who earns more, taxi driver or truck driver?

I made about $500/wk, average, driving the taxi. That's before taxes. You have to file as self-employed and that takes a good chunk as well (of course a lot of taxi drivers don't file but I did).

When I started driving a truck I was making about the same, but I got health insurance and needed it at the time. Now I make almost double that.

 

I know about that time I was in Vegas and me and my cousin went out to a club and I got so smashed I did not remember how I got back to the hotel. My cousin said we took a cab and it cost $11 and I gave him a hundred dollar bill and told him to keep the change. I talked to one in Vegas a few years later who said that happens all the time.

 

I drove taxi for about 8 months and it was hard to make any money. 80$ dollars a day for the cab plus gas and and it took me 8 hours to break even and this was before gas prices sky rocketed. Most of the runs were medical vouchers that paid fix rates and none of those people ever tipped. Dead runs (when you'd get a call and go to pick up the person and nobody was there), heavy traffic, people skipping out on cab fare. It was a nightmare. I had days where I made 20 dollars, I had rare days where I made $150.00, but that's over 12 hours of work.

When I drove truck, I did have some weeks that were short on runs and thus short on money, but it never felt as bad as when driving cab and only clearing 20 dollars in a day. In truck driving, I had weeks where I turned in a ton of trip packs, and had nice big paychecks, which made up for the rough weeks.

Truck driving > cab driving, in my experience

 

That's exactly the reason that I quit doing it.

Vegas is probably different than other places ....... gambling, drinking, drugs, prostitution etc...

It's one thing if your driving a cab and just hauling people from point A to point B but, when you have to deal with all the other associated b.s. It gets kind of weird.

It made me feal sleazy.

As far as money for a cab driver vs. an entry level truck driver? My experience is so old, I don't think that I could make a valid comparison.


............... Jim