The cab drivers are all lined up with nowhere to go.

Outside the doors of Terminal D at DFW Airport, travelers are greeted by a familiar sight: a row of taxis waiting to take them to a hotel or back home.

But many of these travelers look right past the traditional cab drivers and use mobile phone apps to connect with ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. Long-time cab drivers, like Mukudi Shelley, are left idle and stewing.

Thursday afternoon, Shelley, 58, sat at the wheel of a white sedan he drives for Ranger Cab. After nearly two decades as a cabdriver and probably a million miles of experience driving local roads, Shelley’s worse off than when he started hacking in the early 2000s.

Most of his trips from the airport involve taking business travelers to hotels in downtown Dallas. When times were good, he’d have six or seven such fares a day. But since the arrival of Uber and Lyft at DFW three years ago, he’s lucky if he does two or three trips a day.

The drop in business has hit his wallet hard. His annual take-home pay has dropped from $40,000 to less than $20,000.

“I’m a single parent,” Shelley said. “I need the work.”

A traveler passes taxi cabs waiting for customers at Terminal A at DFW International Airport. (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

New rules coming to DFW Airport could make make it even harder for taxi drivers. Airport officials are planning changes that could dislodge hundreds of taxi drivers who wait for customers at the upper levels of the airport closest to baggage claim. The changes, set to take effect later this year or early next, will require taxis to wait for passengers on the lower level.

"These steps are going to make us lose half of the business we still have," Reda Mohamed, director of the Driver Society of North Texas, a group representing taxi drivers, told The Dallas Morning News.

The new rules, which also prohibit vehicles from waiting curbside for passengers on upper levels, are aimed at easing congestion at the nation's fourth-busiest airport, airport officials said. In the last three years, total vehicle traffic at the airport has increased 18 percent to 1.5 million vehicles per month.

Taxi drivers see the rules as helping Uber and similar ride-hailing services, which can continue to operate on the upper level because they only show up curbside after they’ve been contacted via a phone app by the customer.

To Shelley and other cab drivers, the changes are about as welcome as a flat tire on a 100-degree afternoon. Since starting at DFW Airport in 2015, ride-hailing services have seen an eightfold increase in usage through February of this year. They now dominate the number of rides. During the same period, taxis have seen a 42 percent decline — with about 1,000 fewer daily rides than three years ago.

Beyond those specific changes at DFW Airport, there is a broader theme at work: Taxis are just another business that the internet has upended. Shelley, and drivers like him, respond in the only one way they know how — work harder. Up and down Taxi Row, drivers say they routinely put in 16-hour-days — just to make sure they get enough rides to pay their licensing fees, which can be about $60 to $70 a day, if they’re leasing a cab company’s car. And they have other expenses, including their own auto insurance, gas and airport tolls.

The long hours and financial stress is taking a toll on taxi drivers. In New York City, there have been at least six cab driver suicides in the past eight months.

"We are suffering," said Mohamed. "Nobody makes money. Who benefits from all these changes?"

As he always does, Shelley started his day at 2:30 a.m. in the airport “queue,” a staging lot on the airport perimeter. Hundreds of taxis sit there for hours before getting their turn to wait curbside a few at a time at the terminals. Shelley will work into the evening before heading home to his two-bedroom apartment in Dallas, where he typically snatches about three or four hours of sleep. Then he starts all over again.

Most ride-hailing drivers are part-timers, who do the job to earn extra income, Shelley said. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-D.C. think tank, confirms Shelley's view, finding that Uber drivers average just 17 hours a week. The Cameroon-born Shelley said he had to pass a written road test and pass a background check before he could start driving.

At his age, “I can’t stop,” he said. “This is what I know.”

American Dream

Many of the drivers idling along Taxi Row immigrated to the United States as young men, fleeing violence or poverty in their own countries. They were drawn by the American Dream of working hard and raising a family with a chance to send their children to college.

That’s the story of Hassan Ahmed, 60, who lives in Arlington. Ahmed, who immigrated from Somalia, has worked as a taxi driver for 17 years — mostly at the airport. A father of six, he’s helped three of them attend local colleges.

“Before, it was good,” he said. He could take care of his family; his wife could stay home to raise their children.

Now, he’s lost “more than 50 percent” of his income in the last three years since Uber and other ride-hailing services came on the scene, he said. Local residents aren’t using taxis as much, he explained. “The business executives take the taxis mostly.”

A tall, lean man with a warm, easy smile, Ahmed said he has to put in 16-hour days to retain even half his former income. “If you don’t put in the time, you’ll never make anything,” Ahmed said. “You have to work a long time.”

Ahmed uses his own car but still pays $70 a week to the taxi company for their name and services.

Some taxi drivers are being lured away to work for trucking companies, which need drivers. But Ahmed said driving a truck is not for him. “I’m too old,” he said. “The young people are mostly going to trucks.”

He also doesn’t want to work for ride-hailing services, like Uber, because he’s heard from those drivers that they make even less money than he does. The ride-hailing companies’ commissions take too big a bite out of the fares, he said.

Ahmed said his advice to young people would be not to get into the taxi business. “They lose time. They don’t make good money for the time they work,” he said. “If they can, they should go to school and get their degree.”

That was the dream for his family, Ahmed said.

Mid-career crisis

Caught in a mid-career crisis is Ahmed Indris. At 42, he’s still young enough to do something else. But he likes driving taxis because of the independence. He’s his own boss.

Originally from Ethiopia, Indris started driving taxis in Dallas in 2010 after moving from Las Vegas, where the economy was devastated by the collapse of the real estate market.

He’s a father of three young children ages 2 to 7.

It’s been a slow day for Indris. He arrived before 7 a.m., and nearly six hours later, he was still waiting for his first fare. “I’m serious,” he said, as he sat behind the steering wheel, with the window open and the engine off to conserve gas. “You can see, I’m sweating, too.”

Taxi driver Ahmed Indris of Dallas picks up a fare at Terminal D at DFW Airport. (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

Eight years ago, when he started at DFW, he typically had five or six fares a day — almost always to downtown Dallas.

He pays $70 a day to lease his car from Ambassador Cab. His daily goal is to work enough hours to take home $60 a day after expenses. That doesn’t leave as much time as he’d like with his family at his Dallas apartment.

Almost all of his take-home income goes to pay for rent — which is $770 a month — food and other household expenses. “It’s very tough,” he said. “No off days. Always working.”

Still, it’s better than where he came from. He was 19 when he arrived in the United States from Ethiopia.

“I came here for a better life. American Dream,” he said.

And those first few years, the dream was working. “It was really, really good,” he said.

Finally, a little after 1 p.m., a business executive climbs into the back seat as Indris helps him with his luggage. The man is heading to Las Colinas.

Indris knows the way.

Staff writer Conor Shine contributed to this report.