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Saturday, June 06, 2009

Claude Davis to Start Taxi Service in Tamaqua and Schuylkill County AGAIN

It was 34 years ago - when I owned a small weekly newspaper in Tamaqua - that Claude Davis planned to offer taxi service. The more things change - the more they stay the same. Check out this story from the Pottsville Republican today -

A Pottsville native is preparing his case for a hearing next month on his bid to return 24-hour taxi service to Schuylkill and Carbon counties, a venture he says will honor his late father.

Claude Davis, Palatine, Ill., said he will appear at 10 a.m. July 8 in the second-floor conference room of Pottsville City Hall for a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission hearing on whether he can start his taxi service.

“This is an application for Charlie’s Yellow Cab for all of Carbon and Schuylkill counties,” Davis said Friday. “I’m pretty sure that I’ll get approval.”

He said he has lots of support for his proposed venture.

“A lot of witnesses are going to appear,” said Davis, who declined to divulge their names.

Charlie’s Yellow Cab would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year, including holidays, and would make cabs available to anyone in the either county who wants a ride, Davis said. The company would have 22 cabs and six handicap-accessible vans stationed throughout the two counties for its customers, according to Davis.

“The calls are going to come into Pottsville,” he said. “They’ll be dispatched.”

The company would provide service to people who are intoxicated to allow them to avoid possible driving under the influence charges, Davis said.

“They’ll be able to get a cab,” not only for that, but for hospital, shopping, airport and other kinds of trips, Davis said.

Davis said the company’s name honors his father, Charles “Rabbits” Davis, who owned and operated a taxi in Pottsville. Claude Davis has said he promised his father when he died in 1988 that he would return to the area and operate a taxi company.

Claude Davis started driving a taxi in 1969, bought a taxi company in 1974 in Tamaqua and operated it until 1980.

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