Taxis Sheffield - from Mercury Taxis Sheffield

You could say that the times have changed all of us somewhat over the past twenty-one years and as a company Mercury Taxis would certainly be no exception to that rule. Back in 1988 the times, and indeed the lifestyles, of the people of Sheffield were very much different. The skyline of our City was changing at a fast and furious pace, or so we thought (little did we know what the skyline of 2009 would bring us !) and the student scene in Sheffield was just beginning to thrive and flourish.

In 1988 ...................

* A gallon of four star petrol, that’s about four and a half litres, cost £1.67
* The English pound note ceased to be legal tender
* It was announced that the 1994 'Soccer' World Cup would be held in the USA 
* Ben Johnson won the Olympic 100m gold medal & was disqualified for taking drugs
* The popular films at the time were Rain Man, Who Framed Roger Rabbit & Die Hard
* Some of the popular bands/artists were Erasure, Kylie Minogue, U2, Bros & Enya
* and most important of all …..... MERCURY TAXIS WAS BORN.

Our very first base back in the Summer of 1988 was on Barber Crescent in Commonside, right in the very heart of Sheffield‘s bustling and fast-developing student land. These were extremely humble beginnings indeed for us - an old style static caravan was our accounts office in those days - and we had just the one car - a Lada Riva to be precise - exactly like the one on the right ! But nowadays Mercury Taxis has grown into a strong family run company that today is virtually unrecognisable with many, many prestigious account customers from all over the world, over 340 vehicles and an annual job count of over 1.3 million completed journies per year. Over 2.5 million customers have travelled in our vehicles in the last twelve months.  The strong traditional family values, that run throughout the company, have enabled us to develop and forge many long lasting relationships with many of our customers over the years and we are indeed regarded by many of our customers as friends.

When it all started back in the Summer of  ‘88 one of our very first customers was the popular singer of that time Yazz, who along with her band - the Plastic Population - had a huge hit with a single entitled ‘The Only Way Is Up’. Our owner Andrew Eales, then just a mere taxi-driver for his sins, was the driver that day as he transported his passenger to Leeds. How prophetic the words of that song turned out to be for us, because that’s exactly the way things have turned out here at Mercury Taxis. In those days of course we were operating with the ‘old-style’ voice type radios in our cars and a pen, paper & peg board system in our office, how very different the times are now.

Three years later in 1991 and we were on the move, literally just around the corner, to a larger base in Commonside next to the Hallamshire House Pub. But the times were booming quicker than we all knew and within twelve months we were on the move yet again, to our current larger premises at the top of Crookes, to cope with the demand of more work and even more drivers.

Northfield Road at Crookes, right on the top of the Bole Hills, is a fantastic setting to come to work to everyday and this has been our home now for the past 17 years. We are less than a mile away from our original base in Barber Crescent but literally we are a million miles away from those old days of the eighties. Our fantastic new call centre complete with our fully-computerised state of the art data despatch system handles in excess of 25,000 bookings each and every week of the year. Today we have over 340 vehicles, whilst we safely transport over 2.5 million customers around South Yorkshire and the rest of the country each year. Our company operates a 24 hour, 365 day a year service - WE NEVER EVER CLOSE !

A long, steady and continuous climb is just about the perfect description of how we have progressed as a company over the past twenty one years and we are very confident that this trend will continue for many, many years to come.
With technology, lifestyles and indeed people all continuing to change at a fast and furious pace then you can rest assured that Mercury Taxis will be ready for all of these changes as and when they occur.