“I'm so pleased to see you,” she calls to a customer hailing her on the street on a recent Sunday.
The £20 fare was Dale’s only job in a six-hour shift before calling it quits for the day.
The COVID-19 pandemic has crippled London’s iconic taxi business.
Strict lockdowns have closed pubs, non-essential shops, and theatres while the city’s workforce is largely working from home.
There is no one on the street to hail a cab.
Dale was left wondering how to pay off the cab she’d bought only a month before the pandemic took hold.
“The taxi cost me 70,000 pounds, which I pay over a five-year plan.
“I'm still working literally just to try and pay my costs of running the taxi.”
A taxi driver can’t work from home, yet that’s where many now are.
Hundreds of London's iconic Black Cabs are stored in a field, victims of the pandemic. Source: Dateline
The Licenced Taxi Drivers’ Association which claims to represent about half of London’s cab drivers, says only 20 per cent of the city’s drivers are working right now.
And that’s the drivers who haven’t given up. The LTDA says record number of drivers have been forced out of the trade during the pandemic.
They say that 1,500 drivers have given up their licences, but many more will have left quietly by simply letting their licences expire.
The situation is just as grim for the iconic black cab vehicles themselves, known as Hackney Carriages.
Nearly 5000 black cabs have been lost from London’s streets since the first lockdown ended in June 2020. That’s over one quarter of all taxis in the city.
Many have been stored in so-called taxi graveyards on London’s outskirts.
"It's terrible,” says Dale, on a visit to one of these site.
“It's just so sad.”
“I'm just thinking, this is peoples’ livelihoods. What are these people doing? Work-wise, you know, how are they surviving?”
To make it through the dark days, Dale knew early on that she’d have to adapt if she was going to survive.
London taxi driver Dale Forwood took on a second job as a supermarket delivery driver to help her get through the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: Dateline
For the last 10-months, she’s been driving a supermarket delivery van five days a week, earning only a fraction of her normal income.
“I've never worked so hard for such little money doing the deliveries,” she says.
“I never ever envisioned being a supermarket delivery driver, but that really has saved me.”
When not driving the delivery van, Dale is back in her taxi plying London's streets for fares.
"You've just got to get out and try and earn some sort of living.
“And then every month you're hoping we'll come out of lockdown, things will be back to normal.
“You just got to keep positive and hopefully that will happen,” she says.
The UK is slowly emerging from lockdown and its vaccination rollout has been one of the world’s most successful.
But industry figures fear the downturn in the taxi business won’t pick up anytime soon.
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