0:06

You're listening to the ground transportation podcast with Ken Lucci of driving transactions and James Blaine of PAX training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Ken and James.

James Blain 0:30

Hello, everybody. And welcome back to a very special episode of the ground transportation podcast. We just had the chauffeur driven national limousine association event in Washington, D. C. And we're going to talk about some of the big insights, some of the big changes coming, some of the things that have come up, the conversations. So we're really excited to share that with you guys. As always, I am James Blaine from PAX training. I'm joined by my co host, Ken Lucci of driving transactions

Ken Lucci 0:56

Good afternoon.

James Blain 0:57

Yeah, I will say, you know, right out of the gate, this was a little bit of a different show for me. I know that Ken, you and I have been in the same boat. We've done a lot of presentations. We've been very involved with the shows, with the National Limousine Association. And so this was one of those shows where even though we were still involved, we didn't actually have a presentation. So it was very, It was very interesting to be able to really sit back. There's a lot of effort. There's a lot of time that goes into that. You know, they kind of talked a little bit about that at the show with the behind the scenes with the education committee, all the work that goes into it, but it really kind of gave us perspective to be able to sit back and look more. One thing I want to really commend you on, Ken, and I want to say I was super impressed with going into that show was that you always do a great job when you're able to present kind of the state. of the industry's financials. And so I thought you did a really great job there. I also think Oh, go ahead.

Ken Lucci 1:51

well, it's as much work, if not more than doing a session, because when we come up with a statistic or trend that we think is important, we always verify it several different ways. Um, when we came across, you know, when we looked at the airline growth or the air travel growth. As you'll agree, the growth in air travel is going to be like a hockey stick.

James Blain 2:19

Oh, yeah.

Ken Lucci 2:19

Okay, so we drilled down to that and um, believe it or not, that's probably only about 10%, 5 10 percent of what's going to end up in the financial state of the industry report. And we're adding stuff, we're adding things to it because there's been some breaking news going on about a couple of things since the show. So I appreciate you saying that we got a lot of good feedback on it. Um, it's tough to cram. Um, all that much information into what should have been five minutes when you sponsor, you know, this when you spot when you sponsor, you basically get a high. Hello. Thank you for coming. And they've graciously Chris from CD and NLA have graciously graciously given me 10 minutes. Um, and when I rehearse those things, it's trying to, it's like, it's speed reading and trying to get everything out. But, but I think it was good substance. We get some good feedback on it and I appreciate you saying that.

James Blain 3:19

Well, and I, I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, right. That's one of the things that kind of created a bit of a wave, right? You, you had a lot of excitement coming in when you were talking about that, because I could hear the operators around me, you know, air travel go up. Yes. Right. You know, we're going to see things go up, right? All of these people are in their business, right? Even though we try to work on the business, not in the business, a lot of times, and being business owners ourselves, right, we kind of operate with those blinders

Ken Lucci 3:46

Oh, they're up to their neck in the business. There's no question about it. And you know, I got to thank you for the QR code, um, on that, on the, on the state of the industry report. That slide with the QR code, how many people do you think were in that room when we did, when the state, for the state of the industry?

James Blain 4:04

I would say the majority of the show was there. So if I had to guess it would probably be, and I'm really bad with, with counting people, but I don't know, somewhere between seven 50 and a thousand, maybe.

Ken Lucci 4:16

Yeah, I was shocked at the number of people that requested the report on Monday. That's how, I mean, it was, it was shocking. And we've really not done a lot of promotion on the report, so it tells me that people were listening.

James Blain 4:30

Yeah, and I think it really kind of teed up and something that I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about, right? Is you brought up the need for an app. We've talked about the convenience that the rideshare companies give on various episodes. And we still don't have an app in our industry. You know, regardless of the market, I can think of maybe one market that's trying to do it. And you brought up trying to. Trying to bring that convenience, trying to be able to do that. And I know that that's something that made a lot of waves in a good way.

Ken Lucci 5:02

Well, and they, you know, when we, when I, when I looked at Uber's annual reports and I've studied the crap out of them, I mean, the information I have on Uber goes up to my knee, which is not that much, but it's still a lot. And the analyst reports that we looked at Uber has an Achilles heel and the Achilles heel is they cannot predict when their capacity is going to be on the road. And they cannot predict when their capacity is going to accept the work. And they have been fighting for several years to try to make the airport business a bigger piece of their pie because 80 percent of their trips are less than 20 minutes and 20 bucks. And it's tough to make a decent margin at that, right? So when you look at, when we, when we validated the, the lack that, that Uber's trips are less than 15. percent to or from an airport begin or end at an airport. It to me, it triggered in my head. You know, we as an industry have been talking about doing a near demand app or an on demand app, and it's really not possible because the only reason why Uber is able to do what they do still is because they have Uber X drivers racing around. This is the,

James Blain 6:19

the model.

Ken Lucci 6:19

it's their model. It's it, and they're working full time. There are people that are getting in and out of cars 12 hours later, and the next guy's getting in and, and the Uber X model is, is in my estimate. We've talked about this. It's worker exploitation. That's my

James Blain 6:34

Yeah, they're, they're not getting paid in between trips, right? They're getting people to sit there unpaid, hoping for the next one.

