Our Clean and Simple History

Founded by two Orange County cab drivers who were tired of working in half-wrecked vehicles with “interesting” insurance, corrupt dispatchers, and even more “interesting” management, California Yellow Cab opened for business the weekend of Memorial Day in 1995.

Patterned in the classic yellow cab format created by John D. Hertz back in 1915, we launched with the mindset that a taxicab company really has two clients: the cab-riding public and the independent taxicab driver. By empowering drivers to build their own clientele and function as franchise-style business owners, we encouraged a strong working relationship between drivers and their customers without the need to filter every single service request through “the company”.

By applying this clean and simple principle, California Yellow Cab began with a small-but-mighty fleet of just 7 taxicabs that more than tripled in size to 25 cabs in just two short years. Our business plan was so successful that by 2000, we were awarded one of only three operating permits to service the City of Anaheim once again tripling in size to a fleet of 80.

In 2001, when the opportunity to service John Wayne Airport became available, again, it was California Yellow Cab that was awarded the joint contact for service, doubling our fleet in size to more than 175 cabs.

Today, by sticking to our founding principles, we now have more than 220 distinctive yellow-over-black taxicabs in service to Orange County and we’re still growing.

Throughout our history, California Yellow Cab has continued to lead the way not just in Orange County but nationwide! With constantly evolving service request and dispatch technologies created in-house by our own tech team, we’ve incorporated state-of-the-art customer service systems, built the greenest taxi fleet in the county and now launched our new smartphone dispatch platform.

Recognizing the demand for faster response times and improved personal-data security, California Yellow went beyond a packaged dispatch system and developed our own proprietary dispatch platform. Housed in a separate, secure customer service and dispatch office, our specially trained service agents prioritize service requests based on the order in which they are received, the proximity of a cab to a call, and by any specialized need like wheelchair access or high-occupancy. This system ensures that no matter where someone is headed, we get a cab to them based on how fast it can be done, instead of where the call is going or what driver we can “sell” the order to.

Beginning in the Fall of 2011 California Yellow Cab began adding the new compressed natural gas (CNG) powered Ford Transit Connect taxicabs to our already green fleet. By Spring 2012, we will be at 72% CNG and Hybrid cabs, with the goal of being 95% by Spring 2013.

And in February 2012, California Yellow Cab rolled out our newest technology: Smartphone Application dispatching. This advanced system dispatches calls using a 3G Smartphone or tablet application that integrates pick up and destination messaging with 3D GPS guidance. This fully encrypted system is not only faster and less troublesome than any other dispatch system, it also goes further to protect a customer’s personal and credit card information than any other system in use today.

California Yellow Cab is proud to serve Orange County. We look forward to many more years helping you get around Clean and Simple – the way it should be.