San Francisco’s Largest Yellow Cab Company A Casualty Of Uber’s Success

Uber came to disrupt the market, which it undeniable has, and in its home town of San Francisco, it has managed to disrupt one of its larger rivals — the city’s largest yellow cab company — right out of existence. By all accounts, this is the first big cab company to fall into Chapter 11 because of Uber (and Lyft, to a lesser extent).

In a letter to shareholders, Yellow Cab Co-op President Pamela Martinez wrote that the bankruptcy filing was undertaken in order to save the business.

“We are in a midst of serious financial setbacks,” Martinez wrote in a letter obtained by The San Francisco Examiner.

“[The financial setbacks] are due to business challenges beyond our control, and others are of our own making. Today, we are faced with fiscal obligations that far exceed expected income.”

And Yellow Cab is not the only business that has seen its bottom line suffer terribly in the era of ridesharing; an NYC taxi medallion has lost over 40 percent of its value in the last five years, which has shut down the credit unions who financed them.

But as Uber is more successful, driver earnings may fall, analysts note, in which case the driver population might just move en masse back to traditional cabs.

The co-op is the largest cab company in San Francisco, with about 530 medallions. Uber and Lyft both make their home in San Fran.