Yellow Cab

The Tipsy? Taxi! service from Yellow Cab, which offers free cab rides on several holidays throughout the year, is returning to Baltimore on New Year's Eve. It'll be the fourth year in a row the service, which has been criticized for being sluggish and dropping calls, will be offered in the city. On the 31st,  the Charm City Circulator with also have extended hours. Tipsy? Taxi!, sponsored by Yellow Cab, AAA Mid-Atlantic, and this year, the Motor Vehicle Administration, aims to keep drunk drivers off the road on drinking holidays.

Baltimore's oldest cab company and the Maryland Transit Administration are updating their fleets for wheelchair-using customers, replacing small buses and minivans with an SUV-like vehicle that provides a smoother, more civilized ride. The MV-1 is designed specifically to transport disabled passengers and already is in use in cities such as Pittsburgh, Chicago and Dallas. Built in Indiana, it is the only production vehicle that meets Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines. Yellow Cab and sister company 1010 Sedan purchased 10 MV-1s and began using them this week.

Yellow Cab of Baltimore celebrated its 100th anniversary Thursday with a downtown parade of taxis, including vintage cabs and even the most modern addition, hybrid vehicles. W.W. Cloud purchased the Brown and Blue Cab companies in 1909 and renamed them Yellow, making it the oldest registered Yellow Cab in the country, according to company officials. The cars, however, were black. Yellow grew and expanded until 2001, when Yellow Transportation of Baltimore was acquired by a global transportation company now known as Veolia Transportation.

The state Public Service Commission Wednesday denied a request from the owners of century-old Yellow Cab of Baltimore to prohibit Uber Technologies Inc. from operating a luxury town car service that can be hired by smartphone. Yellow Cab officials believe the San Francisco-based company that launched service in the city and Baltimore County late last month has an unfair competitive advantage because the startup does not comply with safety and insurance regulations. But Uber contends that it is a technology company with an app that allows independent drivers and upscale customers to do business on their own. The commission staff recommended that Yellow Cab's request be denied because at the time of its review, Uber had not begun operations.

Yellow Cab, which has operated in the Baltimore area since 1909, has been named taxi operator of the year by the industry's trade group, the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association. Behind the wheel is Mark Joseph, a graduate of American University in Washington, who began his career at Yellow Cab in 1976 and was president and CEO for 20 years. When Connex North America acquired Yellow Transportation in 2001, Joseph rose through the executive ranks to become president and chief operating officer of Connex, now Veolia Transportation, and vice chairman and CEO of Veolia.

George Jay Joseph, who owned and rebuilt Baltimore's Yellow Cab Co. into the region's largest passenger ground transportation business, died of cancer Monday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. The Chevy Chase resident was 87. Born in Bethlehem, Pa., he was the son of a Lithuanian immigrant peddler who went on to found a department store in Reading, Pa. He earned a bachelor's degree at Pennsylvania State University and a law degree from the University of Virginia after Army service during World War II. Mr. Joseph went into the legal publishing business in downtown Washington in the 1950s and named his first two companies, Jefferson Law Book and Thomas Jefferson Publishing, in honor of the president who established the University of Virginia.

The state Public Service Commission Wednesday denied a request from the owners of century-old Yellow Cab of Baltimore to prohibit Uber Technologies Inc. from operating a luxury town car service that can be hired by smartphone. Yellow Cab officials believe the San Francisco-based company that launched service in the city and Baltimore County late last month has an unfair competitive advantage because the startup does not comply with safety and insurance regulations. But Uber contends that it is a technology company with an app that allows independent drivers and upscale customers to do business on their own. The commission staff recommended that Yellow Cab's request be denied because at the time of its review, Uber had not begun operations.

RICHARD C. WOLFE, of Baltimore, died April 27, 2006 of heart failure at age 63. He was a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and received an MA in English Literature from Kent State University. Early in his career he was an instructor of English at Towson State University. At the time of his death, he was employed by the Yellow Cab Company. He leaves a daughter, Pamela Goodrum, in California, a son, Erik Wolfe, in Georgia, and a brother, Paul Wolfe, in New Hampshire. No funeral service is planned.

George Edward BondDrove for Yellow Cab Co.George Edward Bond, who retired from the Yellow Cab Co. after 50 years of service, died Oct. 14 of heart and respiratory failure as a result of complications of a stroke he suffered on July 29 at the Lorien Nursing Home in Columbia. He moved to the nursing home in 1993.The 87-year-old former East Baltimore resident moved to Columbia in 1989 to live with a daughter. He was a Yellow Cab driver until 1975, when he became a Yellow Cab owner. He retired in 1982.

