We’ve heard so much about daily troubles on Wall Street, the real estate mess and the crushing economic recession.  Newspaper headlines and television news reports announcing the latest list of companies filing for bankruptcy, laying off workers, closing their doors or running to Washington for a federal bailout doesn’t really shock us anymore.  But how’s this for an eye-catching headline?  ”HOW LOSING MONEY CAN HELP YOUR COMPANY AND YOUR COMMUNITY IN 2009″  Wait?  Losing money?  Yellow Cab in Birmingham, Alabama isn’t in trouble.  In fact CEO Ellis Houston will tell you they are doing great, thank you very much.  But in 2009 they are planning on giving free cab rides, the very service that makes profit for a cab company.  Houston says they are even budgeting for those losses this year.  So in a time when most companies are struggling to simply stop the free-fall into financial ruin, why is this company giving away it’s “bread and butter” for nothing?

Like most cab companies and public transportation systems across the country, Yellow Cab in Birmingham offered free rides home last month for anyone who drank too much at Christmas parties and on New Years Eve.   It’s a holiday tradition to help keep revelers from drinking and driving.  But this year Yellow Cab in Birmingham is extending their program, hoping to keep drunk drivers off the streets 24 hours a day, seven days a week…all 365 days of this year.  I repeatedly asked Ellis how he could afford to do this, especially with record-high gas prices fresh in our memories and a tanking economy that’s effecting every business from coast to coast.  How can Yellow Cab give free rides all year long?  ”Our goal is to save lives and keep people from being injured,” he says.  ”If we even save one life with this program then it’s money-well spent.”

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Houston says there’s no catch and no cost to customers or the bars and restaurants signed up for the program.  All you have to do is tell a manager or bartender that you’ll be needing a ride home.  You have to put your keys in an envelope which will includes your name, address, description of your car and where you left it.  Once the cab driver drops you off at home, you get the envelope back.  It’s up to you to get yourself back to the bar to pick your car up the next morning.  There are a few restrictions in the program, you could call them guidelines.  A customer must be at a bar or restaurant that has registered with Yellow Cab.  As of today, only a handful of Birmingham watering holes have signed up, but Ellis expects that number to increase.  You also must be going home.  Don’t expect a cab to give you a free lift to the bar or serve as your shuttle as you hop from bar to bar.

This isn’t the first program of it’s kind.  It’s actually the second.  Ellis Houston also owns and operates Yellow Cab in Little Rock, Arkansas.  That location is a year-old veteran for this generous program that could keep celebrating patrons from putting themselves and others in danger.  Houston says the program in Little Rock is a hit and hopes Birmingham will find the same success.  Restaurants and bars like The J. Clyde and Innisfree in Birmingham say the safe-ride program is so popular with patrons that they can’t keep those needed envelopes in stock.

You have to appreciate a businessman who is brave enough to start another year of uncertain economic conditions with a program that will bring no profit to his company.  Sure he’s getting some media attention, but with that attention, Houston is bracing for the program to grow and to pay for a lot of free rides in Birmingham and Little Rock this year.  But he’s unfazed at the loss he will absorb and, despite the cost, is committed to making the streets a little safer.  ”We are going to continue to do this program, at least for the next 12 months, no matter what the cost,”  he says.  Maybe one day every Company CEO will value their customers and community more and consider giving back as much as they take, just like Ellis Houston does.

If you would like to learn more click on this link to the Birmingham Yellow Cab Safe Ride Program.