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About LCT's The Great Limo Race

LCT will be comparing how five operators with less than two years in the industry build their success, including the challenges, failures, and achievements. Read more

Players

Deborah Talbott

Debbie is a former purchasing director who after 20 years found herself unemployed in a recession. She immediately launched her new business from home starting with a single 120-inch stretch limousine and has since added a Lincoln Town Car Executive L to the fleet. Read more

Ricardo Garza

Ric, as he is known to friends, is 45 years old, married, and a proud parent of two boys and one girl. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and spent many years working in the Houston Mayor’s Office as a certified conflict mediator and business developer. Read more

Becky Laramee

Along with her brother, John, Becky bought All Points Limousine in 2008. Their mother had spent time in the motorcoach and travel industry and had retired, but wasn’t quite ready for retirement. Needless to say, mother Bonnie is the office manager. Read more

Brad Gregory

Brad bought a 25-year-old limousine service in 2009 from a retiring owner. The company is located between Nashville, Tenn. and Bowling Green, Ky. He had no previous experience in the industry, working for the past decade for an automotive company. Read more

Georgia Berg

In July 2007, at the age of 44, Georgia became a long-distance business partner with her longtime Australian friend, Peter Smith. They met by chance while vacationing in Hawaii in 1993. During a 2003 visit to the U.S., Smith saw a Ford Excursion limousine and vowed to bring the first one to Australia. Read more

Race Referee

Jim Luff

LCT Contributing Editor Jim Luff is an operator from Bakersfield, Calif. After working as a chauffeur in the early 1990s, he joined The Limousine Scene in 1993 as general manager and later became a partner in the business. Read more

August 2011 Entries

Racers Accomplish An Industry First

INDUSTRY ENTREPRENEURS SET A NEW STANDARD: LCT would like to extend special appreciation to all five LCT Great Limo Race contestants -- Ric, Becky, Georgia, Debbie, and Brad -- for taking the time to share their business lives with the industry and the wider world for the last 18 months. We hope all of you get the positive exposure you richly deserve. The Great Limo Race and this blog served as an experiment of sorts: To get five fairly new limousine operators to post candidly about their new business challenges. We will announce a technical race "winner" in the upcoming September issue of LCT Magazine. But the real takeaway lesson here is that all five contestants "won," given that their businesses are still standing and growing after three of the toughest years the chauffeured transportation industry has ever seen. More fair-weathered and faint-hearted businesspeople would have simply folded. Their blog updates stand as a first draft reality account of making it in the chauffeured business world, and we hope their stories can help and inspire new operators for years to come. -- Martin Romjue, LCT editor

posted @ Monday, August 29, 2011 2:09 PM | Comment (0)