One too many margaritas isn't hard to manage during Cinco de Mayo. So a number of organizations have teamed up to make sure no one in Baltimore gets behind the wheel with tequila breath that would break a breathalyzer. AAA Mid-Atlantic, the Maryland Department of Transportation and Yellow Cab created "Tipsy? Taxi!" to offer drunken revelers a way to get home without driving. From 4 p.m. Saturday to 4 a.m. Sunday, anyone that calls a certain number to order a cab gets the ride free.

Yellow Cab, which has operated in the Baltimore area since 1909, has been named taxi operator of the year by the industry's trade group, the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association. Behind the wheel is Mark Joseph, a graduate of American University in Washington, who began his career at Yellow Cab in 1976 and was president and CEO for 20 years. When Connex North America acquired Yellow Transportation in 2001, Joseph rose through the executive ranks to become president and chief operating officer of Connex, now Veolia Transportation, and vice chairman and CEO of Veolia.

One too many margaritas isn't hard to manage during Cinco de Mayo. So a number of organizations have teamed up to make sure no one in Baltimore gets behind the wheel with tequila breath that would break a breathalyzer. AAA Mid-Atlantic, the Maryland Department of Transportation and Yellow Cab created "Tipsy? Taxi!" to offer drunken revelers a way to get home without driving. From 4 p.m. Saturday to 4 a.m. Sunday, anyone that calls a certain number to order a cab gets the ride free.

The Tipsy? Taxi! service from Yellow Cab, which offers free cab rides on several holidays throughout the year, is returning to Baltimore on New Year's Eve. It'll be the fourth year in a row the service, which has been criticized for being sluggish and dropping calls, will be offered in the city. On the 31st,  the Charm City Circulator with also have extended hours. Tipsy? Taxi!, sponsored by Yellow Cab, AAA Mid-Atlantic, and this year, the Motor Vehicle Administration, aims to keep drunk drivers off the road on drinking holidays.

Baltimore's election judges will be ferried to the polls by Yellow Cabs this fall, under an up-to-$30,000 deal approved by the city's Board of Estimates Thursday. The contract was not competitively bid, but awarded to Yellow Cab because it is the "only known vendor that has the proven resources" to deliver the judges, according to the board's agenda. Baltimore City Elections Board Chair Armstead B.C. Jones Sr. said that the cabs would wait outside board of elections offices near City Hall to take substitute judges to the polls during the September primary and November general election.

Yellow Cab of Baltimore celebrated its 100th anniversary Thursday with a downtown parade of taxis, including vintage cabs and even the most modern addition, hybrid vehicles. W.W. Cloud purchased the Brown and Blue Cab companies in 1909 and renamed them Yellow, making it the oldest registered Yellow Cab in the country, according to company officials. The cars, however, were black. Yellow grew and expanded until 2001, when Yellow Transportation of Baltimore was acquired by a global transportation company now known as Veolia Transportation.

Stephen Mauk, a driver for Yellow Cab of Frederick, was dispatched to pick up passengers in his minivan early yesterday - and that was the last his co-workers heard from him, a company official said. Four hours later, Mauk, 47, was found shot to death in his cab at a public housing complex in East Baltimore, according to city police. Police said the man was shot once in the head while sitting in the driver's seat in the 200 block of N. Bond St. An autopsy is pending. Police officials did not release a possible motive in the killing, which led homicide detectives to travel to Frederick yesterday as part of their investigation.

A 70-year-old cab driver remained in critical condition yesterday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after being shot in the head during an apparent robbery in Southwest Baltimore on Friday.The Yellow Cab driver was identified yesterday as Gorman S. Johnson Sr. of Hanover, in Anne Arundel County.Johnson was shot inside his cab at Leeds Street and Palormo Avenue about 8: 15 a.m Friday. Police said the driver did not notify his dispatcher that he had picked up a passenger.Police were looking for a man wearing a dark baseball cap and blue jeans who was seen running north on Palormo carrying a duffel bag.Johnson was the third taxi driver shot in Baltimore in the past four weeks.

Drivers from Baltimore City Cab, Diamond Cab and other companies clogged up a taxi stand yesterday on the side of Penn Station usually reserved for Yellow Cab taxis, protesting that company's exclusive rights contracts to pick up passengers at many downtown hotels, hospitals and other places in the city. About 20 drivers took part in the protest, which was organized in response to what many of them say is the newest exclusive deal awarded Yellow Cab at the downtown Renaissance Hotel. Protesters said the hotel had allowed all taxi companies to pick up passengers before March 24, the day an exclusive-rights contract Renaissance officials signed with Yellow Cab went into effect.

Elizabeth Buie, a pioneering African-American cab driver and taxi owner, died of heart disease Saturday at the Alice Manor Nursing Home. The East Baltimore resident was 89. Born Elizabeth Webb on a Sanford, N.C., farm, she completed the seventh grade and did agricultural work in neighboring Broadway. When she heard there was work available here, she moved to Baltimore in the 1940s and took a job packing hand grenades at the Edgewood Arsenal. She rode a bus from her Gay Street home to Harford County.