For Kevin and Leanne McKenzie, whose maxi taxi transports more than 150 wheelchair passengers a month, driving is not simply a job – it’s a vocation. The couple count compassion, empathy and kindness among the secrets to their success.  

Transporting disabled people requires a special set of skills beyond the formal qualifications required to operate a wheelchair accessible taxi (WAT).

Just ask Kevin and Leanne McKenzie, who own and operate a WAT in Melbourne. Kevin drives the nightshift four nights a week.

“A lot of people can be cab drivers, but not a lot of cab drivers can be WAT drivers,” Kevin says.

“You have to have compassion,” adds Leanne.

“And to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re transporting is very important, because you have to treat those people like you would like somebody to treat you.”

The nationally accredited course that allows a driver to operate a WAT includes practical and theoretical tests, Leanne explains. A driver cannot log on in a WAT without that qualification. But that’s not the important part, according to Kevin.

“The thing is you have to understand people with disabilities are human beings,” he says.

“So it’s learning how to communicate with people who might have speech impediments or physical impediments, and having an empathy and an understanding of how to work with those people.

“There’s also all the safety requirements that come with making sure those people are safe: that the wheelchair is secured correctly and that the person is secured to the wheelchair correctly. Because you have a duty of care – a lot of people can’t do a lot of things themselves; they have the mental capacity but sometimes they don’t have the physical capacity.”

Fate drew the McKenzies into the taxi industry about 15 years ago, in the small town of Ballingen in New South Wales. Leanne, a physiotherapist, was working, while Kevin was renovating their home and caring for the family (they have six children).

When Leanne became sick and was temporarily unable to work, Kevin became the breadwinner. With previous careers in the agriculture and freight industries, he thought he’d try his hand at driving taxis – something he had always wanted to do since his brother had owned taxis years earlier.

However, Ballingen was a one-taxi town, and some nights, fares were scarce.

Leanne and Kevin both laugh heartily at the memory of Kevin’s early taxi driving days.

“Ballingen is very tiny and sometimes Kev would earn two dollars,” Leanne says.

“Sometimes he’d go and sit up there all night for one fare. One day he came home with two dollars in his pocket and he said ‘here you go!’ It didn’t even pay for the petrol to get there.”

With a view to improving the income, the McKenzies moved to Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, where Kevin began driving cabs full-time and realised he loved it. And when you ask exactly what it is he loves, he answers quickly.

“The people,” he says.

“You’ve got to love the people and you’ve got to love what you do for the people.”

“And you’ve got to love the guide dogs that get in the car too, because they’re part of the people,” Leanne says.

It wasn’t long before they purchased their own taxi and part shares in a second one. The company, which combined Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie Taxis, offered Kevin the job of General Manager.

“We had about 45 taxis and of those, 20 were WATs,” Kevin says.

“So we’ve had a big part in moving disabled people for a long time. I did that job for six years.”

During that time, Leanne, who had worked in the Occupational Health and Safety sector for many years as a physiotherapist, was involved with driver training – particularly drivers of WATs.

“We met lots of people, worked with lots of people, saw a lot of people go through a lot of things,” Kevin says.

“We went to a lot of funerals for the kids we used to take on the school runs,” Leanne adds.

“It was hard. The drivers became attached to the kids. The had set runs for the whole year. A lot of disabled kids can’t cope well with change, so we tried to keep the same driver with the same kids and the same carer.

“Our son actually drove for a while and he had a particular rapport with a group of kids, because he used to play head banging music! The older drivers didn’t do that.”

Another change of direction – after a stint in the dispatch business with CabSat – came when the McKenzie’s fell in love with Melbourne on what was to be a temporary stay, when a mate asked Kev to help him establish Rova media taxi signs.

“We’re happy down here,” Leanne says.

“Everyone told us we were mad because of the weather and they said the cab industry’s terrible down here, but we haven’t found it quite so bad.”

With such vast experience in the taxi industry and specifically, insight into operating WATs, it’s not surprising Kevin and Leanne have strong views about how illegal ride-sharing will affect this particular segment of the industry, and cautions the government to carefully consider the implications of potential future regulations. 

“Disabled people are very limited as to how they can get around,” he says.

“They can either spend a fortune themselves and modify them and have someone in their family drive them around, or they catch a maxi taxi. The set up for a wheelchair maxi taxi to meet all the Australian safety standards is around $60,000 plus.

“If the government makes a mess of this industry, the disabled lobby has got a huge problem. The disabled lobby is a major part of our society and they hold a lot of important positions in society; they need to be able to get to and from places. So if the government doesn’t handle this well, there will be a huge outcry in Australia.”

In the meantime, Kevin and Leanne will continue to provide the level of service that keeps their taxi flat out, with a large percentage of regular customers. It’s the customer, after all, that they know is the key to the taxi industry’s, and their own, future.

“Without the customers we don’t have an industry,” Leanne says.

“If we don’t have the customer getting into our cab and paying us money we don’t have an industry.”

Kevin agrees: ““It always has to revolve around the customer,” he says.

“Then, everything else falls into line. If the customer’s standards and services are being met, that’s what is needed.

“It’s the little things that matter; just make sure the customer’s the winner.”