Tyneside taxi firm on road to success
Oct 1 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal
Over the last 50 years a car with a blue stripe has helped drive the mass creation of jobs on Tyneside as Andrew Mernin finds out.
IN THE late 1980s, two Wallsend lads packed their bags and jetted off west to spy on the New York taxi industry. Their mission – as dictated by their father – was to find out how their family business could evolve with the dawn of the brave new age of computers.
Colin Shanks knew the firm he had built up from the ground needed to change with the times and believed the answer lay on the mean streets of the Big Apple.
His two sons Paul and Ian, watched closely at how the network of yellow cabs were dispatched across the sprawling metropolis and even took a behind-the-scenes look at the workings of the NYPD.
The move ultimately paid off and helped Blue Line become one of the largest taxi companies in the region, with an army of around 450 drivers and 30 office staff.
“He had a drive to better himself and I guess he had the foresight to see the importance of technology,” says Ian Shanks, son of the late Colin Shanks.
“We were one of the first companies to have two-way radios and taxi meters inside our cars. He felt that all those things were best for the business and good for the customer.”
In a back office akin to a 1970s living room, Ian is surrounded by memorabilia connected to his father’s legacy, which charts the growth of the business from a one-car, terraced house business into a £3m empire.
The former Newcastle Gosforth rugby player – who once shared a bench with Jonny Wilkinson – now runs the business with his brother Paul and sister Jane.
On one wall he points out a letter from the daughter and son-in-law of Walt Disney, which is framed next to a gold-plated Mickey Mouse watch.
Shanks senior had ferried the couple round in a taxi during the production of a 1970s childrens movie in Northumberland but had refused a £20 tip – which is why they sent him the gold watch.
He also tells how Fleetwood Mac would regularly travel Blue Line to a recording studio close to the firm’s home off Wallsend High Street.
The firm started life in the early 1950s in the family home on Wallsend’s Wooley Steet, with a car embossed with a blue coach line along its body.
“He started with one car and my father was constantly under pressure over getting it repossessed with one thing or another. It was very hard to make ends meet in those days and taxis were very much a luxury.”
“We started from the family home and we as kids used to answer the phones but my father built the business up over the years.”
And Shanks junior has continued that tradition by adopting mobile and automated systems and has followed in his father’s footsteps by investing heavily on infrastructure.
In 1990 Colin Shanks unexpectedly passed away, thrusting Ian into a lofty position which belied his age and status.
“I remember at the time I was 28 years old and stood in front of drivers and was scared because there were men far my senior who had to now rely on me to make the right decision.”
“I had to give them reassurances that we were going to take the business on and we wanted their support because we didn’t want them to scatter thinking we were going to go down the pan.”
Fortunately for the 450 people whose jobs are supported by Blue Line today, the company survived the loss of its enigmatic founder and remains on the road to further expansion.
