Its is NYC in 1928 and taxi-cab owners Tim McGuerin and Eddie Corbett are making a hard-scrabble living with the one tumbledown cab they have between them, and take shifts driving. They have plans to expand and already have their second cab in their garage, lacking only a motor. Tim, led into a burlesque theatre by a rich drunk, Reginald Van Nostrum, who has rented the cab for the day, falls in love at first sight with dancer Sadie O'Brien, who has also caught the eye of gangster Louis Glorio, and the latter is none too thrilled with Tim's courtship of Sadie. The latter though is taken also with Tim, and barely even knows that Glorio has staked a claim on her. She gives two of Glorio's henchman, Stretch and Joe the money to buy a motor for Tim and Eddie's second cab. The two, in an economy move, steal the motor from the first cab and install it in the second cab. Meanwhile, Glorio has his henchman Silk plant guns and booze in the boy's cab, while they are playing baseball, and the police are called. After several hours of intense grilling in which the "thoirty-thoid" degree grilling of Tim and Eddie does more damage to the grillers than the grillees, the police finally release them, primarily because they have discovered that a fingerprint on the planted tommy-gun belongs to a long-sought gangster known as the Frisco Ghost. Silk, despite his name, is not the smoothest nor brightest star in hoodlum circles and has planted a gun taken from (what must have been a big) drawer in Glorio's desk. Glorio is about to force Tim to aid him in escaping the fast-approaching police in his cab, which might have been a good plan if the cab had still had a motor.