Central London and the City
The middle of London is mostly corporate travel, hotel pickups and evenings out. The City sends us bankers to Heathrow and guests to livery hall dinners. Westminster means theatre groups and Mayfair hotels. Camden splits between King's Cross, where Eurostar groups come in at St Pancras, and the music venues up in Camden Town.
Two things shape every central trip. The first is the Congestion Charge, which applies across the zone during charging hours and goes on your quote if the route crosses it. The second is stopping. Most main roads here are red routes, and a 16-seater can't pull up wherever it likes. So we agree a pickup point in advance, usually a side street a minute from your door, and the driver calls when they're close.
In the City itself, weekday pickups around Liverpool Street and Bank are slow at peak times. Weekends are quiet, which suits early airport runs and wedding guests heading out of town.
Kensington and Chelsea brings the museum school trips. The streets around Exhibition Road have little room for anything bigger than a car, so school groups are usually dropped on a side street and walk the last couple of minutes.
For hotel pickups in Westminster, give us the hotel name and the entrance. Several of the big hotels have a side entrance where a minibus can stop when the front can't.
Southwark, Lambeth, Islington and Kensington and Chelsea ring this core. They're our nearest work, so short-notice jobs are most likely to be possible here.
East London and the Docklands
East London has the busiest event calendar in the city. ExCeL in the Royal Docks runs exhibitions most weeks. The London Stadium in Stratford hosts West Ham as well as summer concerts. And London City Airport is a few minutes from ExCeL, which makes it the easy airport for anyone in Tower Hamlets or Newham.
Canary Wharf works to its own rules. Office teams book minibuses for client events and away days, and the estate controls where vehicles can wait, so the driver usually collects from an agreed point rather than the front door of the building. For Stansted, the A12 and then the M11 is the usual route from most of east London. Under an hour from Stratford on a clear road. On a Friday in the school holidays, give it longer.
Further out, Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Havering and Barking and Dagenham book more weddings and school trips than anything else, plus a steady run of Stansted transfers up the M11. Romford has a busy Friday and Saturday night trade, and groups there often want a minibus home rather than a taxi queue at 2am.
Crossing the river is the east's weak spot. The Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels both charge a user fee now, and the Blackwall approach can queue for a long time after an O2 show.
North London
Wembley sets the calendar in the north-west. Cup finals and big concerts mean road closures around the stadium, and drop-off points move further out on event days. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium does the same along Tottenham High Road on match days. When Alexandra Palace has a big show on, Wood Green and Muswell Hill fill up.
So much of our work in Brent and Haringey is getting groups to a show and back again. The return is the hard part. Tens of thousands of people leave Wembley at once, and rather than trying to pull up at the stadium, the driver will tell you in advance where to walk to.
Away from the venues, Barnet, Harrow and Enfield are mostly school and wedding work. School fixtures are the classic north London booking, a 16-seater with a kit bag per player and a hard deadline to be back before the bell. Luton is the natural airport for Harrow and Barnet, straight up the M1. For Enfield it's usually Stansted, via the M25. The North Circular ties the whole area together and is often the slowest part of any trip, so we build it into the timings rather than hope.
South London
South of the river, Gatwick is the airport most people mean. From Croydon it's the A23 and then the M23, quick at five in the morning and a lot less so on a Friday afternoon in August. Airport runs make up much of what Bromley and Croydon book from us.
The South Circular is south London's version of the North Circular, slow at the best of times. Greenwich has The O2 on the peninsula at North Greenwich, and weddings in the grounds of the old naval college. Wimbledon has its fortnight of tennis, when everything around the All England Club gets busy. Sutton groups head out to Epsom for race days. Bexley customers cross the Dartford Crossing for trips into Kent.
Further east, Lewisham and Bexley are mostly school trips and weddings, with the A2 and A20 the main ways out towards the M25. Kingston groups lean towards day trips and students, with Kingston University in the town and Chessington World of Adventures a short drive south.
West London and the Heathrow side
Heathrow sits inside Hillingdon, and the boroughs around it give us the quickest airport runs anywhere outside the centre. Uxbridge, Hayes and Southall are short hops. Most of the airport hotels sit along the Bath Road on Heathrow's northern edge, and plenty of early pickups start there, including conference delegates and families who stayed the night before a flight. From Ealing Broadway it's usually twenty to thirty minutes outside the rush.
The west has its own venues too. Twickenham Stadium fills Richmond and Isleworth on rugby weekends, and Brentford's ground sits right by the M4. Fulham has two football grounds. Hammersmith has the Eventim Apollo, with the A4 flyover beside it carrying most of the Heathrow traffic.
One local caveat. Hammersmith Bridge has been closed to motor vehicles for years, so trips between Barnes and Hammersmith go the long way round via Putney or Chiswick. Allow for it.
London minibus hire across the M25 and beyond
Every booking starts in London, but plenty don't end there. We drive to Southampton, Dover and Tilbury for cruises, to the racecourses at Ascot and Epsom, to the coast for day trips and to away fixtures anywhere in the UK.
Royal Ascot week in June is one of the busiest weeks of the racing year, so book early if you're going. Brighton is around two hours from SE1 for a summer day out, depending on the A23, and Margate is a little longer via the A2 and M2.
For long trips, the quote covers the driver's time for the whole day, including the wait at the other end. Drivers' hours are regulated by law, so a long day out with a late finish needs planning, and occasionally a second driver.
Find your borough in the directory on this page, or call 020 7183 0567 and we'll talk it through.