Call Sign February 2008 - Page 26 - Ł521,730: THE COST OF DAC’S XMAS INCENTIVE!

Following the 1998 Dial-a-Cab Christmas incentive, 10 drivers shared Ł5,500 between them for covering work leading up to the holiday season. By 2006, that had been improved to a ‘Gold’ spec taxi and 6 weeks of luxury holidays. Then last year, the DaC incentive gave away 3 black ‘special’ Peugeot 307s to three lucky members. But it has to be said that if you were to add together every Christmas incentive this Society has given to its drivers since that fateful Sunday of March 29 1953 when 4 owner-drivers met in back of Bonnie Martyn’s cab at the Grosvenor Gardens shelter cab rank, the combined total would still come nowhere near this year’s payout. It also seems highly probable that this year’s total paid to drivers is higher than any incentive ever paid out to any group of cab drivers anywhere in the world - let alone London! That total figure? An astonishing Ł521,730. From that huge total, three drivers came away with over Ł2000 each – two of them beating the Ł2500 mark. A further eight smiled as they received their payout of over Ł1500, but then it almost begins to border on the realms of fantasy with no less than fifty-six DaC drivers copping over Ł1000 each! How can you possibly beat that? Well how about an amazing 341 planning their next holidays after scooping over Ł500 each! We don’t suppose that the 412 drivers who came away with an extra bonus of over Ł250 complained too much either. Literally hundreds more received useful amounts of around Ł100 or more with many others close to three	Ł521,730: THE COST OF DAC’S XMAS INCENTIVE!
	DaC's current and late founder Chairman. What would Bonnie have made of Brian giving away Ł521,730 to drivers! figures. And of course, everyone got paid for doing the work anyway! Call Sign asked Chairman Brian Rice how even a Society that was doing as well as this one could afford such a huge amount? "Firstly, let me say how absolutely delighted we are to be able to pass this huge sum onto our members. However, I have to say that although we may well have an incentive every year, the amount on offer this year was most definitely a one-off!" He then explained: "Our old building, Brunswick House, has now been sold. It was on the books at Ł1,420,000 as an asset, but I managed to acquire Ł2,750,000 for it. Basically, we replaced the Ł1.42million asset with Ł2.75million in cash and I decided to give Dial-a-Cab members a windfall. Our rules forbid any kind of dividend, so I thought that the Christmas incentive, using reasonably easy targets, would be the ideal	vehicle to reward our members who wanted to work hard during the run-up to Xmas." Brian continued: "Whilst we wanted to reward members, we also hoped that this incentive would help coverage at a time of year when we probably get the highest number of complaints through delays etc. Well, I have to say that our driver’s coverage has resulted in my most peaceful Xmas since becoming Chairman in 1996. I’ve had very few complaints and most clients have been delighted by our service. So the bottom line was that we wanted to give members some of the extra money that we received for the old building and if that helped make members smile, which as a bonus helped our clients also smile, then we are delighted!" Call Sign cannot but help but wonder what those 4 drivers in Bonnie Martyn’s cab on that cold March 1953 day, Arthur Cutmore, Albert Hall, Eric Stoffel and Bonnie himself, would have made of a Christmas incentive that involved giving away over half a million quid when just 8 weeks later – in June 1953 - at the Albany Tavern, Great Portland street, a meeting of owner drivers struggled to find between them the Ł200 needed to get ODRTS off the ground! We think they would have felt incredibly proud! To everyone who coined it in 2007 well done. And to those few believers in 1953, a belated thank you as well…

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