Dial-a-Cab House
launch…
As you are probably aware, we launched
our new building to the trade and
clients on 19 October. I must say I
thought the whole day went extremely
well, especially as we also launched our
new website and announced that
Dial-a-Cab are now offsetting our Carbon
Footprint.
For those of you that have access to the Internet, I would ask you
to have a look at our new website that
has been completely rebuilt by DaC’s IT
department. We’ve decided that early in
the New Year, we will give members that
require it the opportunity to review
their credit payments directly via the
website. We will be writing to you in
the future explaining the situation, but
in a nutshell you should return the
letter to us together with your chosen
password so that you might gain access
to your account via our website. We
believe this could be extremely
beneficial, as the website will retain
your accounts for two years, which
should prove particularly helpful should
your accountants require any backdated
statements. Of course, you will also be
helping Dial-a-Cab to offset their
Carbon Footprint even further!
And speaking of Carbon
Footprints…
The same day as we launched our new
building and website, Dial-a-Cab
announced that as from the 1 October we
were offsetting our Carbon Footprint.
Hardly a day passes when we are not all
reminded about global warming etc,
consequently we can now inform our
clients that in future for every journey
they complete in one of our taxis,
Dial-a-Cab are offsetting the carbon
that is produced by that journey. We are
also looking at our new building to see
if we can reduce even further the amount
of emissions we produce from it.
However, as you can imagine, we were
mindful of this situation when the
building was being renovated and as a
consequence, such things as automatic
lighting etc have already been
installed. I believe that in the future,
your corporate clients will discuss with
you the Carbon Footprint issue, as it
seems to be gathering pace. It’s a topic
that is very close to the hearts of many
|
of our top corporates,
with some
of them even insisting that they use
electric cars for some of their
journeys… how long before KPM launch an
electric taxi?
If you would like to know a little more regarding your Carbon
Footprint, then please visit our
website, which has a link to the Carbon
Footprint site.
Eco City Vehicles
I have just
been reading the above regarding our
Carbon Footprint and feel it pertinent
that I explain my comment a little more
regarding KPM and the electric taxi. It
has just been announced that there has
been a reverse takeover regarding Pannal
and KPM, with KPM being reversed into
Pannal. What that actually means is that
KPM have taken over Pannal - the
manufacturer of electric vehicles - and
named the new company Eco City Vehicles.
As explained earlier, Pannal were manufacturers of electric
delivery vehicles, so why would a taxi
distributor want to purchase a company
that produces electric vehicles? Anyone
fancy a flutter on the AIM?
Christmas incentive
You should
have received a letter by now outlining
our Christmas incentive in order that we
might maintain - and hopefully even
improve - upon our coverage in the
run-up to Christmas. If you take the
seven week period over a five day week,
we are only requesting you cover less
than three account trips per day before
you start earning £5 for every credit
ride you accept. I hope you will
endeavour to support your clients and
the Society in what I believe will be a
very busy period. There is not a lot
more I can do, the remainder is up to
you! We anticipate that we will pay the
incentive towards the end of January.
|
Signals again…
You will read elsewhere in Call
Sign, Keith Cain’s response to
Darren Hawley’s letter in this issue’s
Mailshot. There is also a letter
from Paul Taylor where he also
criticises our signals. I know you will
agree that I have written thousands of
words on this issue and every single one
of you should be extremely conversant
with the subject, assuming of course you
read the magazine.
For Paul Taylor to accuse me of not listening and burying my head
in the sand is very unfair and extremely
derogatory. No one - and I mean no one -
could have done more in an attempt to
cure our problems. The latest attempt is
to convert our voice channel to data in
an attempt to improve signal quality. We
have installed a new site at the Hilton
in Park Lane, to be followed later this
year or early next with a further site
near Heathrow. However, to lock onto
these new sites you will require the
latest upgrade from Roman Way (3.4.5).
The upgrade takes around 15 minutes to
complete, including the radio upgrade.
During the recent past, we have totally refurbished every aerial
site with new equipment, new
interference filters have been fitted to
every site and software has been changed
in an attempt to improve channel
roaming. All 4031 comms controllers
have been replaced with servers
with an IQ link to improve signals and
to cap it all, our turnover has
increased by over 30% in the last two
years, meaning vast volumes of extra
work has gone through our system and
into your cabs. We are constantly
battling to improve signals, even going
so far as to eliminate back-up zones so
that trips go back and forth less often.
Even as I write, we are in discussions with one of our suppliers to
provide a back-up network on the public
GPRS system. So perhaps you can
understand why I do sometimes get a
little tetchy when there is constant
criticism and I and everyone else is
doing everything possible to improve
signals whilst still returning a record
year for Dial-a-Cab.
Brian Rice
Chairman
Dial-a-Cab |
