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 Company History
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"Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement".
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Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog
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Alert Taxis was established by Mr. Hawthorne and his family in 1960 and has been operating a fleet of taxis in the Auckland area since then.
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Current owners, Paul and Robert, had always had a good relationship with Alert and with the Hawthorne family. They were working for an opposition company at the time, and although Alert Taxis was their competitor, they both recognized early on the strength of the Alert brand. They believed it had the right colours for a taxi: orange, red and white, very simple, very clean, and the
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perfect red. Other advantages they recognized were that it had a top light that always stood out more than its competitors, and it had permanent signage instead of magnetic signs, so their signs were always in the same place every time you saw them. They knew the importance of this, having seen it work in New York with the yellow cabs, and in London with the black cabs. They wanted the customer to see a consistency. To associate themselves with the brand. To feel safe with the brand.
However, they struggled to implement positive branding changes within their own organization, which they had been running for 9 years. It was a cooperative environment, which made it very difficult to effect change quickly, which was frustrating for them.
They decided to purchase their own organization and the obvious choice was Alert Taxis. They saw huge potential, and being young and idealistic they had the energy and enthusiasm to make a go of it.
So when Paul Cafferkey and Robert van Heiningen bought Alert Taxis in 2002, they bought a good brand. However, it was also a brand that had been put into the wardrobe for 10 years through deregulation, and it needed to be taken out, dusted off and put back into the public eye again. Whilst the Hawthorne family had always been very protective of the brand, colour, shield, what it stood for, and how it was represented in the market, deregulation had basically suffocated them.
In 1989 the government had deregulated the industry and basically flooded the market with taxis. This meant that the major companies had to make some drastic changes in order to compete with the new companies. At that time, Alert was used to working in a controlled market and perhaps didn't embrace these changes fast enough. They needed to be more aggressive. So Alert continued to function and survive, but lost its market presence a bit.
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So when Robert and Paul bought it, their main goal was to grow.
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Grow the business, grow the fleet and provide good service to the public at a good price. They also wanted to eventually invest in state of the art technology in dispatching because they had 9 years experience in dispatch systems and knew what customers required from a taxi.
To date, they have largely succeeded in all their original goals.
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 They have grown to one of Auckland's top taxi companies, processing an average of
60,000 orders every 4 weeks.
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They have the most sophisticated dispatching system in the country.
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They have some of the most well known companies in New Zealand as their clients.
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They are the official transport providers for huge events such as the Air NZ Fashion
Week and the Ellerslie Flower show.
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When the public think Alert Taxis, they think nice car, safe company, cars arrive on time and easy to order.
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To find out how Alert Taxis can be of service to you, please click here.
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