How to Start a Taxi Business Service? :: Start a Small Taxi Business

Do you want to satisfy the entrepreneurial thirst in you? Are you planning to start a taxi service business?

It is not as easy as it seems but it’s not rocket science either. There are some basic rules of business that apply to any startup including taxi service business. If you learn and execute them correctly then success is just a few steps ahead. I am here to give you the almighty whip to crack on your competition, get the edge over them and to answer your question on how to start a taxi business?

You can start a taxi service business with one car, expanding concurrently with your profit rise. You may not even need an office; initially, just begin your operations at home and then move to an office when your taxi cab business grows bigger. In this blog, we will be going through the detailed steps on How to start a taxi business?

FAQs on starting a taxi service business:

You might have many questions about starting a taxi service business like:

How to start your own taxi business?
How to start a taxi business in countries like Germany, Hawaii, Australia, Philippines, South Africa, Singapore, Kenya, Dubai?
How to start a taxi business in cities like Illinois, Arizona, Buffalo, New York, South Carolina, Florida, Tampa, Los Angeles?
How to start a taxi business with one car?
How to start a small taxi business?
How to start up a taxi business in the USA?
How to start uber like taxi business?

These are the most frequently asked questions that you may see on the internet. Today we are going to answer all these questions and help you build your own taxi service startup.

Let’s not waste further time and dive into the specifics:

1. Finding The Perfect Location

Does the place that you are looking to build your business in, need a new cab service? Many entrepreneurs live in a small town where taxi users are quite less compared to big cities. So, it’s not advisable to start a taxi service in such towns where there is no scope for growth.

You might have to move to a more populated and taxi friendly city.

Learn About The City

Now that you have moved to a more competitive city, you need to have proper knowledge about the taxicab market of the city. You don’t need to be a paid member of any taxi association to gain such information. All the information that you need is right there on the internet, you just need to have patience and search in-depth about the stats and facts on taxi cab services of that particular city.

Know Your Competition

Use the internet to find all you can about your competitors. Visit their websites, view their reviews given by customers. After finding their fares you can offer lower fares in your cabs to get into competition.

2. Research Your Market

3. Buy Inventory

Get a car

What do you need to start a taxi business? Well first of all to start a taxi service you need a car. The first and costliest investment in your inventory will be the car. You can buy other cars later as you keep growing, but in the beginning, you start a small taxi/cab business with just one car.

Now you may think, How to start a taxi business with one car? You can either buy a brand new car which will cost you around $15,000 at least or you can go for used cars. The budget goes from as low as $3000 to $15,000 and above. Choosing the cheapest option may seem a good idea at first but the maintenance and repair cost will put a big hole in your pocket.

The best option is to go with a medium budget car ranging from $7000 to $9000.

Get Dressed For The Part

Customize your car with your taxi business logo and decals for the ease of customers to spot your cab. Also, you would need to install top lights/roof lights on the car roof and cab meters and other such details to make your car look more like a taxi cab. Such additions and upgrades will cost you around $700 to $900.

To start your taxi business you need a commercial license. The license that you may own right now will be a private driving license which is for personal vehicle use. Commercial licenses are for cab drivers and truckers. You need to apply for this license at your local DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles). Typically a commercial driving license will cost you around $800.

In some states, a minimum amount of insurance is implied before allowing a taxi service. But, if your city doesn’t fall in such states then you can go to an insurance agent to talk about various insurance policies.

4. License and Insurance

5. Office Space

For the initial stage when you don’t have a lot of cars to handle and you are tight on budget, working from home is the best idea. For one or a few number of cabs, a home office is the best and cheapest place to work from.

As you grow in size then you can rent an office with an attached garage or parking lot to park your cabs when not in use. There are some prime locations that exist in the center of the city; hence you can offer your taxi services all around the city. Such places can cost you around $2000 in monthly rent.

With people spending more and more time on the internet, you cannot just keep on waiting at the street corners to get customers. People need your presence on the internet to use your services. So, building an app for your taxi business is a must at present. You have to hire mobile taxi app developers for this purpose.

Having your own custom built taxi service app will give you the much-needed edge over your competitors. You should also think about building your taxi business website simultaneously for larger market penetration.

6. Mobile App

Conclusion

Even though we belong from the technical field of mobile app development, we had a goal of guiding our fellow entrepreneurs in the taxi cab businesses. So we approached this blog in a more non-technical way. To find the real world problems that you as an entrepreneur have to face and give you a basic idea of how to start a taxi business.