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Taxis and San Francisco Labor History
View the Taxi-Photo display, which needs more good pictures. Do you have photos to share?
Featured photo
A model poses as a horse cab driver in this postcard from the Femmes Cocher collection gathered by Norman Beattie. The series celebrates the role of women in the Paris taxi trade during the early 1900s.
Taxi history from the 1870s to 1960s is illustrated with more than 100 photos from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Text by Norman Beattie chronicles the transition from small horse-drawn liveries operating out of stables to fleets of Cadillacs, Nashs, Packards and Studebakers. Winnipeg Cab History is an enthralling read for taxi folk everywhere.
Best collection of taxi-related documents
Taxi Library is a non-commercial educational website serving the taxicab industry worldwide. It provides an extensive collection of documents and links relating to the taxi business, which is a private segment of municipal and rural transportation systems throughout the world.
Founded as Taxi-L in 1999 by former Winnipeg regulator Terry Smythe, Taxi Library represents the contributions of many people including drivers, company managers, regulators, journalists, academics and family members.
Your host on the Taxi Library website, Charles Rathbone. Click this email link to send him an email.
Contact
Taxi Library is maintained by Charles Rathbone, who began working as a taxicab driver in San Francisco in 1975. He also worked as a labor and community organizer. He operated a cab as a single-shift independent owner-driver, and as an employer with his own one-cab microfleet. He is now retired from his work as an assistant manager at a fleet with 200 cabs.
During breaks from his taxi work, Charles earned a BA degree in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley, and satisfied a wanderlust that took him to 40 states and 33 countries.
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