Ken Lucci 6:39

no. And they're breaking even, breaking even on a per mile basis. So when we looked at the, when we looked at the growth of the airlines. And then we said, wait a minute, 15 less than 15 percent of Uber trips begin or end at an airport. There's a reason. Okay. The reason is you absolutely have to be there. You absolutely can't miss it. If you miss it, it's going to cost you lots of money. So my recommendation to the industry is stop talking about an on demand or near demand app and start talking about owning the airport, airport experience. The airport. app, the airport transfers are 60 percent of of why corporate America uses us. And if you lose them, if you lose that, you lose your entree into everything else, groups and meetings, larger equipment, et cetera, et cetera. So I was, I was happy that it went over. You know, I, I always go over what I'm gonna talk about with Chris Weiss. Okay. Because be, you know, just, you know, total courtesy to him. And I also trust Susan Rose from Chauffeur Driven two, and she edits everything I do, right? So when I went through that with Chris, he, I said, I originally had a couple more slides in there, and when I cut it down, he said, you've left what you need to leave. And you're really striking a good tone with Uber. A. You're showing the airline growth be you're showing they only do less than 15 percent of the trips, and you're showing that the demographic of Uber is the corporate traveler, right? The kids that are traveling today. Um, and it's, it's, it's pretty, pretty, pretty critical. The 25 to 44, those are the road warriors, right? Coming out of college. I mean, after that, they don't want to travel that much because they're having families. The other thing that was impactful, I think, was that 27 percent of Uber riders are in the top 25 wealthiest earners, the income earners.

James Blain 8:39

That was an eye opener for a

Ken Lucci 8:40

Right. So, so think about that. That's people. That's what I call the working wealthy, right? We're not talking about the crowd that, you know, goes from Palm Beach back home. They're snowbirds. We're talking about the working wealthy business class, and that's 27 percent of the riders. You know, the other thing that people, the reaction I got was, I didn't realize 60 percent of Fortune 500, Use Uber for business travel, et cetera. So I, I do think it went over well, you know, I was, as part of the show, I was a little bit, I don't want to use the term disappointed in, but I was a little surprised. I, I ducked in and out of the, um, delivering a luxury experience and it was not what I expected. Um, you and I have spent a lot of time on this because we're big believers in it. I thought that was going to be about how you convey luxury and personalized service in every one of your touch points. And it was more how to me, it was more how you capture the luxury client, you know, and I think, listen, having served and driven the luxury client. And, you know, we've talked about this with the, with the pedigree of being trained by the Ritz Carlton. I think we need, as an industry, we need to do one hell of a better job with the in client, in customer, the in car experience. And I was a little bit, I was a little bit, I also was a little bit disappointed that you weren't up on the dais, to be honest with you.

James Blain 10:17

Thank you. I've been on enough. Um,

Ken Lucci 10:20

but, to your point, not doing a 60 minute session allows us to look at the shows in a little bit of a different way.

James Blain 10:27

different.

Ken Lucci 10:28

way. Um,

James Blain 10:29

And, and my big thing was always, I always wanted to be on the first day because, you know, I think you and I live kind of in the same space and that I take it very, very seriously. If I don't have people leaving that room with solid takeaways, I feel like I've let them down, right? For me, it's never about sales. It's never anything. I want you to have takeaways. I'm the type of person that if you sit down and have lunch with me, I don't have any secrets, right? What we do is we're about building the luxury experience to build your company, to grow

Ken Lucci 11:01

it's that culture. It's creating that culture.

James Blain 11:03

Yeah. And, and I'm lucky enough that I'm one of those people that, you know, I understand that there's nothing I'm going to say or do or give you that is going to detract from what we do or who we are. And I also have come to terms with the fact that not everybody in this business is the right person to work with us. Right. So I think for me not having to worry about that, Put me in a place to be able to see it differently. And I think, you know, to, to, to your point about the luxury experience, um, big, big shout out to, to Cody from sky coach. Um, you know, he, he actually, he made, you know, our, our Aaron, who's on our team, he made his day because he'd been working with Aaron and was able to kind of share that and he worked with Aaron and was really happy. But I think that for me, a lot of times I see tons opportunity. We went to a restaurant called Philomenas. We ordered a black SUV. We told the guy where we were going to be waiting, everything. While we're walking there, I notice he's at the wrong place. So I call him up and I say, Hey, you know, we're, we're over here. It looks like you might be in the wrong place. And he goes, Oh, well, you weren't there. So I knew you were over here and I came over here and I said, Well, you know, we're at the original pickup location. He goes, So do you want me to come back? Like, well, okay, that's, that's not luxury. Clearly uber black here and not a chauffeur. He picks us up, plays Pac Man the whole way to the restaurant, right? For those of you that, that too young to remember Pac Man, hopefully nobody on here, that means you were literally eating the yellow center line, right? This guy couldn't stay in a lane, jerking between the lanes, right? To the point where, you know, Anybody that hadn't considered wearing their seatbelt, right, a couple minutes in, I, I just kind of, of course, I'm the safety guy, so I'm nudging people, and all of a sudden, you know, as soon as we got on the highway, it's just click, click, click, and then we get there, and as everybody's getting out of the car, I had ordered the vehicle. James, James, James, and I'm like, oh, okay, so at the end, you know, how was the ride? Did everything go good? Did I do a good job? And I'm like, now you've, and then, and then wants to shake my hand. I'm like, all right, you've broken like every rule I teach.

