Nineteen years driving taxis in Toronto ended when a Killorglin man bought the hackney plate in his own town

The first thing he noticed was the silence.

After years of engines, sirens, and late-night chatter, Seán O’Donnell rolled down a Killorglin road and heard the river again.

“It felt like a restart,” he said, easing his new hackney car past the Laune, the mountains opening like a book he’d loved and left.

From high-rises to hedgerows

In Toronto, he learned to thread a needle through traffic, to read faces in rear-view mirrors, to never trust a gap that looks too easy.

Nineteen years of shift changes, airport runs, and winter slick ended the day he signed for a hackney plate in his hometown.

“I wanted to be the guy who knows every lane, not just every shortcut,” he said, hands loose at ten and two.

Why he left a city that never sleeps

Toronto paid the rent, taught him patience, and turned him into a listener.

But the math of long hours, rising costs, and the slow grind of city living began to dull even the good nights.

“I kept thinking about the Laune, the Reeks, and a kettle humming in the kitchen,” he said. “That’s when I knew the time had come.”

The price of coming home

He saved for years, jotting numbers on scrap receipts, trimming back on small luxuries, and watching the used-car market like a hawk.

A call from a friend in Kerry tipped him to a plate coming free, and suddenly the future had a local dialing code.

He flew home with a suitcase, a plan, and a wallet that felt too thin, but a certainty that felt solid.

Learning to drive slow again

On the N70, pace is a quiet teacher.

“Back there, I judged a run by minutes,” he said. “Here, it’s by the look on someone’s face when you take the long way for the view.”

He leans into bends that reveal the river like a flash of silver, the Reeks standing stern and steady.

Bookings, not hails

A hackney isn’t a curbside hail.

It’s a phone that buzzes at odd hours, a text ping for a school run, a calendar filled with local names.

Seán’s day is strung between familiarity and small, necessary surprises.

• Early appointments to Tralee’s hospital, grocery drops to high cottages, night lifts home from the pub, and, in August, Puck Fair rides in happy loops.

What changed—and what didn’t

The wheel is the same circle, but the job is a different promise.

“Here, you carry people who tell you about their week, their dad’s new knee, their neighbour’s missing dog,” he said. “It’s not just a ride—it’s a thread.”

In Toronto, the faces blurred into a moving city; in Killorglin, they blur into a moving story you’re part of every day.

The craft returns

He keeps the car clean, not showroom cold, but the way a tool is kept ready.

He’s learned again how to lift a suitcase without breaking a rhythm, how to open a door at the perfect moment, how to make silence comfortable.

“A good fare is a good conversation,” he said, “and sometimes the best conversation is a shared quiet.”

Money, in plain terms

No job survives on romance and views.

Rates must cover tyres, insurance, and diesel that rises like a mischievous tide.

What he gains now is a balance of hours and health, a chance to close the calendar and still feel useful.

The local ledger

Puck Fair week is a joyous whirl, a reminder that a town can still be a stage.

School terms mark steady mornings; winter asks for grit and early starts; summer is visitors and patient routes.

“It’s not boom and bust,” he said. “It’s season and sense.”

The long look back

He keeps a Toronto token tucked in the glove box—a faded receipt from a 3 a.m. fare that tipped well and said “God bless, brother.”

“Back then, I thought I’d die in that cab,” Seán laughed. “Turns out I just needed a different door.”

Now his day begins with mist on the Laune and ends with a porch light.

A license, a promise

Owning a hackney plate in your own town is a small, stubborn pledge.

It says: I live here, I turn up when you call, and I’ll get you there without hurry or fuss.

It says: the road is ours, and the miles we share make a quiet kind of home.

He checks his phone, nods at a familiar name, and turns the key with a practiced calm.

Outside, the river goes about its endless business, and Seán does the same—mile by mile.