Lincoln Journal-Star article here
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Showing posts with label January 23. Show all posts
Showing posts with label January 23. Show all posts
Monday, January 23, 2017
What 10 Luxury Cars Are Ready To Shine In 2017?
Turtle Top Shuttle Ready For Workhorse Duty
To balance the costs of running a diverse fleet, many operators rely on vehicles that complement the luxury image, but run reliable and cheap.
A 2011 Ford E-450 14-passenger shuttle minibus now available on Limoforsale.com fits that bill. The Turtle Top-built bus goes for $33,900 at 96,000 miles. SPECS, PHOTOS & SELLER INFO HERE.
With the right shuttle contracts or client mix, this used luxury shuttle bus can run up a high profit margin. The seller has multiple in stock.
Keywords
dealerships Limoforsale.com mini-buses online vehicle sales shuttle buses Turtle Top used vehicles vehicle sales
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Continental Is The Car Lincoln Was Begged To Build
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Grech Motors Introduces Newly Designed 2017 F550 GM33 Bus
Equipped with either a powerful 6.7-liter V8 turbo diesel engine or 6.8-liter V-10 gasoline engine, the new 2017 F-550 GM33 minicoach can seat up to 27 passengers as a shuttle with rear luggage.
Better Design for a Better Bus
In true Grech Motors fashion, the new GM33 gets all the details right. Grech Motors’ signature lines and elegant, modern design are complemented by the 2017 F-550’s new front cab, which features a sleeker, aerodynamic profile and redesigned grill. The bus offers unparalleled curb appeal and distinctive styling that enhances the travel experience for passengers while helping operators build luxury brands and grow their businesses.
Ford’s new 2017 F-550 chassis retains an all-new fully boxed under-cab and C-channel aft-of-cab frame made of 95% high-strength steel with up to 10 crossmembers (eight through-welded). Torsional rigidity is eight times greater than the previous design.
Connected to this new frame is a high-strength, military-grade, aluminum alloy body, which is lighter than the steel previously used yet is immensely strong. It’s also more dent-and ding-resistant and not subject to red rust corrosion. This complements Grech Motors’ riveted, aircraft-grade aluminum skin.
In addition to its stronger body and frame, the 2017 Ford F-550 chassis also features a suspension, brakes, driveline, transfer case and axles larger and heftier for greater strength and capability. The components of the 4-wheel anti-lock brakes contain the largest rotors in class, which increases their longevity and maximizes their stopping power.
Combined with Grech Motors’ high-strength steel bus cage, the new 2017 GM33 F-550 luxury bus is the safest, most comfortable, and best-looking midsize bus on the market.
2017 Ford F-550 Powertrain Specs
- 6.8-liter V-10 gasoline engine: 288hp and 424 lb-ft torque
- 6.7-liter V-8 turbo diesel engine: 330hp and 750 lb-ft torque
- TorqueShift 6-speed SelectShift automatic transmission
Learn more about the new 2017 GM33 F-550 by visiting:http://bit.ly/2017f550
About Grech Motors
Grech Motors designs, makes, and sells the world’s most advanced minicoaches and Sprinters. The company was founded by Ed Grech to revolutionize group ground transportation. Innovation and quality are at the core of Grech Motors and guide everything it does, from engineering and design to fit and finish. Grech Motors is based in Riverside, Calif. Information: www.grechmotors.com.
Source: Grech press release
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How To Find The Right Financial Services For Your Business
Many operators know their industry, but few know how to read complex financial statements or optimize tax positions. Therefore, it is vital to accomplish the requirements of accounting in the best way.
Many of the most important questions are inter-related. Perfect individual answers are not easy to come by. Still, the questions and concerns remain:
- Why is accounting important?
- Should I outsource my accounting, or should I hire an accounting department?
- Does the same resource provide accounting and tax services?
- Is my business big enough to justify creating budgets and forecasts?
- What does a CFO do and how does it differ from these other responsibilities?
Vital For Operations
Whether you are a startup one-car operation, a medium-sized family business, or a large corporation, you should measure your financial performance. After all, these are for-profit businesses, not charities or hobbies, so how you profit (or do not) is one of the most critical factors to measure. Accounting is a common, scientific language that uses set standards, processes, and rules to transform a company’s performance into readable and understandable data. The rules of accounting are generally consistent across nearly all industries. Following those rules allows a business to understand what is going right versus wrong, and what to do about it. It provides the score and report card for the business. It is critical you do that work correctly.
