Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Does anyone know a city better than its taxicab drivers? For 13 years, Jeff Hamilton has taken people where they want to go for County Cab (countycab.com). His favorite film? Taxi Driver, of course.
• You have to know where everything is in the city—that’s part of the business. The restaurants and places of interest. You have to know different avenues and streets. If people come in looking for barbecue, I recommend Pappy’s or Bogart’s. If they want Italian, I recommend The Hill. If they want a five-star restaurant, I recommend Tony’s downtown. If they want a steak, I tell ’em about Tucker’s or Morton’s or Ruth’s Chris. For seafood, you want to go to Wildflower in the Central West End. If they want to hear live music, I recommend Beale on Broadway, BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, and the Broadway Oyster Bar.
• I don’t really need GPS unless I’m going someplace out in the county I’ve never been before. If you stay on the streets 10, 12 hours a day, you should know where everything is—it’s repetition.
• In my cab I’ve had Tony La Russa, Dave Duncan, Batista the wrestler, Bobby Knight, Lewis Black… I get a lot of ballplayers, like the Latin players who want to eat Cuban food. I take them to La Tropicana.
• We have to pay for our own gas. It costs $50 to $60 a day. The gas prices really hurt our business. When they’re spiraling out of control, it really hurts the cab drivers. You pay $83 a day to lease the cab, too. It’s not a job that you’ll get rich on, but you’ll be able to pay your rent and buy a couple of ham sandwiches and maybe a White Castle every now and then.
• I set my own hours. I’m usually up every morning by 4:30 and out the door by 5:30. We put in 12-hour days. Some guys even stay out longer. I work seven days a week. It takes seven days a week if you wanna make it in the business. It’s all about survival.
• I get up in the morning, have a couple of cups of coffee, make sure I’m well-groomed, inspect my cab, check the tires, make sure it’s clean inside and out, and then I go out and start doing my business. I’ve had people get in my cab and say, “This is the cleanest cab I’ve ever been in,” and that makes me feel good.
• You don’t want to smoke in the cab, and you want to keep it clean, so people feel like they’re getting top-quality service. I take the car to the car wash and vacuum it every day.
• Most of the time we have orders that come across the screen, but if you’ve been working a good while like I have, you have “personals,” too. That’s when I give someone my card, and they call the company and ask for me.
• The competition is pretty tough out there, too. If there’s an order downtown, one of the other drivers might pull up and say they’re the cab that was called and take your fare. That’s why my company sends a text message with the driver’s name and the cab number. Even still, a lot of people steal from us.
• Lifting people’s luggage is part of the job. You gotta stay in shape. I’m ex-military. I start my day with 50 push-ups, and I do 50 more at night. Lifting luggage is good exercise, because if you’re just sitting in the cab all day, you get fat. And the better the customer service, the better the gratuities.
• A good fare is a person who gets in and wants to go from point A to point B and doesn’t want to create any problems. The bad fare wants to smoke cigarettes, bring in open containers, and argue that the meter is going too fast. The meter’s on a timer, by the way—we can’t change it.
• One guy attempted to rob me—but it didn’t work out too good for him.
• I picked up a guy at Amtrak about a month ago and carried him all the way to Bloomington, Illinois, two-and-a-half hours away. I got $450 for that. That included a good tip.
• I like talking to people. I’ve gotten a lot of insight from dealing with people. You do get people angry with their spouses, and they want to take it out on the first person they see. I try to talk about sports to take their minds off of it. I ask people how they’re doing and where they’re going, and then I might say how the Blues and Cardinals are doing. If it’s a guy, you start talking about sports, and if it’s a female, current events. I try to read The New York Times, the Post-Dispatch, and USA Today, and that way I’m full of information when people talk to me.
• People get in my cab and kid me about the show Taxicab Confessions. I don’t know if that’s real or staged. People don’t just start telling their life stories like that.
• People do get in and ask me if this is the Cash Cab, and I say, “Yeah, but I’m gonna be the only one winning!”
• I’ve been observing the people in St. Louis for a while, and it seems like we’re obsessed with cars. People will drive a car and get a DUI rather than call a cab. St. Louis is a great city, but too many people don’t understand that public transportation and taxis are useful. And people tailgate all the time.
• St. Louisans are just like everybody else in any other city, except they’re obsessed with the Cardinals and they need to quit attacking me for being a Yankees fan. I won’t wear a Yankee cap unless I’m off duty.
• If you want to hail a cab, wave your hand. You can whistle, too—the whistle does not offend me. The whistle sounds like business.
• If people are making out in the back of my cab, I tell ’em, “You all might wanna get a room.” I drive a Lincoln Town Car with plush leather seats. I run a clean operation. I’m a Catholic boy, and I don’t think I would allow that to go on.
• Thank God I’ve never had an experience like Collateral, where Tom Cruise was a hit man who got Jamie Foxx to drive him around while he was killing people all night long. I don’t need the excitement.
• I had a lady tell me one time, “You’re nothing but a cab driver,” and I said, “Yeah, but I’m the best one in the city!”
