José Antonio has been driving taxis for more than fifteen years, ever since he started out working alongside his father in Barcelona. These days he’s based in Roquetas de Mar, in the province of Almería, running his own license as an independent driver. He doesn’t sugarcoat what the job actually involves, even as he insists it can be genuinely lucrative — some months he clears more than 2,000 euros after expenses.
That figure comes with a catch: it takes a punishing schedule to get there. José Antonio typically works six days a week, with shifts stretching to twelve hours. He’s usually parked at the taxi rank near his home by 7 a.m., a habit that saves him from wasting time before the first fare even comes in.
Being your own boss sounds appealing, and in some ways it is — he sets his own hours. But that freedom operates inside a framework of local rules covering everything from service conditions to where taxis can stop and what kind of vehicles qualify. Within those boundaries, he can still shape his day around demand, which matters a lot in a tourist town like his. Weather, school holidays, hotel check-ins, a local festival — any of it can turn a dead quiet morning into a rush of back-to-back calls within hours.
The 2,000-euro figure isn’t something he banks every single month — it swings with the season, the number of rides, and how much he’s had to spend keeping the car and the business running. And there’s a lot to spend on. Fuel is the obvious one, but it’s far from the only cost: loan payments or the purchase of the vehicle itself, insurance, repairs, tires, cleaning, social security contributions and licensing fees all chip away at what’s left over.
Summer near the coast changes everything financially. Vacationers heading to and from train stations, hotels and restaurants keep drivers busy. The quieter months are a different story — long stretches parked at the rank, waiting for a fare that may or may not show up.
Not every hour behind the wheel turns into money, and José Antonio has learned to make the dead time useful. He handles some organizational duties tied to running the taxi service and gets on his laptop when he’s stuck waiting at the stand — proof that for a lot of independent workers, downtime just becomes another kind of work.
Driving in Roquetas de Mar is a different experience than it was in Barcelona, he says. In a smaller town, he sees the same passengers again and again, chats with them, becomes something like a familiar face in the neighborhood. In Barcelona, rides were anonymous — you rarely crossed paths with the same person twice.
That closeness has its downsides, too. Drunk passengers, people who try to skip out without paying — José Antonio has dealt with both, and in tricky situations he’s asked a rider to leave something behind as collateral until the fare is settled.
Against unlicensed ride services, licensed drivers lean on one thing above all: the taximeter. It’s inspected and sealed to prevent tampering, and it guarantees fares are calculated by official rates tied to distance and time — a transparency argument drivers like him rely on heavily.
The job has changed with technology, too. Plenty of rides now come through phone calls, messaging apps or dispatch systems that assign the nearest car, cutting down on empty drives and passenger wait times. Flat rates for airport or train station runs are also becoming more common, giving travelers price certainty upfront, while the meter still handles the rides where distance and time are harder to predict. In the end, profitability comes down as much to smart routing as to sheer mileage — a long fare that ends in an empty drive back can be worth less than several short, well-timed rides in a busy part of town.
