Metro

Life goes to hail

How the mighty have fallen.

A former Wall Street guru who once pulled down $250,000 a year now spends his time wandering the hard streets of New York — as a cabby.

Jack Alvo, 49 — who escaped the World Trade Center on 9/11 — lost his sweet finance job after the financial plunge in 2009.

Desperate, a friend suggested that the father of two start driving a taxi.

“I thought, ‘You must be crazy.’ Forty-eight hours later, I called up how to get a hack license,” Alvo told The Post yesterday.

Alvo found the first few months of driving to be much more interesting than he had anticipated.

“There’s a bit of ‘glamour’ period,” he recalled.

“You’re meeting a lot of people. I think like anything else, when you first start out in a business, there’s a honeymoon phase.

“It was kind of freeing, like letting your hair down,” Alvo said of the career switch.

The Forest Hills, Queens, native — who worked at Morgan Stanley in the WTC — said he now makes about $300 on a good day.

Despite the pay cut, there are some benefits to driving a cab.

“There is that little bit of immediate gratification. You go out and work hard and know there’ll be cash at the end of the day,” he said.

“With a lot of other businesses, you have to dish out a lot of money to get it off the ground.”

He said it takes a little bit of luck — and a lot of skill — to earn as much as he can during his 12-hour shift.

“It’s fishing. When you’re fishing like that, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll never catch a fish,” he said.

His strategy involves hitting TriBeCa first thing in the morning because people there tend to go to work earlier, he said.

He then tries to head to the Upper East Side, where he also swings back to in the afternoon to get mothers and nannies picking up kids from school.

“When someone gets in a second or third time, you look at the clock and where they’re standing. You at least try and bring the car back to them.”

Even though the past 2 1/2 years riding around have been enjoyable, Alvo — who keeps copies of his résumé in the back of his cab for passengers with clout — hopes to soon go back to work in an office.

“I’m working on a few things, looking at something financial again, a real-estate venture, and I’m just considering writing a book,” he said.