Ken Lucci 13:05

Yeah. Right. And well, first of

James Blain 13:07

and I'm super uncomfortable at this

Ken Lucci 13:09

Yep. He didn't introduce himself in the beginning. He didn't make eye contact. Exactly right. Yeah.

James Blain 13:14

Yeah. So, and, and the, the funniest part to me is, is I'm like, what do I say? I was terrified. No, I I'm a Midwesterner. I can't, like, it's not physically in me to do that, right? Even if you, like, even, you, you, I thought I had to be like, well, now I gotta take another one back to go change my shorts. But no, I'm like, I'm like, no, no, great, thanks. You know, thanks, I appreciate it, right? And then as he leaves, he runs the curb over as he leaves loud enough that the whole group of six people that was with me turns around and goes, what?

Ken Lucci 13:44

Yeah. Yeah.

James Blain 13:45

and,

Ken Lucci 13:47

Well, listen, he, you, you know, you're illustrating, you're illustrating something we talked about on the last podcast is that's the blurring of the line, right? The blurring of the line is you have uber black in the same instrument as what we do and total blurring of the line. Um. So the show I think was extremely, it was very well attended. I saw a lot of new faces. They came by our booth. I think a lot of people don't understand fully what I, what we do, which is okay because, you know, if you're new into the business, the courses are great for you. But I don't, I don't think I want to talk about enterprise value with someone who's maybe two or three years into the business yet. A lot of people came over to over to us who are younger, well, younger than me, um, thirties and forties. And they talked to, they talked about wanting to buy businesses. Um, they wanted to expand. Um, so I think the show overall was very good. I thought I saw a lot less emphasis on the EDs. I saw

James Blain 14:52

there,

Ken Lucci 14:53

still there, but a lot less emphasis, right? Um, the affiliate central event was a, uh, it was, I think, the biggest I've ever seen in a

James Blain 15:05

Yeah, it was a door buster.

Ken Lucci 15:07

Okay. Um, which, which concerns me a little bit. Okay. Because if, if, if what you're trying to do is twice a year attract, new people to use you for, to use you as a farm out company to use you as an affiliate. If that's your marketing plan, you're going to fail. You're going to fail.

James Blain 15:32

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 15:33

and, uh, listen, I, I am a big proponent of having affiliate work as fill ins. and as and building those relationships so that you can reciprocate. But I saw, I see a dependence and I see that's my focus in life. And, and it's a little bit to me. I think that we, we, uh, we need to probably teach, teach new operators that it's a part of what you should be doing. It's a part. of the business, but it's not the entire business. And listen, it's a critical part of the ecosystem.

James Blain 16:18

It is.

Ken Lucci 16:18

But I, you know, when people are asking me to introduce them to the network, the networks that are my clients, I'm like, okay, well, you know, let's, let's, let's talk about the emphasis of, of all of the different services that you can provide. So, so I said a lot, a lot of new, a lot of new people. Um, I thought the, I love the venue because it's, I love the Gaylords. The Orlando Gaylord was great. This was great.

James Blain 16:46

always one of my favorites as well.

Ken Lucci 16:49

people have said to me, they were a little disappointed that there was not more talk in the sessions on technology. And it seems like we're, we're just so vested in manual processes. And we are, you know, our tech has not come as far as it should, um, but, but a couple of, of operators that stopped by the booth. I said, what do you think so far? I'm like, Ken, they're not talking about tech. We need tech.

James Blain 18:26

I, I agree, you know, and, and big shout out to Athena Grimm on the AI session. But I think one of the things that comes out is that, you know, We, and I've, I actually at one point helped with, with one of the AA sessions, cause, cause we use that here, but there are really not a lot of products that are AI focused, AI driven that are in the industry. And I think I had a really great conversation on the show floor with one of the vendors about this. Every company now wants to say they're an AI company. there's a massive difference between understanding, using, leveraging, and having smart technology that will do work for you. And saying that you do that, or, you know, now we're an AI company because we integrated this thing, or we did this thing, right? There's, I think a lot of opportunity. Um, one of the companies we partnered with recently, um, that I think really is, has been a disrupter is the QuoPot. Right. And I

Ken Lucci 19:26

Uh, yeah. Yeah.

James Blain 19:27

looked at the quote bot, but we've got some of the biggest names in the industry, right?

Ken Lucci 19:30

Very familiar

James Blain 19:31

from, yeah, it comes from the Dozier brothers working with Dan over at Signature. And so they were able to, they've got, you know, A1A Limousine, they've got Signature, they've got, I believe, Driver Provider.

Ken Lucci 19:41

think every one of my clients is using it.

James Blain 19:43

And it's, it's interesting because, you know, technologies like that, Get to us later. We talk about them. We try to use them. We look at things, but it just feels like in our industry, we've got a little bit of a legacy feel and things like that. Technologies like that are going to allow you to not take away from the experience, but like we've, we've talked about before, right? You know, you've got to meet them where they want to be met. You've got to be able to provide multiple channels for booking.

Ken Lucci 20:17

Omnichannel. That's the name. That's the Omnichannel. It's not about how you want to talk to your customers. It's how your customers want to deal with you.