For that reason, most accountants look to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) as the standard for businesses to follow. These rules are captured in volumes of documents, and updated regularly, which is why you should stay abreast of them. They are also difficult to understand, decipher, and apply to your business situation. Still, several overriding important elements should answer the other questions raised.
One of the most important elements of GAAP is the separation of duties — that is, no one person should perform all the accounting duties. Rather, they should be divided so different participants conduct various aspects of the accounting process. By dividing workloads, we avoid conflicts of interest.
Another important aspect is the notion of matching — that is, revenues should be accounted for in the period earned; expenses follow the same rule. This is the notion of accrual accounting, a higher level of accounting than many bookkeepers can provide. With experienced accountants, improved accounting methods can be used. So how should accounting work in your business?
Balancing Your Accounting Needs
If you already have accounting capabilities in-house, you likely do it on your own as long as there is more than a single person. If you do not have enough or the right type of in-house resources, then the best solution is outsourcing.
In today’s accounting services market, outsourced services are common. A team of accountants from different backgrounds and specialties provides fractional resources on a budget and with services agreed upon. The most mundane responsibilities of balancing merchant statements and recording bank and credit card transactions are completed by the staff accountant. A senior accountant then checks and reconciles them. Reconciliations are reviewed, and an accounting manager creates the analysis. If appropriate, a CFO meets with the owner once a month to discuss the effects of the prior month, how they differed from the budget, resulting consequences, and what the operator should do about it.
This team approach typically ranges from $2,000 to $6,000 per month depending on the services provided. Still, they are less than the cost of a single employee and provide the insurance of degreed and certified accountants performing the duties in a safe and secure way.
In these arrangements, the team can use an accounting system already in place, or they can assist in putting up a new system. Most often, simple systems such as QuickBooks are adequate. Licenses are annual, so you can pay as you go, and most accounting services know how to use the system. Reports will be tailored to meet the business’ needs, thereby creating other benefits:
- Payroll can be run through QuickBooks. If you already have a payroll service, you might find insourcing the payroll function, in the hands of professional accountants, could lower the price and speed up the processing of payroll.
- Annual report requirements can be supported. If you use a single resource, the time requirements and legal risk associated with end-of-year reporting (like 1099s), tax preparation, partnership, and corporate filings, create unnecessary business risk. Accounting service firms provide this relief as well.
[PAGEBREAK]
Clearly, using a variety of resources is better than using a single one. Similarly, using separate tax and accounting services is better than working with a single firm. While that may seem inefficient, the practice allows you to work with specialists, each with a different set of eyes all intended to protect your interests. The accounting firm creates a set of financial statements the tax firm optimizes. Knowledge of how to create the financials is different than the knowledge of how to optimize its tax treatment — two separate firms are better.
Remember a bigger firm is not necessarily better. Often what you get from the “Big 4” international accounting firms are high prices and newly-hired college graduates. The premium paid for that prestigious signature on financial documents is, most likely, not necessary for small- to medium-sized business. Instead, choose a local or regional tax firm. Identify what firm to use by getting referrals from your accounting firm, your business banker, or from the local chamber. Working with local firms brings added benefits such as lower costs, deeper interest, local knowledge, and referrals unavailable when working with the big firms. Most important is the quality of the people working on your account, and a seasoned and local tax firm will more likely provide a better service.
Finally, it should be noted outsourcing of professional services does not end your responsibilities. When using multiple resources at different entities, communication becomes more important and something you may need to coordinate to get the full benefits of the services you buy. Unless you are skilled at conducting these relationships individually, you would be well advised to get these parties to communicate with each other and with you. Regular meetings should occur to ensure all parties are on the same page. While each seeks to protect your best interests, your financial reports and plans require communication and coordination to ensure correct implementation and continued viability.
Do I Need A CFO?
In many ways, coordinating all the pieces of accounting and reporting is the job of a CFO. While many businesses consider themselves too small to afford a CFO, they are the ones who most need the CFO’s expertise. Rather than a pure accounting responsibility, the CFO acts more as a conductor and coordinator of the professional services around the business. The CFO speaks the various languages, understands how to transform business strategy into economic principles, and always seeks to optimize the business. Don’t underestimate what this set of skills can add to your operation.
