One of the best ways to promote your taxi business is for people to notice your cab or PHV.
Making sure it is clean and in good condition goes a long way, but how do you make it stand out from the other Kias, Toyotas and Hyundais on the road?
Bright idea
One PHV owner decided to paint her cars bright pink to make sure they were not only noticed, but also to help vulnerable passengers feel safe.
And after a successful first year, taxi industry veteran Amberine Nawaz’s Helli Cars and Pink Ladies business is expanding.
The mum-of-two set up the business when she returned to Yorkshire after living in Surrey. Her cars also carry male passengers, but the service focuses on making lone women and girls feel safer during journeys.
As well as making sure the bright pink cars stand out as safe spaces, its female drivers ensure that at the end of a journey, they wait for passengers to get through their front door before leaving.
Isolated
Amberine told the Telegraph & Argus she set up the business after an incident in which her eight-year-old daughter was travelling in a taxi from school to their remote farmhouse and she could not contact her because of the area’s poor mobile phone signal.
Recalling the worry and anxiety she felt, Amberine set up the female-focused PHV service to reassure others, especially when travelling alone on remote country roads.
After a successful first year at its Skipton base, the firm is expanding into Bradford – and Amberine wants to inspire other women to become taxi drivers.
She told the Telegraph & Argus: “I’m quite lucky that I’ve not had any unfortunate experiences, but I’ve had women telling me what’s happened. It’s needed more than I anticipated.
Support
“It’s unfortunate that we’re in the 21st century and there is a need. It’s a deeper problem and it’s needed. Men have had equally as bad experiences.
“It’s been positive. We’re a bit of a counselling role as well when they feel they can open up and talk to us.
“We wait for them to go in the house. Little things like that make such a difference.”
It is this extra care that led Amberine to include a chaperone service, in which drivers will accompany vulnerable passengers such as the elderly to hospital appointments.
Pink Ladies driver Michelle Taylor said: “There are so many people who are isolated and they not only have physical disabilities but mental disabilities too. A lot of them struggle with men, they feel more comfortable with a female [driver].
“We’ve made a good rapport with people we’ve got as clients and they report back that if they didn’t have this service, they’d be isolated, they wouldn’t be going out, they wouldn’t be going shopping, they’d be relying on carers or neighbours. In that sense it took a lot of isolation away from the community.”
Pink Ladies’ cars stand out from the crowd not only because of their bright colour, but because of the safety and support that drivers provide to vulnerable passengers. The service has made a big difference to people who would otherwise be isolated, especially in remote rural areas.
