Big Daddy Taxi owner Cleat Jones said these allegations were “absolutely untrue,” saying Biller and Voller left Big Daddy Taxi, started Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi and are trying to put him out of business.

The State News filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the East Lansing Police Department regarding drug use by Big Daddy Taxi employees. Deputy police Chief Juli Liebler said to her knowledge, nothing has been reported to the department about drug use and Big Daddy Taxi.

“If I had people doing that stuff, they would have gone to jail and been fired,” Jones said. “All they want to do is hurt me.”

He said if any law was broken, it was in his former employees’ exit and formation of Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi in June. For the first few weeks, he said, the taxi service was operating without a license.

East Lansing City Clerk Sharon Reid said Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi was told they could operate without a license until the city went to its attorney for an opinion. Once the city attorney said a license was needed, Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi went before the East Lansing City Council.

Leaving Big Daddy Taxi

Biller, Voeller, three fellow van owners and 10 drivers parted ways with Big Daddy Taxi to form Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi seven weeks ago. They say Big Daddy Taxi’s reputation, combined with how Jones ran his business, led them to break ties with the company.

Jones ran the Big Daddy Taxi office but owned none of the vans – all the work was done by vans’ owners, Voeller said. They drove the vans, hired additional drivers and paid for repair and insurance costs. Jones collected lease payments from Biller, Voeller and other Big Daddy Taxi van owners, essentially to use the Big Daddy Taxi name, they said.

Voeller said they were scraping out a living and didn’t have contracts with Jones.

“We were literally going broke trying to keep vans on the road for this guy,” she said. “It was nothing for him to throw an owner out just because they ticked him off. We had no security from week to week.”

Jones said van owners like Biller and Voeller weren’t victims of unfair wages, but instead planned and saved their money poorly. One van owner who stayed with him, Mehedi Kamal, said his boss treats and pays him well.

“If (Biller and Voeller) want to make any allegations, (Jones) treats us all the same way and he is treating me well,” Kamal said. “Why would I lie if it’s my own money we’re talking about?”

Voeller and her husband worked four 12-hour shifts with Big Daddy Taxi one of the last weeks before the split. After paying Jones and their drivers at the end of the week, they profited $141.

“The decision was made pretty easy by then,” she said. “Actually, it didn’t warrant a decision after a while. You had no choice but to leave.”

Fed up, Biller and Voeller started to jot down an escape from Jones’ business on restaurant napkins.

Biller and Voeller say Jones would have fired them immediately if he found out they were leaving, but Jones was out of the loop and on a two-week vacation to Hawaii.

Bringing down a business?

Jones said he hasn’t spoken with Biller or Voeller since they left the company. He said greed drove the two former owners to break ties with him and make allegations that would drive him out of a business he started with one cab.

“I started out as one guy, and I’ve become an 800-pound gorilla,” he said. “You know who I honestly feel like? I feel like George W. Bush.”

Before ditching Big Daddy Taxi, Voeller said Jones wanted to add more vans to the fleet. Jones charged more than $300 to lease each van per week, but while he would have profited from more leases, business would have been spread among more vans.

Voeller said Jones also didn’t adjust charges for van owners in the summer and on student breaks when business was slow.

“There’s really only about 32 viable, profitable weeks, and you can’t treat the business as anything other than that,” she said.

A week before leaving Big Daddy Taxi, a driver had to sell his personal car to pay his rent, she added.

“We’re not trying to bash Big Daddy, and it’s unfortunate we had to do this,” Voeller said of breaking ties with the taxi company. “It’s been a lot of work. If (Jones) could have made things a little more right, just enough right to keep us only grumbling, we all would have suffered through that.”

Money wasn’t the only reason for the break up. Biller and Voeller said they repeatedly asked Jones to fire other owners whose drivers were allegedly using drugs on the job and disrespecting customers. They said Jones refused to do anything, often reacting harshly.

“That was more than $300 a week out of his pocket if there was an owner that was allowing things that were obviously very unprofessional,” Biller said. “His reaction was always, ‘It’s my company and if you don’t like it, you can get the f—- out.’”

Jones challenged Biller and Voeller to present him with any record of drug use in the Big Daddy Taxi office.

“I’ve fired plenty of drivers for doing bad things,” he said. “If I had pot smokers on my staff, I’d have the cops on my doorstep.”

Starting Shaggin’ Wagon

Their experiences at Big Daddy Taxi led Biller and Voeller to set up Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi differently, they said. They have radios installed in each van in hopes of making their taxi service more efficient than Big Daddy Taxi.

“Drivers were pitted against each other for their own survival,” Biller said of Big Daddy Taxi. “Some had radios, some didn’t and some had personal cell phones.”

As Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi’s sixth week of business came to a close, Biller said they were struggling to compete with Big Daddy Taxi. He blamed students’ familiarity with Big Daddy Taxi and lack of name recognition with the new taxi service.

So far, Jones hasn’t seen Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi challenge his business.

“My biggest competitor is me,” he said.

Eventually, Voeller and Biller said they expect to “tip the scales,” with more customers calling them.

“We’re not afraid of competing with them,” Voeller said. “We’ll see them on the streets.”