In a fractional environment using part-time, on-demand services, the CFO has the responsibility as the last line of defense. The beauty of modern services is this can be achieved without permanently hiring. By using a strategy of coordinated outsourced accounting services, the CFO, the accounting manager, and the staff and senior accountants all can be a part of your team. And they use the most current systems armed with the most current laws and regulations specifically tasked with properly accounting for your business. Hiring this expertise in-house is impossible for most operators, but with fractional services, the costs may equal a good salary. But you get a team with multiple areas of expertise to properly and legally document your business’ financial performance. For nearly every livery operator, outsourcing is the way to go to lower cost and improve your reporting compliance.
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Tesla Model S: The First Driverless Armored Vehicle?
Stafford on Jan. 18 mentioned a crash test video he once saw in which a post was driven into a driver’s door at a rate of 60mph of both a Volvo S60 and Tesla Model S. The S60 had a foot intrusion, while the Model S stopped the intrusion at about six inches. He referred to the video while meeting with editors of LCT and related fleet vehicle magazines at parent company Bobit Business Media’s headquarters in Torrance.
Both the Tesla Model S and X have five-star safety ratings, and the upcoming Model 3 is designed to achieve the same. If one does get into a collision, the large, dense metal battery protects passengers and slows down the impact.
The company began by testing the vehicle’s own weight (about 4,700 lbs.) on top of it, but saw no result. They doubled and tripled the pressure, and it still didn’t collapse. They would have tried to quadruple it, but the machine couldn’t do it. “We wanted to go for a six star rating, but it doesn’t exist,” Stafford said.
He also mentioned Tesla vehicles have now reached a Level 3 autonomy rating. This means drivers are still necessary, but are able to completely shift “safety-critical functions” to the vehicle, under certain traffic or environmental conditions.
Although this might raise privacy concerns, the data collection isn’t for advertising purposes. “We are looking at it from a standpoint of how the vehicle responds, and we want to use this data to improve our process.”
With companies such as Google, Uber, and Lyft are trying to break into the self-driving vehicle market, LCT asked if Tesla was looking to partner with any Transportation Network Companies. Stafford responded, “We haven’t approached them, and they haven’t approached us.”
Keywords
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Saturday, January 23, 2016
Big Group Business Bodes Well For Motorcoaches
There’s good news for large fleet operators who supply full transportation services for meetings and conventions — and those smaller companies looking to gain a slice of the farm-out pie. 2016 is shaping up to be another growth year.
Positive economic trends combined with the global expansion of companies will drive growth for the meetings industry this year, according to the American Express Meetings & Events 2016 Global Meetings Forecast.
Bucking Bulls
Companies are bullish on holding employee face-to-face meetings, although we live in a 24/7 non-stop digital communication age, the report states.
“The resurgence of meetings and events over the past few years has allowed meeting professionals to demonstrate the strong value that face-to-face meetings continue to offer globally,” said Issa Jouaneh, senior vice president and general manager, American Express Meetings & Events.
Another bright spot for limousine companies is an expected increase in the size of meetings and conventions, which bodes well for operations that can supply a range of vehicles for multiple transportation needs during the event.
“Our buses are running nonstop and many days our buses are sold out,” said George Jacobs, owner of Windy City Limousine in Chicago. Jacobs notes that he also gets bus bookings for special event outings, airport transfers, road shows, concerts, college sports teams, bands and “even the debate team.”
He notes that sports teams, for example, may need a motorcoach or a mini-bus depending on the number of people, equipment and the distance they must travel, and whether or not they need a vehicle with a restroom. He emphasizes that operators need to be able to handle all requests.
Regarding convention business, Jacobs has noticed people are more worried about prices. “For example, they may use sedans when they arrive at the airport, but they’ll group together in a mini-bus to save money on the return and that saves them money.”
He also has seen heavy use of buses to shuttle large groups among hotels and conventions sites that run continuous routes. Convention planners are looking for a one-stop-shop vendor to provide all transportation needs, he says. They want a company to offer sedans, SUVs and buses to also take them to dinners, functions and events.
Cost Conscious
Still, operators embedded in the meetings and convention business say that planners hiring ground transportation are cost conscious, expect more services, and don’t always understand the difficulty of logistics and the operation of motorcoaches.
“Meeting planners are looking for vendors like us to do more of the legwork to help them design more trips,” says Tony Simon, COO of Reston Limousine in Dulles, Va. “Everybody is stretched these days. It’s twofold — clients are looking for low pricing and meetings planners are trying to make a decent amount of money.”
One of the trends Simon notices is that meeting planners are making more last-minute changes and expecting transportation providers to make it happen.
