thumb|right|280px|Chicago yellow cab
The Yellow Cab Company is a taxicab company founded in Chicago in 1907 and today operating as a remnant of a once large manufacturing and transportation operation. Its rapid growth in the late 1910s and 1920s innovated a new kind of taxi company, one which covered the entire city limits, promising a cab to any address in ten minutes or less. In establishing its service, the Yellow Cab Company developed many of the procedures and safety protocols that would be adopted by taxi companies around the country.
In 1916 the Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company was created, producing taxicabs, including for the Yellow Cab Company. The Yellow Cab Company's meteoric success also invited bitter competition on the city's streets, leading to a period known as the "Taxi Wars." During the Depression, Morris Markin, owner of Yellow Cab's rival Checker Cab Manufacturing Company, significantly consolidated ownership of the city's taxi companies, putting an end to the violence.
Yellow Cabs remain on the city's streets today, though ownership was split between multiple companies upon its declaration of bankruptcy in 2015.
History
Formation
The Yellow Cab Company was co-founded as the Walden W. Shaw Livery Company in 1907 by Walden W. Shaw and John D. Hertz. As part of the deal, Hertz joined General Motors as the president of its Board of Directors.
Acquisition of Parmelee
In 1917, Shaw and Hertz acquired the taxi division of the Parmelee Transfer Company. Charles McCulloch, the manager of that division, continued in that role at Yellow Cab and joined the Board of Directors of the Walden W. Shaw Corporation. After acquiring Parmelee's taxi division, Yellow Cab retired their cars and replaced them with 200 Yellow Cabs on the city's streets.
Taxi wars
During the 1910s and 1920s the company was involved in multiple incidents of intimidation, harassment and violence with taxi drivers from other companies. In 1921, a Yellow Cab driver named Thomas A. Skirven, Jr. was shot and killed while standing outside a Yellow Cab garage. Two Checker Taxi drivers were eventually convicted of his murder. This began a period of particularly bitter relations between Yellow Cab and Checker Taxi which led to shootings, targeted murders and firebombings. to Morris Markin, who had established Checker Cab Manufacturing Company as a driver cooperative with the Checker Taxi. Yellow Cab Co eventually split into multiple companies nationwide bearing the Yellow Cab name. In January 2016, San Francisco's Yellow Cab cooperative filed for bankruptcy protection.
Since the bankruptcy, many of the companies that continue to carry the Yellow Cab name have struggled to compete with rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft that have drivers use their own personal vehicles for services traditionally provided by Yellow Cab and generally have much lower fares than traditional taxicabs. In some cities such as Pittsburgh, Yellow Cab even changed their business model to match ridesharing services by using a smartphone app and converted their drivers from employees to independent contractors while still being able to hail a taxicab in the traditional sense.