A million miles and still going for Glasgow’s oldest cabbie

● City didn’t fit ‘mean’ stereotype ● Modern drivers do longer hours

He says of Glasgow passengers over the years: “There’s a lot of shouting and bawling, but very, very seldom does it get serious.

“I’ve got enough fingers on one hand to tell you the number of times I’ve had to get myself out of a tight spot. I could always maybe talk my way out of it.

“And the police in those days – I’m not condemning the police now, but the police then looked after the taxis.

“We didn’t have an enforcement unit [as we do now].

“We had police who were assigned to the Hackney Carriage Branch as they were called. They were disbanded many years ago.

“The police when they were in charge of the taxis, it ran like a watch, you know what I mean. They were good at their job.”

When Robert came into the trade as a young man, there was 852 taxis in Glasgow for a city with more than one million people. Now there’s 1,429 hackney cars for 500,000 people.

According to Robert, what makes competition even harder now is the proliferation of private hire cars.

“There is a living to be had now if you are willing to put the hours in, but it wasn’t always like that,” he says.

“It’s not the job it used to be. If you want to eat, sleep and work you will be well off.”

Robert adds: “When I was a young man in the trade we had social events throughout the year. We had an angling club, we had a golf club. We had social evenings out – maybe three times a year.

“We would have annual dances and the kiddies’ outing, which is still on the go, but away back then you took

0 After 58 years, Robert Mclauchlin is still picking up fares in Glasgow a day off or two days off to do your car up. And then two days off to get it tidied up again once you came back. Guys can’t do that now. They can’t afford it anymore.”

The industry has changed in other ways too, noticeably the silence of the airwaves with the demise of radio operators.

“We don’t have voice anymore,” Robert says.

“It’s all screen. It’s all hi-tech. The trade used to be very good because you were listening to a bit of crack over the air.

“If you were quiet, you were driving along, somebody would be on to the controller about something. And there would be a bit of chit-chat, a bit of banter, you know. It was good.

“It’s just a screen now and if you have the need to talk to a supervisor you’ve got to press the appropriate button, then you go into a queue.

“And if it’s a busy time of the day, you could wait for maybe five or six minutes before you get a bit of airspace.”

Robert was asked recently by his grandson – he has nine grandchildren – how many miles he has driven in his time. “I can’t even begin to imagine how many miles I’ve done,” he says.

“I’d hazard a guess – say 15,000 a year – and it’s probably more than that because some drivers are doing 1,000 miles a week now.”