James Blain 20:28

yes. And I, and I will say that I think one of the things that, you know, and, and again, I can't say enough great things about, you know, putting these shows on how they go, but I think one of the things that I've heard that would be something great for them to look at in the future is, you know, It really goes back to how do you get all of these to play together nicely? How do you get everything to work together nicely? How do we, how do we get to the point where you don't need to worry about how you integrate stuff? And you're able to say, I've got these pieces, they plug in together, they do what they're supposed to do. And I know that's been talked about, but I don't think we're there yet.

Ken Lucci 21:04

Oh, we're not, I don't think we're any further. All right. I'll just say it. I don't think we're any, I don't think we're any further ahead than we were 10 years ago. Um, I don't, I, I don't, you know, I get, I'm a little guy, but I look extremely small. in rooms of private equity companies and investment banks. When I try to to bring capital into the industry and talk about, you know, the movement into larger equipment and diversified fleets. And AI is coming. So now is the time to get into the industry. And they all do this to me.

James Blain 21:45

So, so for those of you listening and not watching, Ken is, Ken is just shaking his iPhone at us.

Ken Lucci 21:49

I'm shaking my iPhone at you because they all say the same thing and some of them bring up, you know, brands that they don't, they. You know, they bring up Black Lane. They don't own a piece of, they've never owned a piece of metal, but they bring up, they, during the pandemic, Black Lane got a big, uh, leg up when you couldn't get an Uber driver, you know, the downloads of the Black Lane app went through the roof during, during pandemic, but I, I don't think we're, I, I think that there needs to be a massive focus to me and the conference brought out two things. The industry has a massive crisis on, on, on insurance and it's a, it's a crisis and, and, and, and, you know, maybe because I was, you know, at the summit, but I think the NLA has done a phenomenal job at corralling the state. I have to, I have to give props to both Sarah and Kyle at the NLA. I know Mike Rose worked on it. I know Rick Versace's right head and front head and shoulders in front of it. But the best practices document that the NL came up with after the show, I sent an email out saying, Look, I I I every single member needs to have that in their hands with a step by step because if they follow that they're going to be in such better shape. So the so the insurance crisis is real and and not going away. It's never going away. And people have to proactively manage, which we'll, we'll get into telematics in a second. And the other piece of the conference that, that it just ranked totally true to me is the tech piece. I had more people come up to me after the fact saying, when are we going to have an app where we own, where we own the spot at the airport? If Ed, I get it that we want to do large equipment. I understand that completely. Okay. But I grew up in the supermarket business and with, with a guy that was emphatic about you, you, you have to be the most competitive of the price on milks, milk, egg, milk, eggs, and bread and baby food so that you, so that you get people in the store. If we lose the airport, we don't get people in the store. And so that's truth. Those are the two things that came out to me. The other thing that came out to me was the number of one to five car operators that go to the shows that started recently. And I think those were the ones that were in the affiliate central, you know, really applying for work, which

James Blain 24:35

it's, it's do or die for them, right? At that, at that point, it is do or die for you, you know, a lot of, a lot of these more established companies, affiliate work might be a huge part of their business, but when you were trying to get it off the ground, if you start looking at the stats on companies and when they fail, right? You don't have much time as a small business, you know when I started my first business with my dad I quit my job. I had six grand. I was like, i'll be fine. What an idiot I was stupid that it didn't last me more than a couple months And I had no idea what I was doing, you know Thank god I had my father in law who had his own business had people around me that were able to say hey Come work for me. Let me teach you the ropes and and you know to brett baron holtz's point Mentorship mentorship mentorship. I got really lucky that I had mentors that got me through you But if you don't find that, if you don't have that, that, uh, finding those affiliates, finding that work is the difference between you make it or you don't

Ken Lucci 25:31

And, and if I was starting out today, the first thing I would try to do is build a network of people that were probably three steps ahead of where I was, you know, and, um, and I would listen a hell of a lot more, which coming from me as a, Quite an admit, fuck,

James Blain 25:50

from, from,

Ken Lucci 25:52

Um, right. And, and I would try to be, I would, I would hang with people that are three or four steps further along than I am. Um, I love, I love the fact that we've got new people coming into the industry. The, the sad part is if they are not educated on how to make a profit. and how to, how to financially manage their businesses, they're going to fail. And I don't know that we do enough as an industry to stop that, um, or to help them along. Um, the statistic is right that it's, you know, 80 percent of businesses fail within the first five years because they run out of money. The, uh, there's another interesting stat on small businesses. The average small business goes back. and has to find funding before they turn a profit, they have to find funding on average four times. They have to, they have to put more, more money into their business four times before they ever make any semblance of a profit. And even if they have a, a good month and they're in the black, they, it's, it's, it could be an anomaly. So they, they, that's why they fail is because of cash flow. Um, So, yeah, I think it was a great conference. I mean, from from where I sit, um, uh, we're excited about doing the financial report. That was something that, you know, we devoted a lot of time, effort, money to the research that we felt is going to be good for the industry. And I think more than anything, it, uh, it definitely, it definitely opens up the conversation. Um, it definitely keeps the conversation going at a different level.

