that you have wasted your time and effort. There are usually two or three such customers on weekends, but at least one every month.

What would you tell a person considering the profession of a taxi driver?

If you get along with people and like driving, this job is definitely worth trying.

How do you see the future of your profession?

The number of taxi users is increasing in Finland because the average age of people is rising. Growing numbers of sick people are also being transported by taxi. In the future, close cooperation between different modes of transport will be needed. Customers will not only take a taxi, but they also use a train or a bus, and want to get from door to door combining different modes of transport.

Photo: Sami Mäkinen