“Society is all about ‘now’ and people feel they can get anything they want, whenever they want,” he adds. “For example, a wedding planner may have ordered one bus and then ask for two more buses at the last minute and expect it to just happen. It’s actually becoming the norm so we have to scramble to provide more buses. We’ve basically adapted and are used to it now.”
[PAGEBREAK]
Extra Services
Another trend Simon points out is that meeting planners want transportation companies to assist them on site, but they don’t always want to pay for it.
“We look at it as a risk assessment issue,” Simon says. “They want to spend less but that increases our risk of not performing to the level of their expectations, so we find ourselves providing staff to make sure everything goes right.”
Stephen Story, president of James River Transportation in Richmond, Va., says, “Meeting planners are looking for experienced, quality and very organized service providers — not the cheapest price. Companies that just provide basic transportation and rely on the planners to direct them are not successful. The event looks bad, the planners look bad, and the attendees have a poor experience.”
Adds Simon, “Meeting planners are using one full-service vendor for all of their transportation needs. We’ll tell them that if we need more vehicles, we’ll use our affiliate network and they are fine with that. In some cases, they know the affiliates, but they still want to hold one company accountable.”
Variable Fleets
Regarding trends, Simon says Reston is seeing more bookings for mini-buses and buses. In the big picture, Story says, “We are all over the board with meeting and event types. For us, the event type depends on the season. The more popular types are association and church conventions, corporate events, outdoor leisure events and sporting events.”
Echoing his colleagues, Story says groups are booking motorcoaches, mini-coaches, and sedans and vans for VIPs.
When dealing with convention clients and meeting planners, Story suggests consulting with convention clients to help them simplify logisics and save on costs, such as matching types of vehicles with capacities. “A client may come to us and say ‘we need five buses,’ but after we discuss the plan, they may need only two buses that can do quick loops to move a large group rather than more buses. It’s important to talk to clients about their transportation parameters.”
In another example, if a client can live with a 30-minute timeframe at the airport for a group coming in, James River can combine the group transportation so they can all travel together, saving money. “They may have budgeted 30-40 transfers but we can get their manifest and schedule a group pickup, and if the client wants sedans and vans for executives, we can manage grouping them together in a few sedans,” Story says.
One interesting trend Story has noticed is that corporate clients are requesting smaller buses so employees can interact. “Companies don’t want 20 employees spread out on a big bus I’m finding. They want them closer together for team building so the people in the front of the vehicle can talk to the people in the back. It’s becoming a big deal,” he says. He also reinforces what many operators have discovered with wedding transportation. “Big wedding parties are using more buses because it’s both economical and the “smush” factor. They’re all in formal attire and they don’t want to be all smushed together in sedans or limousines.”
Because companies such as Reston and James River are busy, they often farm-out mini-bus and motorcoach work to affiliates. To maintain sevice levels, it’s all about building a relationship with affiliates, Story says. “We have to make sure they have the expertise in dealing with meetings planners because they can be so stressed out and abusive to vendors at times. You need to develop relationships with operators who can stay calm, especially with big weddings.”
Real-World Logistics
One of the problems operators often deal with when they provide motorcoach transportation for large events is managing client expectations versus the realities of the real-world logistics management.
“Many people don’t understand that you just don’t rev up a bus and off it goes,” says Stephen Story, president of James River Transportation in Richmond, Va. “There is a lot involved in its operation, and also buses are big and it takes more time to navigate through streets, turns and other factors that take more time than using sedans.”
Communication and experience in logistics are also paramount to providing motorcoach service. “To get 500 people on buses in an orderly, timely manner takes experience. You just don’t have the buses show up and pack people in. For example, you can’t have all the buses lined up and all loading at the same time because if the first bus isn’t fully loaded, it can’t leave and the other buses behind it are just stuck there.”
Story notes that logistics is about mixing and matching vehicles to meet the client’s needs, coordinating drivers, communication, and having staff and greeters onsite to manage a smooth operation.
“If the meeting planner is just using volunteers who lack knowledge of logistics who may load that backfires, it all can blow up in their face,” Story says. “If a meeting planner’s budget doesn’t include onsite greeters and supervision, we recommend it and explain why and what could go wrong. But if they turn it down, we try to make sure the client is aware of the issues because we want to be upfront about all of the potential problems than can go wrong and protect ourselves because our name is on the buses if things don’t go smoothly.”
Keywords
building your clientele charter and tour charter and tour operators Chicago operators fleet management George Jacobs group transportation How To James River logistics mini-buses motorcoaches Reston Limousine Stephen Story Tony Simon Virginia operators Washington DC operators Windy City Limousine
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