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Taxi ads from the 1954 Winnipeg telephone book. Veterans-Nash now had the second-largest taxi fleet after Moore's. Yankee Taxi (originally Yan Kee) had served Winnipeg's Chinese community since 1933. A second Chinese cab company, On Kee, operated from 1934 to 1935. Star Taxi started in 1931 and lasted until 1989 when it was acquired by Tom Springman, founder of Spring Taxi.
Source:
Manitoba Telephone System, Official Directory – Greater Winnipeg, no. 135, July, 1954, Classified Telephone Directory p. 227.
Winnipeg Cab History / 82
The 1950s to the 1960s (2)
The first significant merger occurred in 1951 when the Veteran's Taxi Association purchased Nash Taxi from Harry Levin and Perry Orestes. Levin had started Nash Taxi & U Drive in 1928. He and Orestes retained the U Drive portion of the company.
Veterans Taxi was an association of independent owner-operators and their purchase of Nash Taxi was a collective decision. All but one of Nash's 35 radio-equipped taxis were immediately re-sold to individual Veterans owners, giving Veterans-Nash 70 cabs and making it the second-largest company in Winnipeg.
At first blush it might seem unlikely that 30 or more individual taxi owners would be able to agree on anything, much less a merger, but in fact the association model offered small operators the best of both worlds. They could benefit from the advantages of a large fleet while still retaining a high degree of independence.
Veterans was not the only companies to use the association model which, after all, had been pioneered by the jitneys. United Taxi (started in 1937) and Duffy's Taxi (started in 1946) were both associations and there were no doubt others.