Los Angeles, CA – Two friends who hired a New York City cab driver to drive them across the United States for $5,000 have arrived in Los Angeles.
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John Belitsky of Leonia, N.J, and Dan Wuebben of Queens reached California on Friday after a six-day trip.
The cab made a pit stop in Las Vegas, where the friends won more than $2,000 at the craps and blackjack tables. They told the New York Post that they woke up cabbie Mohammed Alam “with a shower of $100 bills.”
“We got a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim,” Belitsky told 9News Denver, referring to their lucky cabbie Mohammad Alam. The pair told the newspaper the idea for the trip was hatched during a birthday party.
The two friends haven’t yet said how they’ll get back. The cab driver says a friend will help him make the drive home.
It’s just barely worth the fare for the cabbie. We’re talking 6,000 or so miles.
The IRS mileage rate is $0.51 (fifty one cents) per mile, and I’ve found that it generally is actually a realistic measure of costs.
That would mean $3,000 or so just in gas and wear and tear.
A typical cab (story doesn’t say what type of car) gets worse mileage than most other cars, and gas prices have gone up quite a bit from when the IRS made its rating. So the cab driver is probably coming out ahead, but not by much.
“We got a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim meaning ??I didn’t get it
Those two guys are meshuganah. I can rent a car in NYC, drive to Los Angeles and back, and the total bill for the round trip, including 12 nights of motels, gasolene for about 6,000 miles, and 12 days of food would cost about $3,000.00. They paid $5,000 for one way only! It just doesn’t make sense.