James Blain 28:42

No. And I, and I think I want to take us back for a moment to something that you mentioned, right? You, you mentioned earlier that, you know, the place that we have right now is the airport. And this is something that for me has always been really interesting because it doesn't seem to matter what airport I go to. If I'm riding in a black car, right, if I'm riding with chauffeur services, they are never the one with the most direct pickup. And I think, I wish that was something we'd be able to talk about more. Which, by the way, I think Association Summit, I really wish that would have been more front and center and round table. I feel like, um, You know, I think a lot of people saw it as association summit. A lot of people didn't realize how many big issues were getting tackled. And I really wish we could have had that same crowd from state of the industry

Ken Lucci 29:36

Matt Dawes was on, Matt Dawes was on fire at the state of, uh, on the, uh, insurance summit. He was absolutely on fire and which, which, uh, and you were in the back, I don't know if you caught this, but he, he made a point and he said, you know, having telematics, First of all, it's a must. But having it and not managing by it will actually cause you problems in a lawsuit. Because when a law, when a lawyer asks you if you have telematics and you say, yes, I do. And then show me what you did to change the chauffeur's, to change the chauffeur's behavior long before the accident. For So that was, that was an eye opener for me. It's, it's literally, it is a double edged sword. If you have the telematics and you do not use it to make your business safer, and you have a catastrophic loss with any, with you are with any semblance of personal injury, you're on your toast. And what I love about Matt is he gets straight, he gets to the point and he is not afraid to touch the third rail. I mean, he, and I, when I, when I heard him say that, and I've always tried to push my clients to manage by telematics, to improve the safety scores of every driver and document when they've counseled drivers and use a, you know, use a, uh, three strikes in your route rule. Um, but he brought it home and, and I would have liked to see, I would have liked to see that had been more center stage. Um, we were at the end of the day, everybody was tired, uh, on Tuesday night. Um, but, but, you know, I did have one of the largest insurance agents come up to me afterwards and basically say, you're, you're right on the money on the financial recommendations. You're right on the money on the operations recommendations. But I wish we had somebody up on the dais as well, which was

James Blain 31:51

I will tell you yeah There's there's a lot of things that I think are worth mentioning here The first is that to a certain extent owners in our industry are firefighters, right? It is not it is not proactively planning its Something is on fire, and whatever is most on fire at the moment has to get put out. What a lot of,

Ken Lucci 32:12

that's all small business

James Blain 32:13

that's all small business people. But here's what happens because of that. People look at telematics as a way to control and manage that. Telematics are reactive. Now, I'm going to tell you, we have partnerships with some of the telematics companies. I'm one of the biggest and firmest supporters of telematics companies. But your telematics are your game day tape. It is going back and reviewing the game day tape. If you don't change what you're doing in practice, if you don't change how you are getting ready for the game, all you're doing is trying to make minor corrections. And so I always tell people you have to look at it. As three pronged approach our training, what we're doing in terms of our documentation, how we're doing it, how we're keeping records, right? That's my world. That's where I live day in day out. That's what Pax was built to

Ken Lucci 33:06

Trying to compete. Yeah, trying to convince small business people to document their processes.

James Blain 33:12

It's tough.

Ken Lucci 33:13

it's really tough, and it's it's it's a missing piece of their puzzle. But that's why they're all firefighters, because the same problems occur 345 times, and they've not created the teachable moment. They've not trained properly in the beginning, and they've not documented. So it doesn't happen again.

James Blain 33:33

And we'll probably do a whole episode on this, right? But all of those tie together. You have to be out in front of it, because here's the thing. By the time you're getting harsh driving notifications, by the time you're getting those types of things, guess what? That was a risk that day. That was an accident avoided. We are not at a point where the telematics are able to detect all risky behavior. If it's catching things like that, you're already in a danger zone.

Ken Lucci 33:59

And if you don't do anything about it and,

James Blain 34:02

You're toast.

Ken Lucci 34:02

you're, you're totally toast. And, and, um, one of my clients hired a, uh, a DOT safety DOT safety manager and, and we work with him to, and I, I don't, I am not an expert on telematics. My end of it on telematics is I want people to stop their idling so that that reduces their fuel expense.

James Blain 34:26

Especially New York, where that's a fun game of ticket the guy idling.

Ken Lucci 34:30

right. But to, to, to your point is, you know, do you know any companies that actually give people a driving test as they walk through the door of the company? They don't.

James Blain 34:41

So the only ones I know of that do that, and big shout out to the PAX members, you know who you are. Are the ones that have adopted the ones that we've created because for a long time You know, that's one of the we we have a kit that will literally help you with hiring and when people ask me What are the biggest things i'm going to get out of it? I tell them. Yeah, there's a video Yeah, there's this but what you're going to get is documented forms and process

Ken Lucci 35:03

Well, and then

James Blain 35:04

knowledge test. Here's how you do a driving test Here's because trying to find it's none of that is difficult. None of what we do is rocket science But when everything's on fire, finding the time to sit down and put something like that together is tough. And we have the advantage of working with all these companies and putting that together. And then at that point, it becomes, all you gotta do is use it. And that's, you're buying your way out of it.

Ken Lucci 35:31

Well, okay. And, and the other, the other thing that, that. What you what you're doing is you hopefully you're bringing in new people and you're teaching them the right way to begin with and you're using right instead of the retread, the retread rehire. So I think we, I think it's an industry. We, we, when we hire drivers, we show them the airport, we show them how to get the keys out of the vehicles, we show them all of, you know, all of, you know, watch me kind of a thing right along with me. But we don't, we don't really document the processes properly. And I think we've gotten away with it, but now I think this insurance crisis is going to bring it to the fore. And I think companies that are, are not documenting everything are going to be out of business.

