An owner operator in the transportation business is a person or persons who own a vehicle (descriptions to follow of a vehicle) and do work for various limousine companies. We the limousine company, consider this farm out work. We, the limousine company, cross our fingers and hope the job gets completed correctly by the person we gave the ride to.
Owner operators are now known as IO's: Independent operators. As with anything else, there are good ones, okay ones and "I can't believe I'm giving this guy a ride" one's.
The vehicles they drive vary from a pristine late model Lincoln Town Car or Cadillac DTS to a "did you get the number of the dump truck that ran over your car" car. Here is a small example. A number of years ago in the late 80's, my wife and I were coming back from a convention in Atlantic City and we were discussing this very subject. We dealt with a man from Rockland County who was very enterprising and he had several IO's operating under him. His name was Bo. He always did a great job, but we never met him or knew what type of vehicles he had. Smart business people we were.
Anyway, as we were coming north on the NJ Turnpike, we passed a 19something era Lincoln Town Car with livery plates so we knew it was a vehicle from our industry. Let me think for a moment and try to remember if there was a fender or door without a dent........ No, there wasn't. The duct tape on the bumper was a nice touch though, the silver on black faded paint has a certain flair to it. And as we drove by this piece of crap, I remember saying to Doris, "I wonder if that is one of Bo's guy's". We shuddered at the thought, because we knew he was doing a ride for us about that time.
We decided at that moment we had to start meeting our farm out people. (Oh, by the way, that piece of crap was not owned by any body we did or do business with.)
An IO is critical to our industry, because we are counting on them to operate as as one of our's. There is alot of trust that they will do the ride as well as one of our own chauffeurs.
When I talk about the size of our company, I never include the IO's we have working with us. Maybe I should. It would make us look alot larger than we are. After all, I know a company that is based in California, and gives work to companies in New York, and they consider the vehicles in New York a part of their fleet even though they don't pay the freight on them. But this is our industry. How can I twist "this" to make it look like "that" so you the consumer will think I am who I am not.
Oh, what the heck. I guess Perfect Limo has to stay who we are. A fantastic mid size operator who cares about how we do business and make sure we treat all of our customers with quality service and always keep them our number one priority.
