Compelling, in-depth coverage of the people and stories behind the news and their opinions.
My truck has broken down. Has been down since Saturday morning. No big deal, right? Wrong!
Parts. Where are they? Why can’t I get them? Why doesn’t the dealer or any other heavy duty shop have them, for that matter?
That’s right. They are on a ship somewhere. Anchored off of either the Pacific or Atlantic coast, awaiting its turn to nestle into a berth and get unloaded.
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Perhaps, it is a “Perfect Storm:” that rare but devastating nightmare situation which results from a tragic confluence of events both predictable and unpredictable.
Or, perhaps the Supply Chain crisis is in fact due to one, massive unfortunate decision that escaped notice long enough to bring the rest of the system crashing down with it: for example, California’s decision to enforce stringent restrictions on the age of trucks allowed to pick up at its ports.
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That light you’re seeing outside is dawn, not dusk.
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While I knew him, Larry hired a new seven-days-a-week driver and agreed to supply this fellow with a brand-new car. On his first night, the new guy smashed Larry’s new vehicle into a cement flower pot on Eglinton Avenue East, causing four thousand dollars’ damage.
How could anybody with any sense do that? The guy had the car towed back to Larry’s Garage and left a note in the night drop box: “I’m not leaving you the money for the shift until I find out whether you are going to fire me or not.” If Larry was a bit of a pain – and I came to regard him as such – there may have been quite a few real provocations. I guess that might have been true of the other fleet operators I have been writing about, too, even including Mr. Good Guy, world-class weasel that he was.
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Donny has suffered from frequent, debilitating seizures for about half of his life. From the first time Mary called a cab for a hospital trip and Noor pulled up almost five years ago, Mary and Noor became a team, seeing Donny through some of his most challenging times.
Donny is a big man, and at his worst seizures were loud, angry and physical. Noor, however, remained calm and unperturbed at all times.
“Noor had such an amazing, calming effect on Donny,” Mary laughs. “Donny was putty in his hands.”
“I was not bothered,” Noor says. “I understood Donny when he got ‘seizure-ish.’”
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After two crazy-busy days and 500 turkey deliveries, Beck driver Mohsen Holway made it home to his own family with a fresh turkey and a giant “thank you” from turkey drive volunteers.
“Mohsen was amazing!” GTA TurkeyDrive organizer Jennifer Evans told Taxi News. “And not just the fact that he physically loaded and unloaded 500 turkeys over two longs days. He was very creative, directing some of the other volunteers, getting the turkeys loaded and working around problems. He was incredible.”
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Driver Training: After eliminating 50 years of consumer protections in the original Vehicle for Hire By-law, we now see an endless wave of consumer complaints about dirty or mechanically unfit vehicles; the general public is unaware of who really is behind the wheel of their vehicle for hire; and the public wonders why some rides cost more than others for the exact same ride?
I could go on and on. There used to be mandatory twice per year DOT inspections. There used to be sealed meters. There used to be a clear system of identification for who was driving. There used to be a 3-week taxi training course for drivers run by the City of Toronto. These are all gone.
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I started down a trail that has stretched out over thirty years — and will continue until the end of my working life, though I will likely not work in the future on a full-time basis. At this juncture, I am, irretrievably, a cabby.
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In 2019, after the death of Nicholas Cameron in an Uber with an untrained driver, Toronto Council directed staff to reinstate a driver testing and training program. While staff blame COVID for the fact that no training program has yet been launched, 40,000 new professional drivers were licensed without testing during this period.
This is worth re-stating: Toronto Council directed staff to design and implement a training program 27 months ago. No action has been taken: no program designed, no Request for Proposals issued to training suppliers, no outreach to Centennial College, which already offers Taxi driver training.
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