Bob CollinsDrive down Post Road near Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and you’ll see the sign of a changing economy.
On the left, as you head for Terminal 2 the Humphrey Terminal, a lot that once was bumper to bumper taxis now holds three or four, hacks waiting for a call from a terminal.
A few yards down the street, the Uber/Lyft driver staging area is packed with drivers.
Taxis are the newspapers of transportation.
And now, one of the more prominent companies has gone belly up, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports.
Green & White/Suburban taxi didn’t tell state regulators it was shutting down. The law requires companies with 100 or more employees to give them a “heads up.” But the workforce at the company had shrunk from about 250 drivers to about 50.
“We’re really not a taxi service anymore, we’re really a medical transportation company,” said a driver whose last day was Monday.
“The last three years, it was the worst place to work,” said another driver. Ashkir Mohamed started working for Green & White/Suburban in 2009. “They had no respect at all.”
He showed up for work nine days ago and company officials said they wanted to upgrade his car’s camera, GPS unit and on-board computer. When he got it back, all the equipment was gone.
That’s how he found out he was out of a job.
