Taxi Salesman

James Francis Waters is a World War I veteran (Army air corps instructor) who went to California to try his hand at selling airplanes, found he was a little ahead of his time. He switched to a two-by-four used-car agency, soon made the happy discovery that there was nothing like the automobile business for a supersalesman in the '205. By 1929 he was Chrysler's distributor for its new De Soto in all of northern California.

If the golden era of salesmen ended with the '29 crash, nobody told Waters about it. His fortunes rose as the business curve went down. By 1933 he had enough money to buy the San Francisco office building (original cost: $1,250,000) in which he started his business. Last year he branched into selling De Sotos on Long Island, upped his sales to about 4% of De Soto's entire output. Meanwhile he had tackled the taxi business.

Of all branches of the automobile industry, manufacture and sale of taxicabs is the hardest to make a go of. General Motors tried it for a while (through its subsidiary Yellow Truck & Coach), found that it had to operate taxis to be sure of a market in Manhattan, finally began withdrawing in 1934 after it had to repossess two big fleets at a loss of $1,000,000. Next year it sold its Manhattan operating company (Terminal) at another $733,000 loss. Soon Checker Cab Manufacturing Co. was left the only important manufacturer in the field. But even Checker, with a virtual monopoly on production, had dizzy ups & downs.

To Supersalesman Waters, the taxicab business looked as easy as anything else. After selling an occasional taxicab on the side, he jumped in with both feet in 1936, landed a $3,500,000 order for 2,500 cabs from a new operating system (Sunshine) organized in Manhattan that year. To manufacture them, he contracted with De Soto for chassis and body parts, set up his own assembly plant in Detroit. His De Soto SkyView cab now roams Manhattan streets about 7,000 strong.

Waters has a theory that his predeces sors in cab manufacturing got into trouble by operating their own fleets ; he lets some body else worry about running his cabs, is happy to sell one to anybody who has $295 for a down payment. Manhattan's independent cabbies swear by him; until he started selling them brand-new cabs at $1,195 they had to pay nearly that much for castoffs from the big fleets. Last week Waters was sure his theory was right and that he had the taxi business licked: he started delivering 550 new SkyViews to Terminal, which meant that G. M.'s old operating company soon would be using nothing but his cabs.

Operating now on both edges of the continent, blue-eyed, greying Jimmy Wa ters commutes back & forth by airplane two or three times a month, has apart ments on Manhattan's swank Park Avenue and San Francisco's swank Nob Hill as well as an estate at Woodside, Calif. He eggs his salesmen on with contests in which they win chances on a punchboard (two for selling a De Soto, one for a Plymouth) containing $35,000 in prizes.

His social life is on the same high-pressure plane. He is known in every top Manhattan nightclub by his first name, has been chased out of most of them by the closing hour (4 a.m.). His hobby is a string of 35 race horses. But the stable is run on the same cost-accounting basis as his taxi factory.

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