You may know Squamish’s Steve Wyles best by the back of his head or his voice. If you have ever called Howe Sound Taxi, he might have been the driver who picked you up. He works the night shift— from 3:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m four days a week.
Wyles is quick with a laugh, and his distinct voice is gravelly, like that of a heavy smoker or a rock star. (There’s no evidence he has been either.)
Wyles visited with The Chief at our offices to chat about his job, his life and the way Squamish is changing.
What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
Q: So you work all night, how is that?
A: I don't know if I would like to drive in the day ‘cause there is so much traffic. At night, all there is are cops and cabs on the road. So, I can buzz around everywhere.
Q: How did you get into driving a taxi?
A: I used to do long-haul trucking. It is really fun in that you get to see all across Canada, and you get paid for it and everything, but it is pretty boring, and you are by yourself all the time, and that got to me after awhile. How we described trucking is — days and days of boredom filled with seconds of sheer terror.
Before that, I owned a landscape business for about 12 years, down in the city. That is a young man's game. I can't do that anymore.
I stumbled into cabbing, but it has been the best job I have ever had. I enjoy it, and it is the only job I have never missed a day off work. You meet a lot of nice people and make friends. It is a lot of fun.
Q: What is the best thing about driving a cab?
A: You get to know everybody around town and you sort of have the pulse of what is going on. It is busy, busy, busy all the time, non-stop.
Q: It is that busy even though you work the night shift?
A: It is busy. The whole 12-hours it is go, go, go. I start my week on Wednesdays, and sometimes that is busier than the weekend, though it is hard to believe.
Q: What is the worst thing about the job?
A: Some people who don't pay, they throw up, or they pee in your van because they are so hammered.
You can also tell some of the new people in town from the city. I am a bit of a Chatty Cathy, but I have had a couple of people hop in, and I ask how they are doing and where they are off to and they will say, "Just drive." And I think, "Oh, city person."
Q: Are you worried about drive-share companies like Uber at all?
A: No. It won't work in Squamish. Through the week they wouldn't be busy enough to make a go of it. I get it that it is cheaper and all that, but what if the driver gets into an accident? For us, we have to have taxi insurance; we have to have a Class 4 licence, and all kinds of stuff. Uber drivers just have their Class 5 and drive their own vehicle.
Q: So you don't have to pay for the car to drive or anything right?
A: We get the car from our bosses, and we go out, and we get a percentage of the fare. We work straight commission. If it is slow, we make say $50 on a shift, but there are other nights you go out — say during the Christmas holidays and when the Squamish music fest was on — and it is super, super busy.
Q: Who are your clients given you work nights?
A: At about 3 p.m. usually there are a lot of the trips to the grocery store and back.
It is funny when it starts raining hard dispatch starts ringing up too.
I almost had a baby born in the cab, but we got her to the hospital on time.
There are also a lot of people going to work or getting off of work. Or some got caught with an impaired charge, or they just don't have a license.
On weekends, it is pretty scattered — there's young to old like me, in their 50s.
We get airport calls and calls to go up to Whistler. The calls vary.
Q: What are some of the funny stories you have about passengers?
A: The other night, I was coming around a turn, and I could hear the guy in the back groaning a bit, and so I told him to hold on as I would pull over for him if he were going to be sick.
As I was turning the corner he opened the door to throw up, and the next thing I know the roof light is on and the door is swung open, and he had rolled out. He was OK.
Another one was a year ago. This girl and I were driving down Government Road, and there was this little dog just walking in the middle of the road at 2 a.m. He just kept walking down the road and wasn't moving over or anything. It looked like he was going to be coyote bait.
We pulled over and got him, and he was really, really old. So, we drove around looking for his owners, but couldn't find them. The woman said she would take the dog home and to the SPCA the next day. She followed up and found out eventually the dog got adopted by some couple that takes in older dogs. It was a real feel-good story.
Also, a passenger and me almost got killed up on the Duffey Lake Road one night this winter.
We got caught in a rockslide. There were all these rocks that had come down so I slowed down and went around them and suddenly one came down, and it was as big as me, and it didn't even hit the road. It just went whoosh across the road. We both looked at each other — if we hadn't slowed down, we would have been annihilated by that thing.
Q: What are some of the longer trips you do?
A: We go up to Lillooet a lot. We have a CN contract with the train guys. What happens is a train will come from Prince George or Williams Lake into Lillooet and say it is a 100,000-ton train or something. They can't take that from Lillooet into Squamish; they have to cut it into two trains because there are too many hills and curves. So there is always an extra conductor and engineer down here who have to go back up to Lillooet, and that is where we come in. It is a five or six-hour trip.
Q: What would your tip be to someone just starting out driving a taxi?
A: Don't be confrontational. If you are confrontational, people will be that way back.
I have a repertoire of jokes and regulars ask what the joke of the day is. It gets people laughing.
And you have to respect folks. I mean, even the really drunk ones you have to respect the fact that they are getting a cab home.
Q: What do you do for fun?
A: Sundays I watch football. I also have a couple of Sea-Doos, so in the summertime, I go out in Howe Sound. That is my fun.
