Behind every licensed Chicago cab, livery car and pedicab is a second license: the person’s. The city’s Public Chauffeurs register — one row per driver’s license, 29,935 rows as of August 26, 2026 — is the city’s published file of chauffeur-license records, each carrying a printed status. Its two biggest columns nearly mirror each other: 13,274 licenses are ACTIVE and 13,758 sit EXPIRED — the register holds more expired chauffeur-license records than active ones. Around that split: 941 rows are marked DENIED and 254 REVOKED; the oldest still-active license was issued August 13, 1965; 44 percent of today’s active licenses were issued since 2022, with 2023 the biggest minting year on the register; only half of active license records list a Chicago address; and the file still remembers 161 horse-drawn-carriage chauffeur rows — not one of them active. No name appears on this page: the register’s name and sex columns were never selected.
Public Chauffeurs (97wa-y6ff), 29,935 rows — one per license — retrieved August 26, 2026, the same day as the file’s newest issue date · the name and sex columns were never selected; city and state appear only in aggregate counts · statuses and types counted exactly as printedThe register, status by status
| Status, as printed | Licenses |
|---|---|
| EXPIRED | 13,758 |
| ACTIVE | 13,274 |
| DENIED | 941 |
| SUSPENDED | 693 |
| PENDING | 497 |
| INACTIVE | 373 |
| REVOKED | 254 |
| SURRENDER | 145 |
Unlike some city files, this register records its refusals: 941 rows carry DENIED, 693 SUSPENDED, 254 REVOKED, 145 SURRENDER. What sits behind any one of those statuses — the file does not say, and this page does not guess. The license-type column adds its own footnote: 28,199 PERMANENT rows, 862 TEMPORARY, 27 TRAINEE — and 847 rows typed NOT-ISSUED, a label the file prints and does not define.
Licensed to drive what
The register’s driver types, counted as printed: 19,158 TAXI rows, 10,119 LIVERY ONLY, 497 PEDICAB, 161 HORSE-DRAWN ONLY. Among the 13,274 active licenses the split is 7,976 taxi, 5,149 livery-only and 149 pedicab — yes, Chicago has 149 actively licensed pedicab chauffeurs. The horse-drawn rows are the register’s memory: 141 EXPIRED, 18 DENIED, 2 INACTIVE, zero ACTIVE — and the portal’s own description says why no new ones will appear: “Horse-Drawn Carriage license historical records appear; but are no longer issued.” Eighteen of the 161 horse-drawn rows are marked DENIED — and the rows are still there.
Three files, one trade
This is the fourth Chicago taxi file we have read whole, and the numbers belong side by side — each from its own file, on its own date, never added: 7,976 active taxi-chauffeur licenses (this register, August 26); 2,679 ACTIVE taxi vehicle licenses (the public-vehicle register, retrieved August 20); 2,925 distinct cabs that logged at least one trip in January–July 2026 (the trip file, retrieved August 25). Our derivation, labeled as ours: the city licenses roughly three taxi drivers for every taxi vehicle license it lists as active — consistent with cabs that outlive any one driver’s shift, though the files record licenses, not shifts, and none of the three explains the other two. The medallion ledger adds the price of the metal: a $6,000 median recorded sale in 2026, down from $357,000 in 2013.
When today’s licenses were minted
One caveat before any year is read: this is a current register, not a historical archive. Counting rows by issue date says when the licenses on the register today were issued — it is not a count of how many licenses the city issued in any year, because rows that left the register left this count. With that said plainly, the recent years still speak:
| Issue year | Rows on today’s register |
|---|---|
| 2014 | 1,752 |
| 2015 | 1,022 |
| 2016 | 636 |
| 2017 | 857 |
| 2018 | 724 |
| 2019 | 704 |
| 2020 | 225 |
| 2021 | 333 |
| 2022 | 993 |
| 2023 | 1,971 |
| 2024 | 1,252 |
| 2025 | 1,693 |
| 2026 | 1,415 |
The table’s low and high are both striking: 225 rows dated 2020 and 333 dated 2021, then 1,971 dated 2023 — the largest single issue-year count anywhere on the register — with 1,693 in 2025 and 1,415 already in 2026. Why the register looks this way — issuance moving, older rows leaving the roster, or both — a current register cannot separate, and we leave it open. The other end of the ledger is longevity: 522 active licenses were issued before 1990, 1,729 — 13.0 percent of all active rows — before 2000, and the oldest active record in the file was issued on August 13, 1965 — a license issued 61 years ago and still marked ACTIVE.
Where the license records list their addresses
Counted in aggregate only: 6,653 of the 13,274 active licenses — 50.1 percent — list a Chicago address. The rest spread across the region and beyond: Skokie (654), Des Plaines (546), Niles (220), Schaumburg (201), Morton Grove (188). Active licenses list addresses in 18 states, 78 of them outside Illinois. Half of the active license records on Chicago’s own register list an address outside the city — a fact the file states one address column at a time, and this page reads only in totals.
- Source: the city’s Public Chauffeurs register (97wa-y6ff): 29,935 rows, one per chauffeur license, retrieved August 26, 2026 — the same day as the newest issue date in the file. All figures were computed on the city’s portal; no row-level file was downloaded.
- Privacy: the register carries name and sex columns; neither was ever selected in any query. City and state columns were used only in aggregate counts; no address below city level exists in the file or on this page.
- Statuses and types: status, driver-type and license-type labels are counted exactly as printed. The file does not say what conduct or process lies behind any status, and this page does not infer it.
- Issue years: the register is a current roster, not a historical archive; counts by issue year are of rows on the register at retrieval, and are not a measure of historical issuance. 1,399 rows carry no issue date and sit outside the year table.
- Cross-file reads: the taxi-vehicle, trip-file and medallion figures come from our earlier pieces on those files, each named with its own retrieval window; the four files are presented side by side and never combined into a single statistic beyond the labeled drivers-per-vehicle-license division.
Computed by KCM Desk from the city’s chauffeur register, retrieved August 26, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
Related Keep Chicagoland Moving coverage
- Chicago’s Rideshare Roster: 86,195 Driver Records in June 2026, Little More Than Half Its 2017 Peak — and a Third of Them Recorded Zero Trips
- How Chicago Works, by the Numbers
- More of Chicago’s Taxi License Records Sit at VIOLATION Than ACTIVE — 3,518 to 2,679, in the City’s Own Register
- In June 2026, a Chicago Taxi Mile Cost $4.17 and a Rideshare Mile $4.21 — and the Fare Dollar Split Opposite Ways
- Chicago’s Taxi Medallions, Sale by Recorded Sale: A $357,000 Median in 2013, $6,000 in 2026 — and the File’s Most Frequent Seller Is the City Itself