James Blain 36:24

I, I,

Ken Lucci 36:25

that I

James Blain 36:25

it's a

Ken Lucci 36:26

out going to be out of business. It's a total magnifying glass. And, um, interesting, interesting thing that, that someone said to me recently, or actually it was right before the show, is you're going to see more insurance audits in 25 than you are DOT audits. And, and, um, I see, I see operators say, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have cameras in the car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have telematics. Wait a minute. Are you, are you managing by it? Show me where you brought a chauffeur in. And you've said, listen, because we've had this problem here is, here's the next 30 days. Here's the next 30 days of what we're going to do with you, right? And the, the, the, the show for training of the CDL training is if you've got a passenger endorsement and you've got a pulse and you work for a competitor, I'm going to assume you know what you're doing. But the sad part is it's going to bite it. It's going to bite us in the ass. It's, it, and it's finally coming, you know, it's almost like that old saying that the chickens are coming home to roost. Okay. But everybody's blaming the wrong people. They're blaming the insurance companies. Okay. Uh, I mean, and Matt hit it between the eyes. He said, go down. I go up and down 95 and I can't even count the number of personal injury attorneys. The other thing that he

James Blain 37:44

they're everywhere.

Ken Lucci 37:45

the other thing that Matt Doss said is he flat out said that if you people think You're going to get tort reform. You're out of your mind because the people in the legislature are all lawyers. And he was, he was right. I mean,

James Blain 38:01

And even if you do, it's five years away. It's not coming to save you. You might not even be in the business by the time it gets here.

Ken Lucci 38:08

So, so I, I, I hear that. I heard a lot about insurance. I heard a lot about affiliate I heard, I heard a lot about M& A, you know, and a lot of it, I would say it wasn't actually most accurate, but anyway, I, I heard a lot about M& A. Um, and in general, uh, I, I do think from a tech perspective, we're at, we're at the point, it was an industry, There either needs to be a permanent tech committee tech task force. I don't

James Blain 38:49

I would love to see that.

Ken Lucci 38:50

I don't know whether it's operator based. I don't know whether it's NLA based. I, you know, there's a, there's something we also came across recently and, and, and, and I have to give a shout out to Skift Research and GBTA because we take, we look at a lot of what they're doing. You know, 90 percent of travel. Companies, travel partners, hospitality, hotel, airline, they're doing a massive upgrade in their technology, focused around AI, focused around and and every, every one of them said it's a it's a top five priority.

James Blain 39:31

I, I mean, we're

Ken Lucci 39:32

don't see that. I don't see that. I don't see that as a priority to our industry.

James Blain 39:37

It really depends on how you look at it though,

Ken Lucci 39:40

I don't think you can say that in our industry, that changing the tech experience is a massive, is a massive, uh, uh, initiative.

James Blain 39:50

you know, I think, I think a lot of it kind of comes down to what, like we said before, what's most on fire, right? I can tell you for us, I come from a tech background. PAX is making massive investments right now in integrating technology. And our biggest goal going into next year is twofold. One, we want to do more with other vendors. One of the biggest things I hear right now, and I hear it across the board is my chauffeurs are older. They don't need 10 logins, right? They're older. They don't understand 10 apps. So we're already working and talking to vendors about how do we integrate? How do we make things work? But the, the side of that is that it also goes the other way. Right. You've got to be able to provide that to your actual passengers, to the people booking. And I think that one of the things that has always been a limiting factor for us, more so than technology, is the island mindset. The only time that I see In this industry that we really, truly get that we are not little islands and that we are all big interconnected as an industry is when people want affiliate business, but people get so worried about, well, I don't want you to know what I'm doing, or I don't want you to know about that contract. I don't want you to know about this. I don't want you to know about that. And I feel like you have this, you almost have a scarcity mentality of, I got to protect what's mine. But I've got to still do affiliate work. So I got this little tiny door open. And I think like we just bringing it all the way back around. We talked earlier, Uber, TNCs, they don't have that problem. They have a global mindset and they're able to see inside. If we're not able to work as a network and do that, guess what insurance is like the sun in the summer. We could always get sunburned. It was always an issue. The problem is now we got a hole in the ozone. Right kind of the big scare when I was growing. Oh, you can't go anywhere the hole in the ozone It's worse than that now There's a magnifying glass and it's like you got a giant kid up there burning the ants because what used to be Yeah, you could get kind of burned by the insurance industry not because they're doing anything wrong But because you've got to worry about prices. It's just part of the game now. It's They're trying to help. They're trying to control it. We're trying to control it. And you've got these verdicts that are insanity. A guy at the show told me about a story. Somebody walks up to a guy at the airport that's got, I don't remember if it was a suburban escalator, what it might've been. And he goes, Oh, look, there's no camera in there. Ah, I can't believe you just hit me. Gets his phone. Oh, you hit me. You hit me. You ran into me. Right now all of a sudden I'm gonna sue right another guy similar story. Oh, well you you hit me you did this They do a settlement. Guess what happens the guy's buddy comes back Hey, you gave him five grand to settle it and make it go away Which by the way is a miracle they got out of it for that. It could have been way worse I want a paycheck too.

Ken Lucci 42:50

Yeah.

James Blain 42:51

not hearing it like that. What we're hearing is You looked at the guy and now said he wants a million dollars.

