The Family Business

My Dad owns 2 Taxi Medallion (franchises) that permit him to operate cabs at Newark Airport.  Each Taxi franchise is worth about $500,000 a piece.  The cab drivers buy their own cab, maintain them, fuel them, and clean them.  My father insures the cabs every year, with the cost of that insurance coming in around $24,000.

The cab drivers make their own hours when determining how much work and driving they want to do that day.  And my father did not care one way or another about how long the drivers worked as long as they put $800 cash per week, per cab, in the lockbox outside my fathers door in New Providence.

Now with that lockbox getting filled with $1600 cash per week , it is easy to see what a sweet deal my Dad set up. Especially since the business was off the books, and that entire amount deposited each week went right in his pocket.  Don't ask me how my Dad pulled that one off, but he was able to keep this business hush hush for the past 20 years.  That is, until he died at 79 years of age and my Mom took over.

My mother decided shortly after his death, to legitimatize it.  So after 20 years of the cab business being a great source of "under the table" income, mom had it incorporated.  This new form of doing business requires paperwork, for all the world to see, especially the IRS.

My Dad died in 2008 and I was sure that I would be the one to assist in running the cab business.  They would remain in my mother's name, but I would help with the leg and paper work.  Not so.  I was shut off from the business as my younger brother was called upon to help run the cabs now.  I was shocked that my mother would do such a thing and since that time, we have not spoke to each other.

For someone as poor as I, inherenting something would have helped.  Just another Natural Disaster, I suppose.