Taxi 'makes a killing' on rainy days

(Baonghean.vn) - Continuous heavy rain in recent days has caused people's demand for taxi travel to increase dramatically. Most taxi companies in Vinh City are overloaded. Accordingly, the weather is creating an opportunity for this type of service to "make a fortune".

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This morning, it was raining heavily, Ms. Kim Yen in Hung Loc Ward (Vinh City) called a taxi to take her two children to school. However, after waiting for nearly an hour, the taxi still did not come to pick her up, so her family had to take her children to school by motorbike.

For convenience in rainy weather, many people choose taxis, causing the number of customers using this service to increase dramatically. Many companies are overloaded, so calling a taxi these days is not easy.

Taxi is the means of transport chosen by many families with small children to travel on rainy days.

Continuous rain for the past 3 days has caused most taxi companies such as Song Lam, Mai Linh, Van Xuan, Vinh Taxi... in the city to operate at full capacity.

Many popular car companies’ call centers are constantly busy. Some companies have to turn away customers because they don’t have enough cars to meet the high demand for travel these days.

The rainy weather also keeps taxi drivers busy. Mr. Hung, a driver for a major taxi company in the city, said: For the past three days, I have been driving continuously on the road because of the constant calls from customers, in addition to customers from the switchboard, there are also many regular customers. The number of "waving" customers has also increased sharply, especially at construction sites, hospitals, offices... Yesterday, I ran about 40 "trips" in the city; earning more than 1 million VND/day, 2-3 times more than usual.

Many taxi companies operate at full capacity to meet customers' travel needs on rainy days (Photo: Phuong Thuy).

During rainy days, most taxi companies cannot meet customer demand because the number of passengers increases sharply. The director of a taxi company also said: Currently, our company has up to 80 cars, running at full capacity because the number of passengers increases by 200% compared to normal days.

Despite many efforts to quickly pick up and drop off passengers, taxi companies still cannot meet all the needs of customers on rainy days. According to statistics, there are currently 9 taxi companies with about 3,000 vehicles operating in the city. On normal days, people rarely use this service, many drivers are "idle all day" waiting for customers. On rainy days, the number of customers increases dramatically. Because of the difference in customer demand according to the weather, many taxi companies have not dared to increase the number of vehicles.

Heavy rain is forecast to continue in the coming days. Although bad weather is a condition for taxi services to "make a fortune", according to the managers of some taxi companies, they have notified drivers not to operate in flooded areas and routes, and to always monitor the weather to ensure vehicle safety. Therefore, many customers calling in areas at risk of flooding have difficulty accessing taxi services.

Dinh Nguyet