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 as your profits 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 Under $15K?
FAQs on Starting a Taxi Service Business:
You might have many questions about starting a taxi service business like:
Today we are going to answer all these questions and help you build your taxi service startup. Let’s not waste further time and dive into the specifics:
1. Perfect Location For Taxi Business
Does the place that you are looking to build your taxi business, need a new taxi 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 small towns where there is no scope for growth.
You might have to move to a more populated and taxi friendly city. Small taxi businesses can make excellent revenue in big cities.
2. Research The Taxi Market
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 competitor, taxi service enterprises. Visit their websites, view their reviews given by customers. After seeing their fares, you can offer lower fares in your cabs to get into competition.
Also, search for the problems that passengers have with these taxi services. If you solve those issues with your passenger-friendly taxi app service, people will choose your taxi service over your competitors.
SEE ALSO: How To Make A Rideshare App
3. Buy Inventory For Taxis
Get a Taxi Car
What do you need to start a taxi business? Well, first of all, you need a car to start a taxi service. The first and costliest investment in your inventory will be the car. Start from one, and later you can buy more as you keep growing. In the beginning, you should start a small taxi/cab business with just one car.
Now you may think about how to start a taxi business with one car? Either buy a brand new vehicle costing you around $15,000, or you can go for a used car. 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.
4. License and Insurance
To start your taxi business, you need a commercial license & documents. 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.
5. Taxi Garage & 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 and park the cab in your home garage. For one or two 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. Some prime locations 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.
6. Mobile App For Taxi Service
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 for larger market penetration.
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Start Your Own Taxi Business
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.
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, we approached this blog in a more non-technical way.