Ken Lucci 42:57

Well, and, and we, we had several acquisitions where we represented the seller and the entire reason why they were selling is because they had, they had an insurance claim. And it put them and they're not only the, it wiped them out and people don't believe when I say that, but it totally wiped them out. One situation was in the parking lot and it was a vehicle backed in front of a motor coach and it was a tap. It was a tap and the, the driver did the right thing. He asked everybody if everybody was okay, but three, four or five weeks later, a woman says she bit, she bit her tongue. Um, and by the time they get to deposition, no one, no one examined her by the way. And by the time they get to deposition, you know, the insurance set aside for that one little tiny thing. There was not even enough damage on the motor coach to, to report, to fix. Um, and the lady who backed out into, into traffic, she was just a distracted driver. She had a kid in the car. But, but she, she flat out said, this was my fault. I'll take care of my stuff. Right.

James Blain 44:07

Miracle, by the way, absolute miracle. That doesn't happen.

Ken Lucci 44:11

yeah, so no, I think it was, I think it was a, in general, I think it, it was eye opening. I think this is two crisis in the industry. And one is, insurance that, that will require extreme collaboration. both on the national and state level, And extreme cooperation with every operator involved. And some of them will say, well, you know, my my, my insurancee only went up 5, 10%. Um, it's not a problem for me. Yeah, it is. Yes, it is. So, so if you're not a member of an association, you should be now. And I don't want to hear anything about, well, it's not worth it for me to spend whatever to be just the best practices document alone from the NLA. And I know one of my clients was one was the guy that spent a lot of time on it. I, that is a tremendous roadmap. I think it needs to be drilled down on the local level. On the local level, so that people are saying, operators are saying, have you implemented best practices? These best practices? No, I have not. I'm not a member of the N. L. A. I'm not a member of Mila. I'm not a member of the chauffeur Transportation Association of New Jersey. Okay, guess what? X. I'm not using you. That's what it has to come down to. And the second piece is The technology, you know, I don't care. There's going to be companies for sale, regardless of whether the industry is going. Wait a minute. There's some people argue there's more, there's more companies that get go up for sale when the industry is on decline. Okay. And some people have told me that from other industries that have gone through this, but I have no dog in the hunt. We do extraordinarily well. My business partner is overwhelmed with what we, the works that's come in this week. We are so far behind on the tech side and I don't really care about the personalities on the software side, but the operators, if they want to protect their investment, protect their business, there's two things that we all need to understand. Number one, we're the customer, the soft of the software companies. And number two, A rising tide not only lifts all boats, but I don't care if you're 150 million network. You're in the same boat as the five, five car operator. You don't think you are, but you are. And when the industry, if the industry comes, if the industry has any more disruption, because we're not smart enough to do what I've talked about as far as the airport and be the

James Blain 46:59

we cannot, we cannot lose the airport. If there was one point that you've made that we have to punch home today, if you took one thing away, if we lose the airport as an industry, we may lose the industry. Because

Ken Lucci 47:12

And right, right. And so who does it hurt more than 150 million operator or network, or does it hurt the five car operator? The five car operator can go work for Uber or Uber black and, or he can lease out his cars, right? So, you know, I, I just implore anybody who's got their life savings vested in this industry. We need to break through from a tech perspective. We need to, we need to, we need to stop listening to the providers who are saying, well, you know, it's coming. Or, Oh, it does it. If you do it this way, you know, the answer is if the damn app is not as seamless as Uber, it needs to be. I don't want to text message. My clients don't want to open up text messages to, to open up a browser. They want an app and they want, I mean, they want it absolutely as simple as Uber. And we've got a space. We've got a space where we have always commanded. And that's corporate transportation to and from the airport. It's 60 percent of what corporations use us for. I mean, I don't know what else to do besides put a stamp. I don't know what else to do to bring it home.

James Blain 48:24

But, but I think there's something here, right? And, and I'm the training guy, so, so I, I gotta bring this up. The reason that you are going to get picked over Uber for an early morning trip is because they want to prearrange. They want to know you're there. I want to look out my window 15 minutes, 10 minutes. I want to see you backed in my driveway ready to go. I want to know that when I get to DC, when I get to Miami, when I get to LA, when I get to wherever I'm going, I don't have to worry about it. By the time those wheels on that plane touch down and I take my phone off airplane mode, I know where you're at. I know where to meet you. I have no worries at all. The big thing there is just as important as everything else is we have to keep living up to that because if we're if if I look out my window and you're not there right if those wheels touch down on the plane I take it off airplane mode and I'm heading to baggage claim and I don't know where you are. Guess what? That whole experience is broken. And at the point where we do that, it's done. And guess what? Um, I believe it was, was it Chris Weiss who brought this up or was it you that brought this up? Uber is most likely to cancel, not show up, not be there in the morning,

Ken Lucci 49:40

Oh, 18, 18 percent of by reservation on Ubers never show 18%. That's, that's a national, that's a national stat. And,

James Blain 49:48

is great when I'm out drinking, but when I need to be at the airport, cause I've got the biggest meeting of my life and I got to fly from Kansas City out to New York or to LA or wherever I'm going. That's not, I don't want to be in that 15%. I don't want to worry about it.

