Lawyers With Limos To The Rescue

David Kohlmeier, director of business operations for the Las Vegas Defense Group, understands how stressful being in trouble with the law can be. Recently retired from law enforcement, he served the community for 17 years and isn’t about to stop now.

It all began when someone with a warrant for their arrest called the firm looking for help. “I told him if he could come down to the law office and meet with one of the attorneys, we could go over the situation and fill out some paperwork to try and get him some help,” Kohlmeier explains. The lawyers would then attempt to have his warrant recalled and quashed.

After waiting awhile for him to arrive, Kohlmeier called the man’s family and learned the reason for his tardiness: he had been arrested as he was driving to the firm. “I felt bad. You ask people to come down because they need help but if they have a warrant and they get stopped by the police, it doesn’t help their situation,” he says. He believes it’s more of a personable experience when new clients come into the office, and wants to reassure them in person that he and his legal team can assist them.

Help Is On The Way

To ensure situations like this never happened again, Kohlmeier (who also has a background in marketing) came up with a plan. He would contact a car service to pick up potential clients from their homes and bring them to the office. This would reduce the chance of an arrest if the person is in warrant status.

“If the person was arrested for DUI and their car was totaled or their license was taken away, how can I ask them to drive to the law firm?” he says. Not only would that be illegal, they could also be suffering from PTSD and feel extremely uncomfortable.

Naturally, the first suggestion brought up by some of the attorneys was Uber. Kohlmeier nixed the idea from the start. “I didn’t feel it was a luxury service and I also knew that for liability purposes, I wanted to deal with a credible, reputable company,” he says. The Las Vegas Defense Group believes in providing legendary customer service, and that is why he thought a luxury vehicle picking up a client would fit best. After doing some research, he decided to go with Bell Limousine.

“We are one of the largest transportation companies in Nevada, if not the largest,” says Breck Opeka, general manager of Bell Limousine. With an impressive fleet consisting of a variety of makes and models including sedans, SUVs, limos, vans, buses, and limo buses, the company is proud to be a part of the program. “David’s taking the initiative and making sure clients get picked up and transported to where they need to go with a reliable company…it’s a great program.”

When a client needs a ride, The Las Vegas Defense Group will call Bell Limousine and order a vehicle any time of the day. Typically the client is picked up by a chauffeur in a black Lincoln sedan. Under the current contract, the firm pays $96 for a round trip.

Kohlmeier’s idea is one ripe with opportunity for ground transportation companies. “Not everyone with a warrant is a bad person, and many people don’t even know they have a warrant. It could be for a simple traffic ticket they forgot about. People make mistakes, but it doesn’t deserve a trip to the jail. If anything, a trip to a lawyer’s office would be much better,” he says. Having previously worked in the Community Relations Unit as a police officer in Henderson, Nevada, Kohlmeier sees this as another crime prevention program helping society.

“Some people may think the idea is funny, but we truly believe in going above and beyond to help another person in troubled times. The Las Vegas Defense Group wants to go the ‘extra mile’ to help their clients.” Not only would you be helping people get to where they need to be, you would be giving them peace of mind as well. It’s not unlikely they could come to you looking for a limousine to celebrate after the hard times are over.

Good Samaritans

Why would a law firm go this far to make sure their clients were treated so well?

Because Neil Shouse, founding partner at the Las Vegas Defense Group, cares about those who are having a rough time. “Being arrested can be one of the most traumatic events in a person’s life, especially if they are away from home…Offering a luxury car service to bring someone facing criminal traffic charges to our offices so they can receive the help they need immediately is just one of the ways we strive to make our clients as comfortable as possible through a difficult journey.”

The initial set up of the program began in August, and has since been used twice. “It takes people time to understand this is something a law firm can even do,” says Kohlmeier. As more people realize the good intent behind what the people at Las Vegas Defense Group are doing, hopefully more will take advantage of this gesture of goodwill.

The Las Vegas Defense Group is located just west of the Stratosphere hotel, ideal for any tourists who need help. Las Vegas visitors or residents who have been involved in a car accident or stopped for a DUI can contact the law firm at (702) 333-3673 (DEFENSE) to arrange for the free luxury car service. An attorney and case manager will meet with a prospective client for a free case evaluation.

