City Beat: Complete Taxi Management blames Uber for financial unravelling

IT looks like Uber has claimed a big scalp in the Brisbane cabs industry, with a taxi management company being forced to appoint liquidators after blaming the ride-sharing competitor for a great deal of its financial unravelling.

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UBER CLAIMS SCALP

IT LOOKS like Uber has claimed a big scalp in the Brisbane cabs industry.

The directors of Complete Taxi Management Pty Ltd appointed liquidators this week after blaming the ride-sharing competitor for a great deal of their financial unravelling.

Ironically, one of the directors, general manager Greg Collins, went on a controversial social media rant against Uber 2½ years ago.

He boasted in a now-deleted Facebook posting that he had slapped an Uber driver and urged other cabbies “to get more militant’’.

Launched in 1995, Northgate-based CTM ran about 30 Yellow Cabs and 50 Black and White Cabs.

The directors of Complete Taxi Management Pty Ltd blame Uber for a great deal of their financial unravelling.

It claimed to be one of Queensland’s largest multi-fleet operators.

Liquidator Paul Nogueira, a bean counter with insolvency firm Worrells, told City Beat that it was too early to say how many creditors the company had or how much was owed to them.

But he said board members attributed the company’s demise to competitive pressures from Uber, as well as increased operating costs and a general “economic downturn’’.

Nogueira said he had been approached a few weeks before his appointment to look at a potential restructuring of the business but the idea ultimately flamed out.

A taxi industry source told us yesterday that there had been scuttlebutt over the past year that CTM was “starting to look a little shaky’’.

Indeed, there was a red flag back in mid-January when Neta Tire Service & Sales Pty Ltd filed a wind-up application against CTM in the Brisbane Supreme Court.

That matter was ultimately dismissed in
late February but it made clear even then that all
was not well inside CTM.

Collins, who spent more than 30 years in the taxi game and lives in an acreage spread at Morayfield, could not be contacted yesterday. Neither could his wife, Maria, who also served on the board.

A third director, John Parnell, did not return a call seeking comment.

SLAPPING BOAST

COLLINS has long been a critic of Uber on social media, describing the conflict as “war’’ and accusing the Government of “treason’’ for failing to properly regulate the ride-sharing newcomer.

But he generated headlines around the country back in October 2015 when he commented on the allegations of a taxi driver, who complained online that he had been assaulted by an Uber driver while trying to take his photo.

“F---ing slap him like I did to the prick in Warner St the other night, I am f---ing over them,’’ Collins wrote on the Brisbane Taxi Driver Facebook page.

“You wait I will f---ing get them. They won’t and can’t defend themselves, they are illegal. If it was 30 years ago in my time, they wouldn’t last five minutes.

“We need to get more militant about this issue. The (sic) are the f---ing scabs stealing what we have all worked for.”

Collins later removed the post and said he had just been joking. “My comments … were never meant to imply that I advocated violence against any person. I have never assaulted anyone and my comments referred specifically to our reaction to an aggressive Uber driver,’’ he wrote.

RECORD RUN

A BRISBANE property player managed to smash a Guinness World Record on Friday for the longest distance run on a treadmill over 12 hours.

CBRE’s Matt Eckford started jogging in the lobby of Waterfront Place at 5am in his bid to topple the record of 143.84km.

Eckford, who has won several ultra-marathons, knocked off an astonishing 147km.