There was a time when minicab driving was a proper living. Hard work, yes — long nights, difficult passengers, roads you had to know by heart. But it put food on the table. Immigrants chose this trade to build a life in a new country. Doctors, engineers, teachers from back home — they drove because it was honest work that rewarded the hours you put in.
Then the industry started shifting. The TfL licensing battles of the 2000s were the first shake-up. Then came the tech giants — the Ubers, the Bolts, the Freenows — promising passengers cheaper rides while quietly squeezing the drivers who made it all possible. Commission went up. Pay went down. The trade that once supported families became a race to the bottom.
My father drove a minicab from the 1980s to the 2020s in the UK. He loved it — really loved it. He retired in his 80s, and if he had his way, he'd still be on the roads. Graveyard shifts, seven-day weeks — I haven't even come close to matching his work effort. The freedom of the minicab, the social side I used to see with my dad and his pals on the rooftop car park at Morrisons, the pinky notes. These guys were paid, free from the shackles of society, masters of their own ship.
It's not all glory, though. Runaway customers, short change, tussles with passengers, chases, dealing with the intoxicated. The industry is safer now, yes — but we've clipped the wings in terms of earnings. The role itself is slowly diminishing to minimum wage. That's why the time for change has come.
And alongside the drivers, the cab offices. They were never just dispatch software — they were where the trade lived. The local family-run firm that knew which driver to send on the school run, which one liked the night shift, which regular preferred the older saloon. Radios crackling in back-of-shop kitchens, dispatchers who knew every driver by their badge number. A place to drop in for tea between runs, swap stories, the pinky notes pinned to the cork-board. Tech rolled in and squeezed them too — Autocab and the rest sold them dispatch software at a premium, then Uber bought Autocab in 2020 and the same software started funnelling Uber's overflow jobs into local fleets. The offices that built this trade for decades were quietly turned into Uber's backend. That's the bit that gets me. cabeazy keeps cab offices in the picture — the dispatcher still runs the queue, the driver still works under their office, the community stays put. We just bring fairer fares and inbound passenger demand into the mix.
cabeazy exists because drivers deserve a platform that works for them, not against them. No surge pricing. A flat subscription instead of commission, so the more you drive, the more you keep.
A platform built by someone who grew up in the trade — not a boardroom.
- [1]Department for Transport — Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Statistics, England 2024 (revised 22 Jan 2025). 381,092 driver licences as of 1 April 2024.
- [2]Worker Info Exchange & University of Oxford — "Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It," June 2025. 82% of longer-serving drivers earn less per hour than before dynamic pay.