Keywords

Bell Trans   criminal incidents   drunk driving   Las Vegas   Las Vegas operators   law enforcement   lawyers   legal counsel   legal issues   Nevada operators   partnership contracts   tourism   WebXclusive   

 

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Wynne Transportation Moves Ahead With Motorcoaches

DALLAS and IRVING, Texas — Wynne Transportation occupies a former rental car counter building on a flat five-and-a-half acre lot. Throughout the day, a steady stream of commercial airliners fly overhead. Dust from nearby housing construction sites at times blows over, speckling the black vehicles and white buses. Parking lots, low office buildings, hotels and storage facilities are neighbors. You’re likely to see the occasional, iconic tumbleweed sweep in from nearby plains.

While many businesses would not consider it the choicest property, for a motorcoach and limousine company, the location couldn’t get any better. Wynne is the closest such company to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), the fourth busiest in the world, and has immediate access to I-35, the region’s main north-south artery.

There’s plenty of room for all 69 fleet vehicles, offices, a fuel tank, a maintenance garage, tire storage, vehicle wash facilities, and about every function needed for a full-service, 24/7 ground transportation service. When you hear the term “in-house,” Wynne has it all. As its vice president and namesake, Bedford Shelmire Wynne, Jr. likes to say, transportation is all about logistics.

Career Merger
Finding the ideal location for a motorcoach and limousine company, however, was not a coincidence, nor just good luck. It resulted from the background and expertise of owner and founder, and Bedford’s mother, Joan Wynne, a regal, refined Texas dame who has parlayed an entrepreneurial career in commercial real estate into luxury ground transportation. When Mrs. Wynne approaches a dining room table, all seated gentlemen stand.

She knew exactly how to look for and acquire the location in 2009. It now supports a company that has flipped from 70% sedans and black vehicles versus 30% buses in 2008, to 70% motocoaches and buses versus 30% sedans and black vehicles, says CFO Phillip Capers, who joined Wynne Transportation in 2002. As anyone who has owned, run or managed a chauffeured transportation company in the last decade knows, such a “flip” is considered a sign of success as many limousine companies add motorcoaches.

Some of Wynne’s top accounts include a roster of Fortune 500 companies, elite five-star hotels and professional sports clients. Dallas ranks second in the U.S. for Fortune 500 company headquarters. From selling properties, to serving Fortune 500 companies, to running motorcoaches — the connections for Joan Wynne are literal.

A Dallas Story
Joan Wynne entered the commercial real estate business in 1985, a field she notes is male dominated just like the limousine industry. “My dad told me I could be a schoolteacher or a nurse, like many parents did,” she recalls. “I said, ‘No, I want to do something that women aren’t expected to do, something in business that was more challenging and fun.’”

Joan Wynne worked for a real estate company for a few years, buying, selling and owning a mix of residential and commercial properties. Her husband, Bedford Wynne Sr., a prominent Dallas attorney and businessman who was once part owner of the Dallas Cowboys, died in 1989 at the age of 65, according to the Know Your Cowboys website. Wynne Sr. was present at the meeting in Miami in 1960 when NFL owners officially approved the Dallas club as a franchise. He held the position of director and secretary of the Cowboys. In 1967, he sold his minority stake in the Cowboys to help organize the expansion of the New Orleans Saints.

Joan Wynne started her own company in the early 1990s, where she also hit upon her future career. When clients wanted to look at office buildings for sale or lease, she would take them around in a six-passenger stretch limousine. “I’d put them in it and pick them up at the airport, slip in a video of the property we were looking at, and later drink champagne if the deal was solidified,” Joan Wynne recalls. “And if it wasn’t, I’d lock the door and keep them in there until it was,” she jokes.

Because she couldn’t park a stretch in her Highland Park neighborhood, she found a limousine service near the airport to park, clean and insure it for her. When she wasn’t using the stretch for real estate visits, the limousine company would use it as an overflow vehicle for weekend runs. Demand was enough that she earned about $1,500 per month after expenses on that one stretch.

The owner then asked for another, so Wynne bought a limousine company with 10 vehicles in Austin and Oklahoma City. She brought all the vehicles back to Dallas and hired someone to run it as a weekend service. Wynne drew affiliate work from Boston Coach, prompting her to buy more vehicles and hire chauffeurs.

“It got so overwhelming, I didn’t have time to do real estate anymore,” she says. “I asked my son to come help me, because I sometimes had 50 rides coming in per day. Somehow I did it, and it just grew from there.”

