That was my first impression when I read on the news a cabby’s claims that he makes $7000 a month.

I had thought it was rather foolish for him to declare this because of the following reasons:

However, I also suspected that the cabby may have been misquoted. Some of my friends have shared with me their experiences after being interviewed by reporters from one of Singapore Press Holdings [SPH] newspapers. In one case, a friend’s name was misspelled when the article as published. In two other cases, what was said was being taken out of the context and sensationalised. Those affected did not press the matter because they didn’t want to sour their relationship with the press. But one of them mentioned that it is best to keep a transcript (or even a recording) of the interview in case what was printed differs greatly from the true meaning of what was said in the first place.

Anyway, I was just too lazy to find out whether the cabbie meant $7000 nett earnings per month, or $7000 take home earnings. There’s a great difference between nett earnings and take home earnings. In my opinion it is similar to the difference between revenue and profit. Thus, I decided to keep my mouth shut on the matter and waited for the story to develop further.

For the next few days, the poor cabby became Public Enemy Number 1. The “cybersleuths” went so far to even expose that he had a debt of $4000 which he hasn’t paid off. Under intense pressure, the cabbie subsequently came forward to explain that he did not earn $7000 every month and that he had mentioned that was his “best performance”. He further explained it was a rather unpleasant experience. He worked for 18 hours everyday and even had to sleep in his taxi. It was yet another SPH cock-up just as I suspected. Strangely, the other chap who claimed to have made $6000 a month wasn’t attacked at all. Or perhaps he simply wasn’t attacked as viciously.

Anyway, most cabbies claimed that they only manage to make $2000 to $2500 a month. Based on their assertion, I think a single cabby making $6000 nett a month (driving 18 hours a day) is actually normal. Here’s a breakdown.

The daily rental for a taxi is about $100 a day. That means it’s roughly $3000 a month. I estimate that fuel probably cost them about $80 a day which is about $2400 a month. That adds up to $5400 in operating cost. If the cabby can take home about $2000 to $2500 a month, that means his nett income would have been around $7400 to $7900. It is of no wonder that I read on another friend’s Facebook status where he mentioned that a cabby told him that taking home $7000 is possible – as long as the driver doesn’t pay his rentals.

However, regardless whether the papers were sensationalising the matter for whatever agenda (which backfired), or whether the cabby was being too boastful, it cannot change the fact that more than 50% of a cabby’s hard earned money went to paying his rentals based on my estimates. It goes to say that whatever fare increases we are paying has not really gone into improving the income of taxi drivers at large (as we are often led to believe), but has gone into covering their overheads and primarily into the pockets of operators like Comfort Delgro and SMRT in particular. The so-called “$7000 cabby” is not our enemy or someone we should be grilling. Even though I am often critical of Singapore’s recalcitrant cabbies, it remains part of my opinion that their well being has constantly being hijacked by transport operators and the powers-that-be to justify the fare hikes and rental increases. The SPH not only should get the rap for their bad reporting, but also for their failure to point out just how much taxi companies are earning out of the cabbies.

It is laughable that the government wants us to believe that the media is not biased. How are we to believe that when it is sub-standard in the first place?