Dear driver, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Micky Harris, and it is my intention to launch and run a low to no-profit app for e-hailing and pre-booking taxis.
This app was funded and made possible with a legacy left to me by my late wife, Barbara. She always wondered why there wasn’t an app that was run by the trade for the good of all. She also left me with strict instructions to, “Make it work Micky, make it work.”
Barbara and I believed that it should be possible to run a booking service for taxis which is both profitable and charitable. We felt that if the drivers could come together and join a single platform, even if still using others, that a solution could be found that could benefit the whole taxi community.
During the early phases of this project, we often spoke about unifying the trade to act as one. From these conversations the name Unify London Taxis was born, and an idea started to become a reality. We began researching ways in which we could benefit the whole taxi community, drivers, customers, and others associated with the trade, for example the wonderful charities that many taxi drivers support. As you can imagine there was a lot of work undertaken in the early planning of this venture.
Sadly, my wife developed stage four terminal breast cancer, bringing a temporary halt to the venture. This however, never stopped her volunteering to help look after veterans on various trips with the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans. She continued to do this, up until her death in July last year even though she was very ill herself. Although my world had fallen apart, her words telling me to make it work, still rang in my ears. Resulting in me becoming absolutely determined to complete the project which we had so lovingly started together. There is so much more to this story, but I shall save that for another day. However, I wanted to let you have some insight into my motivation and determination to make this project successful.
My eldest son is also a cab driver, and he is helping to create a family legacy for this app that will pass down generation to generation, offering protection from those that would profit off the backs of hard-working cabbies (all of us). Although this app will be profitable, if successful, we will be diverting the majority of those profits to charities associated with the trade. Look at our charities page.
Just recently this project came to conclusion, and we were preparing to launch on the 17th of April. But, through my charity work as a committee member for the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans, a piece was written by them, for an upcoming issue of TAXI magazine. Amazingly, the story was somehow picked up by other members of the media and was published online just before the Easter break. For obvious reasons, this caused a bit of a stir among drivers and other organisations, and before long I found myself being interviewed by ITV London news. The article was broadcast several times on Easter Monday.
There have been platforms in the past which have been driver owned and/or driver led, However, these ventures soon became focused solely on profit, often bringing in outside investors and corporations which very quickly start upping % to make more profit. We have all seen this far too often over the years. Our app is Free to drivers, forever. We will never take a single penny from a single driver to run this app. In fact, we intend to increase your earnings with annual rewards. See our customer trees in the driver section of the website.
On verification to our platform drivers will be sent a “Drivers pack” through the post. This pack contains advertising materials for their Taxi, and we would recommend you use this to help customers sign up to our app:
One flip seat advertisement
Two windscreen stickers
One QR code for your partition
A5 booklet about “Customer trees”
An example selection of receipt pads
If we, as drivers, combine our efforts and determination to seize this opportunity to retrieve fair working practices for everyone, then the trade will go from strength to strength in the coming years. If this opportunity passes us by it’s very unlikely that we will ever have such an offer again. Unify London Taxis Limited is owned and run by a multi-generational cabbie family, for the benefit of the whole taxi community.
Together we are strong, and we can bring about the changes we all wish to see. Let’s Unify. Come together.
Micky Harris