CHICAGO Woman starts taxi service with female drivers

Women prefer to be in a taxi that's driven by a woman, entrepreneur says.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- Renee Finley is betting her home, bank account and future creditworthiness on a hunch that Chicagoans want more female cabbies.
The founder of Wow Taxi, the Countryside, Ill., resident is a rare breed in a city full of fast-moving, tough-guy drivers -- a woman behind the wheel.
She's also the first, people in the industry say, to start a business on the belief that women feel safer when driven by women. It's a conviction Finley honed in her years driving for a mainstream taxi company.
"People would call all the time requesting a female driver," said Finley, a bubbly Army vet who wears hiking boots and flowing curls. "Women don't want to get hit on in the cab ride home. They want to get in the cab and relax."
Currently, about 350 of the city's 17,000 drivers are women. That's just 2 percent.
Even while most cabbies continue to be male, many female passengers say they feel more comfortable with a woman in the driver's seat.
"You do feel safer when it's a female driver," said Michelle Rydberg, a corporate real estate administrator who now relies on Finley. "I once had a cab driver who told me he got kicked out of San Francisco for stabbing someone in the face. That doesn't make you feel easy."
Diverse profession
Finley knows she is unusual in her profession -- on account of her gender and her background.
Most cabbies these days are recent immigrants, not native-born Americans like Finley, who grew up in Chicago.
"The cab-driving pool is unbelievably diverse," said Colin Camerer, an economics professor at the California Institute of Technology who has studied taxi drivers.
He found that cabbies are usually recent immigrants and relatively well-educated. They drive for two or three years, retiring as soon as they find a better job or earn an American degree.
In addition to safety, Camerer suggested that work hours might be another factor deterring women from enlisting as cabbies. Most cab shifts last for 12 hours. And even then, the average driver takes home just $22,000 each year, he said.
Risk factors
For Finley, driving a cab has its moments of danger, but they are few and far between.
"What job doesn't have some risk?" she asked. "When I was a bartender a guy came in once with a gun and robbed us."
It was during those years as a bartender that Finley made her entry into the taxi business. After volunteering for the Army, selling pet supplies on the cat-show circuit, and mixing drinks, Finley found inspiration in one of her customers -- a long-time cabbie -- whom she served at a Chicago bar.
Finley was so taken with his work stories that she decided to try the profession. She joined up with Express Cab Co., based in Cicero, Ill. She didn't have enough money to buy her own car, so she leased one from the company for $457 a week, she said.
Finley liked the work.
"There's something about being a cab driver; it's like being a gambler. It's in your blood," she said. But she also encountered several causes for concern.
For one, there were just five other women who drove for the company. Also, it wasn't uncommon for fellow cabbies to steal her customers, she said. And that's not to mention the fact that she was hardly ever -- only six times, she said -- given the plush assignment of an airport run.
Igniting the idea
Finley and several of the other female cabbies got to talking. A taxi company with only female drivers. No politics. No rude jokes. No lease payments.
In the end, only one other woman driver joined Finley in her venture.
And it was quite a venture. Begun just a year ago and financed with credit-card borrowing, Finley has relied on a Web page and word-of-mouth to get her name out. She is based in the suburbs, which means she can only pick up Chicago passengers if they call her in advance.
So far, Finley's done pretty well. She's nearly paid off her $8,000 debt, she said. And though her initial partner left the business for personal reasons, she's gearing up to buy a second car and hire an additional driver.
On a typical day, Finley, now 50, brings in $100. It is much more than she was making before, she said.
Finley is not the area's only female cabbie to stand out. In February, Mayor Richard Daley bestowed Joan Barnes, a veteran driver based in Chicago, with her own taxi medallion, currently valued at about $50,000.
Barnes caught the attention of City Hall because she dedicates her cab work to transporting disabled passengers.