No, Beck Taxi has not been sold to a Chinese buyer

It’s just a new awning

Beck Taxi has not been sold to a Chinese buyer; it is getting a new awning at the front door.

Rumours began flying early on Friday, September 13th that Toronto’s largest Taxi brokerage had been sold to a Chinese buyer. In fact, Beck’s Operations Manager Kristine Hubbard told Taxi News that Beck has not been sold, to a Chinese buyer or anybody else.

“People are wild. We are literally changing our awning so the old one has been taken down, new one is being installed Monday,” Hubbard says.

“We put up the caution tape and cones because we didn’t want anyone to walk into the posts and they’re freshly painted. It’s actually comical, but a little exhausting, that this is what people are spending their time doing. Someone literally made it up out of thin air.”

Speculation included the idea that the Chinese government would use Beck Taxi to dump thousands of the electronic vehicles which they have been unable to sell in China, and that the City of Toronto would love this because it could then push its “all-EV Taxi fleet” idea and gain access to terabytes of passenger data simultaneously.

In Canada, media members generally consider the “Silly Season” to be the period between Canada Day and Labour Day, when all the politicians are on break and any crazy story might get air time because there is nothing else to write about. In 2024, apparently, the “Silly Season” was unofficially extended to include Friday the 13th.

You may go on with your lives.