From 1995 on, the company evolved into a full-service chauffeured transportation service, and after 2008, expanded with a motorcoach division running 29 buses and counting. Joan Wynne also credits her growth to the company’s formal status as a woman-owned business. It was certified with the Women’s Business Council Southwest a few years after she started the company. The credential helped her get a long list of corporate Fortune 500 level contracts, and to this day she pursues new clients in that category.

Lots On The Lot
The Wynne headquarters and facility has a maintenance garage and raised repair platform that can handle motorcoaches. It has a high-pressure chemical car wash bay and equipment, tire storage area, and a fuel tank that stores 10,000 gallons, divided between diesel and unleaded. One portion of the garage resembles a parts warehouse, with A/C pumps, airbags, light bulbs, brake discs, filters and marker lamps among the many components lining the shelves. Wynne is staffed with five mechanics, certified by MCI and Temsa.

“You must have a good preventative maintenance program,” Bedford Wynne says. “You change your belts, tires, fan motors more than the manufacturer recommends. You should also have one extra item of every mission critical piece of equipment on each bus, such as belts and fuses.”

[PAGEBREAK]

Unlike many chauffeured operations at the cusp of the Great Recession, Wynne bought its first motorcoach in 2008 and now has 29, plus 17 cutaway-style mini-buses. The buses have led to a consistent mix of group transportation clients, such as churches, schools, youth groups, scouting organizations, and universities.

At the time, Wynne had been outsourcing its motorcoach business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Bedford Wynne, who studied international business in Switzerland, decided to buy a Dallas-based boutique motorcoach company with six buses, according to a detailed financial analysis he did, and then six more. From there, the company would buy one or two more at a time.

“The growth has been phenomenal,” Joan Wynne says. “I didn’t realize how it would grow. I didn’t know there was so much of a need for motorcoaches, so many additional sport teams and activities. All these kids need to go somewhere, like to Houston, Austin or San Antonio for a tournament, for five hours. So they jump on a bus.”

Wynne buys some buses new, some used. They have found that it’s best to keep them up to five years or 350,000 miles when higher maintenance starts to kick in. The Wynnes also decided to hire mechanics due to the increased liability of running motorcoaches.

“Our name is on the side of every bus,” Bedford Wynne Jr. says. “As a family run organization, we care intimately about our clients. We both have our personal home phone numbers listed in the white pages so our clients can reach us anytime. As situations arise, we rectify them quickly and eliminate potential surprises before they can happen.”

The company emphasizes its safety record and practices, especially the three-point seatbelts on its motorcoaches. CFO Capers likes to relay an anecdote about a client who “Googled” the terms “safety, ground transportation, buses, and Houston,” and found Wynne in Dallas. (A recent search with those terms puts Wynne fifth in SEO rankings). “We believe that safety is not an accident; it is a way of life,” Capers says.

“It’s not uncommon to have 3,000 people come into Dallas,” Joan Wynne says. “They need a full service transportation company. For seven years we were the only ones in Dallas that offered sedans to motorocoaches. And by doing a lot more in-house, we can add more to the bottom line.”

New Venture
Most recently, Bedford Wynne Jr. bought an entertainment coach on Dec. 11, 2015, a 2009 Prevost Le Mirage XL II, the company’s second. He acquired it for $375,000 with 350,000 miles. Called “Comedy,” it features a tiled Hollywood-style walk of fame inside with stars bearing the names of famous comedians like Jack Benny, George Burns, Charlie Chaplin and Bob Hope.

Wynne Transportation has launched a segment devoted to road shows and tours for sports teams, bands, performers and entertainment industry clients. The sleeper coach has nine bunk beds, along with living room-style seating, a kitchen, dining area and bathroom. The first bus also has proven popular with high school and college sports teams. The dual slide bus has leveraged, retractable extensions along the left side.

The company is also boosting its social media presence and developing a mobile app. It has hired experienced managers, including Bob Lockett, who worked for 10 years at Empire CLS, and as of Jan. 1, Richard Weiner, who brings 23 years of experience at Carey Dallas. In December, Many Denson from the meeting planning firm Wyndham Jade, joined as director of sales and social media.

Role Model
For all the demands of a 24/7 ground transportation company, Joan Wynne, age 68, does not plan to slow down. She commutes daily out to Irving from her high-rise condominium in downtown Dallas, and still puts in 17-hour days when necessary.

