Taxis and the for-hire trade

1916–2026 · THE DIRECTORY ROLL AND THE MODERN CURB

Before the taxi, the transfer companies: the for-hire trade in the directory record begins with hauling people and goods together. R. L. Polk & Co.'s Indiana Gazetteer for 1916–1917 enters, in its Mishawaka list, the City Transfer Co (A. M. Bailey and A. Weiss), 103 E. Lincoln Highway, and the Mishawaka Transfer Co (W. H. and J. R. Jordan), 118 S. Main, with Geo. A. Burkhart's messenger service at 114 S. Main beside them — the transfer wagon and the messenger were the jitney-era city's for-hire trade, a decade before the classified headings separated the taxicab out of it.

The gap in the roll, printed as a gap: the taxi roll at full survey size — the classified Taxicab listings of the directories the build recovered, Polk 1921, 1949, 1956 and 1963 — was not extracted in the build's working texts available; the directories' classified sections for Mishawaka were not among the texts this addendum could read first-hand, and no listings are reconstructed from memory or from the street lists. The settling source is named and located: the directories themselves, in the runs the Indiana State Library's St. Joseph County directory holdings list confirms (Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka directories, including a separate Mishawaka directory for 1956; the list notes that directories from 1971 to 2005 do not include Mishawaka). The trade's shape across those years — its passage from transfer companies to named cab companies to dispatch services — awaits that extraction.

The modern close, verified November 2026: the for-hire curb in Mishawaka today is worked from across the city line and by the app. United Cab of South Bend — locally owned, operating since 2006, at 2213 S. Michigan Street, South Bend — advertises 24-hour taxi and airport service to and from Mishawaka among its Michiana coverage, with posted Mishawaka airport rates; Yellow Cab of Michiana stands at 1814 S. Main Street, South Bend, in current listings; a Mishawaka Taxi Service trades under the city's own name in current directory listings; and Uber's Mishawaka city page offers UberX on demand in the city, noting that a cab cannot yet be requested through the app there. No taxi company headquartered in Mishawaka at the old stand-and-rank pattern was found in the November 2026 listings: the trade that the transfer companies began at 103 E. Lincoln Highway now arrives from South Bend addresses and from a phone screen.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Indiana Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1916–1917, Mishawaka entry (City Transfer Co; Mishawaka Transfer Co; Burkhart messenger service), via Internet Archive text.
2. Indiana State Library, St. Joseph County directory holdings list (secure.in.gov/library) — named as settler for the classified taxi roll.
3. United Cab of South Bend, operator site (unitedcabsouthbend.com), serving Mishawaka since 2006, verified November 2026; Yellow Cab of Michiana and Mishawaka Taxi Service, current directory listings, November 2026; Uber, Mishawaka city page (uber.com), November 2026.