YCS Cab company launches driver recruitment effort
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal (fair use claimed here)
Cab company launches driver recruitment effort
By OMAR SOFRADZIJA
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Too many cabs and not enough cab drivers are leading the Las Vegas Valley’s largest cab company to look for new drivers from outside the valley. Way outside.
Yellow-Checker-Star Transportation this week is launching a national driver recruitment campaign, initially targeting Rust Belt areas in Ohio and western New York state.
Company operations director Bill Shranko hopes to have 300 new drivers hired from out-of-state by mid-August.
“There’s such a demand for (workers to fill) jobs right now in Las Vegas. It’s never been like this in my 23 years in the job,” Shranko said Tuesday. “Companies are paying bonuses to their employees to bring drivers in.”
“It’s probably the biggest comprehensive recruiting thing anybody has done out here” in the taxi industry. Shranko said. “We know it (the hiring squeeze) is going to get worse as the new casinos open up.”
Shranko said a recruitment team from his firm, which now employs about 1,500 drivers, will visit the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Toledo and Youngstown and Buffalo, N.Y.
The cab company has already been advertising for drivers in those cities.
The target cities were picked because of their “economically challenged conditions,” Shranko said.
Salt Lake City; various towns in Illinois, Michigan and Kansas; and other states in the Northeast and Midwest will be the target of campaigns later this year, Shranko said.
Currently, Yellow-Checker-Star has only 45 open driving positions, but the firm also loses drivers at the rate of about 65 a month. Shranko said most valley cab companies have been pinched for drivers.
“They’re canceling vacations, changing shifts. Everybody is up against it,” Shranko said.
To entice out-of-towners, Shranko said his firm will give out-of-state drivers a $300 moving bonus after they’ve worked here for six months..