Wynne evokes one of her longevity idols, Ebby Halliday, a Realtor and businesseswoman who was one of the first successful female entrepreneurs in Dallas. Halliday died in September 2015 at the age of 104. “I aspire to be like her; she went into the office until just before her last day. Well, I don’t think I’ll work until I’m 104,” Wynne jokes, “but I’ve got another good five years before I even start to retire.”

In coming years, she plans to fully hand over the company to Bedford Jr., who has an 8-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. “It’s nice to be able to work hard and build something up and give it to somebody instead of selling it.”

Keywords

Bedford Wynne   business growth   charter and tour operators   Dallas operators   Joan Wynne   motorcoach operators   motorcoaches   operation growth   operator profiles   Texas operators   Wynne Transportation   

 

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How To Master Client Service Spur Of The Moment

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — You may wonder how to provide unique client experiences in your operations, especially when handling clients across multiple fleet vehicles, day and night.

The first rule is to tailor the experience or amenity to the client you wish to impress. That means you listen, observe, engage and care. 

While you might not have a $2,000 daily budget as do Ritz-Carlton employees, there are many small but meaningful things you can do, such as remembering a particular brand of champagne a client prefers and gifting it to them. When a famous musician mentioned he didn’t care for the pillows at his hotel, one operator ran to a store and delivered new ones to his hotel room.

When Treanna Maddox, assistant manager of my former company, Limousine Scene, took an order from a gentleman to celebrate his upcoming wedding anniversary, she sprang into action. The couple was planning to attend the taping of the popular show, “The Big Bang Theory.” Maddox obtained a cardboard cut-out of the entire cast and positioned it in the limousine surrounded by balloons. The cast appeared to be riding in the car with the couple to the taping. They thought it was fantastic.

When Chevron wanted to entertain some foreign dignitaries in central California and show surrounding areas, including some wine tasting, Limousine Scene set up an entire day that included an onsite western style BBQ at a winery featuring cuisine unique to the area of California. Guests participated in grape stemming and crushing, enjoyed dinner served in a cave, and toured wineries and vineyards led by the owners and winemakers. 

Just Ask

Often, a phone call asking for something can get results. A group traveling two hours to patronize a club in West Hollywood worried to a reservationist about not being able to get in or waiting in line all night. A call to the club manager in advance was all that was needed to get them in a VIP line. Well, the call and advising the club manager they were VIP, if only in the mind of the limo company.

To make things easier on bus travelers leaving a hotel late in the day, arrange in advance to get luggage from the bell staff and load the bus early. It’s better for the hotel staff without the rush of 40 people trying to claim their bags all at once, and it’s better for your passengers. They simply get on the bus. Then, make a list of every piece of luggage you load by ID tag on the bag so when Mr. Jones asks if you have his bags, you can easily say, “Yes, we loaded three bags for you Mr. Jones,” and ease his concern.

What If It Costs Money?

The clients we serve are generally well heeled. If they ask you to pick up a dozen red roses, they expect to have it added to their bill. To avoid any unpleasant surprises, you might ask, “Do you have a budget in mind?” On that note, don’t forget to mark it up. You should make some profit on everything your hand touches. If a client is not a regular and asks you to purchase flowers, you would ask the same question and then tell them it will be conveniently added to their total bill for service. Unless a client gets crazy and orders a diamond ring, you should obtain whatever goods or services are requested as long as the request is legal. A note of caution: Some operators have been known to facilitate drug transactions and prostitution services. Don’t be tempted.

Details, Details, Details

When legendary Country Western singer and “Hee Haw” star Buck Owens requested limousine service (prior to his death), he frequently wanted Constant Comment tea and Jelly Belly brand jelly beans in the limousine. Once a client has requested an item two or three times, keep it on file.

If a client frequently makes a long journey and sleeps most of the way on each trip, wow them by providing a pillow and blanket. Present it in clear plastic with the client’s name written on it. If you are driving a celebrity to a concert venue to perform, by all means, call the traffic division of your local police department to inform them and ask for help. The worst thing that can happen is they refuse. That’s not likely if you point out the potential for traffic problems if your artist decides to get out and sign autographs on a sidewalk. Always think fast.

Keywords

building your clientele   celebrities   client feedback   customer service   how to   VIP service   wealthy clients   

 

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