Alternative to Green Tomato

Green tomatoes have branded themselves as the major rival to Addison Lee, but are they just emulating a similar inflexible model of a taxi replacement service?

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They do have a lot of similarities with Addison Lee in that their focus is on marketing a single vehicle type of uniform make and colour.

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Similarly their PR campaign has its costs which tend to be reflected in the price of fares on their invoices, after all we all know there is no free lunch.

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Their green credential is associated with their use of the Toyota Prius which despite being trendy has only marginal benefits in terms of real benefits to the environment. We are well aware as we run over a 100 of them as part of our 600 fleet. Whilst some of our customers like to see that we have them when we pitch or tender for corporate and government contracts, they tend to prefer to have us send one of our Mercedes for their own personal journeys!

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What matters far more from an environmental perspective is how efficiently the fleet is coordinated. The vehicles we use these days are all far more efficient than they were in the past, it is a theme of all of the manufacturers we use to drive down fuel consumption to the extent that they are on a par with the Prius.

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Our strategically placed fleet is deployed with minimal wasted dead mileage across most of London as our despatch team synchronises our customer journeys with our closest driver minimising emissions and customer waiting time. Our efficiency tends to mean our fares are cheaper too, particularly our Heathrow Airport fares.

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But then we are owned by an experienced industry professional who has been in the industry for 30 years, not owned by a bus company and run by an ex corporate lawyer.

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Our major benefit to Parker Customers is the variety of our fleet, not just a single cookie cutter vehicle type but one to suit just about any private hire journey our customer would make. We have a chauffeur for the MD or for a treat, Executive E Class Mercedes for a special client or the big day out, smart 16 seat executive buses for those group outings as well as a variety of MPVs that range up to 8 passenger seats and of course the standard saloon car and yes, plenty of hybrids too.