Ken Lucci 50:02

and this, and many of them are my clients. So I'm just gonna, and I've said this to the privately, as far as like the networks and the, and the largest regional providers, get over yourself. Stop with the I don't trust so and so get over yourself somehow. If you if you want to preserve, if you want the industry to grow, right? Because no offense, 2. 67 percent growth a year over the next 5 percent when the airlines are growing at 5%. It's like a hockey stick. If you want this industry to grow market share, you need to get over yourself, find a way to work, find a group to work with and get the check. Get the break. Get a tech breakthrough. And if you have to say to somebody's software, who's a big software provider, your baby's a little ugly. You need to fix it. Then you need to say it. And if he says, well, we're developing a big new one and we're doing this, hold him to a timeline. You know, because if you don't, I mean, you, you, we've not brought up, you know, the software side of the world where there's a new entrant that's poised to, to supposedly do phenomenal things. And I'd rather not get into that, but you know, I, I will tell you if we don't do it as an industry, it's going to continue, it's going to continue. The black lanes are eventually going to get it right. And this news this week on Uber, um, after the conference, there was more news on Uber than what I brought up at the state of the industry. There was more breaking news on what's going on with Uber. And, and if I hear one more person on Facebook say, well, people who take Uber is not my client, you should go into the delivering package business because you don't get it.

James Blain 51:55

No. And I think the difference there is understanding that you provide a different service than Uber does.

Ken Lucci 52:02

Yep.

James Blain 52:02

you can provide it to the same person. And

Ken Lucci 52:04

You absolutely, you have to, and you have to prove definitively that you deliver better value.

James Blain 52:10

absolutely. You have to be at a different level of value. Right? And we're recording this today on Friday. You guys are listening to it on Wednesday. So we purposely have gone out of our way to try and be timely here. Look, my feed right now, I'm getting hammered by Tesla's new you know, van. The iRobot van. Right? Looks just like the one from iRobot. They've got you know, automated. The news is out there and they're trying to push these types of things. And so we have to do what's exactly expected of us and be that luxury brand because the second we slip, you've got disruptors ready to not catch your fall, but to watch you fall and take everything from you the second you do.

Ken Lucci 52:53

So next year, if I do the 10 minute open, or if I sponsor the state of the industry again, which I permanently want to be my spot, do you think there's gonna be more than 60% of the Fortune 500 using the Uber Uber portal? The answer is yes.

James Blain 53:07

Yeah, God, I hope not. God, I hope we get it

Ken Lucci 53:11

no, if,

James Blain 53:12

they're gonna, they're pushing it.

Ken Lucci 53:13

and if 60 percent doesn't scare you, I'm sorry, it's, it's a problem

James Blain 53:18

You should be terrified.

Ken Lucci 53:19

you should be absolutely terrified. And, and when you look at the news that's coming out on business travel news about Uber is doing an executive level, uh, service, right. That's a tactic. That's tactical. That's tactical. That's tactical to get the CEOs to get the C level used to the service. And I think that they, if one thing they've proven is they will keep doing things and they'll till they try to try to get it right.

James Blain 53:50

And they are

Ken Lucci 53:51

they get it

James Blain 53:52

coordinated effort, right? So

Ken Lucci 53:54

chess. We play checkers.

James Blain 53:56

it absolutely,

Ken Lucci 53:57

They play chess. We play checkers.

James Blain 54:00

but just like I teach my children, right? We, they didn't start as good chess players. We have the opportunity as an industry. To me, more involved with our associations to do more together to come together. Like I said, we've, we've got to, and we're, I think we're very slowly heading the right direction, right? I don't want anyone to think, you know, that, that I'm not saying that there, since I got into now, there's been in the, in the almost 10 years I've been in the industry, we've made massive progress. We just have to keep it going

Ken Lucci 54:30

I think the NLA board

James Blain 54:32

work together.

Ken Lucci 54:33

I think the NLA board is the strongest it's been in a long time. And I think the state, I think the state associations are as strong as I've ever seen them. Now, I haven't been in this, you know, 2007, but, and I wasn't involved on the state level at all. I didn't play nice with other people. Um, but I think that across the country, the state associations have a major role to play When it comes to ensure this insurance rollout and, and, and the, the other piece of this puzzle on the state level is if, if you've got a chauffeur or CDL that comes to you from your biggest competition, don't look upon it as a coup that you just hurt your competitor. You just probably hired his biggest in liability. Okay. You probably just did him an unbelievable favor. Okay.

James Blain 55:20

and I don't care how much experience he has for the love of God train him Don't just assume he's experienced.

Ken Lucci 55:27

call the competitor and say, listen, I, you know, this is, this is one area that we need to get over each other on that. Get over it and say, listen, so Ken just came to me looking for a job. Ken Lucci just came to me. He said that he quit. What happened? Okay. And I'll do the same courtesy to you back. Okay. Please let's make sure that we're not passing around each other's problems. So anyway.

James Blain 55:52

So I think that's an incredible place to end, right? We've got to work together. We've got to bring the industry together. I know. I don't know about you, Ken. I had an amazing time at the show. I'm sure you did too. I think it really excites me to see where we go into Vegas and beyond. And so I think we're really heading the right direction. We all have to push there. So as always, thanks

Ken Lucci 56:13

Keep up the momentum. We have to keep up the

James Blain 56:15

up the momentum and we'll see you on the next episode.

56:18

Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.