| The sight of a taxi driving around Gig Harbor has been rare for many years, but that changed in November. Raft Island resident and longtime entrepreneur, Steve Summerday, launched Harbor Taxi in November, a 24/7 service. Summerday’s business is licensed to pick up passengers around Gig Harbor and the Key Peninsula areas, but can drop them off anywhere they desire.
Summerday is the former owner, with his wife, Allison, of Summerday’s Awning Care and Shipshape Canvas Care. Summerday started the company more than 10 years ago, selling the service door to door, and built it to a successful enterprise with hundreds of residential and commercial customers.
The couple sold the business this past summer, and since then Summerday has been getting ready for his new venture. With Steve as the driver, Allison helps out at the office. Summerday’s in the process of hiring more drivers soon as well.
He said he’s had the idea for a couple of years, but it really hit home earlier this year when he had his car in the shop and had to ride the bus from Tacoma to Gig Harbor, getting dropped off at night by the library, several miles away from home. He realized had he been elderly or ill and had no one to pick him up, he would have had no way of getting home. “It really moved me and I felt a sense of dread knowing that there are people out there, stranded,” he said.
Summerday said according to information he gleaned from longtime residents, Gig Harbor hasn’t had a full-time taxi service for 25 years, and one company that offered the service about a decade ago was short-lived. Asked why he thought there was no interest for someone to open such a business, he said, “My guess is it’s hard to make money here. Now that the population is growing considerably, there is definitely a market here.”
Harbor Taxi is a standard metered taxi service, with prices set by Pierce County. Summerday said the licensing process with both the county and the state was quite extensive. But now that he’s in business, he said local residents should no longer have to drink and drive, and if they’re out partying, they should call a taxi. He said he will pick up anybody, at any time. “I would not leave anybody stranded. I mean it,” he said.
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