The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast 264 Tim Rose of Addison Lee Group, BeSafeRides.com

Episode Date: February 2, 2019

Tim Rose of Addison Lee Group, BeSafeRides.com

Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisfossshow.com, thechrisfossshow.com. Hey, thanks for tuning in to another podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys. I hope you got the news from the prior podcast we've launched, the CVPN Network. I think that's what it is. I'm still getting used to saying it, the Chris Voss Podcast Network. We've got three new shows that you can take and tune in for there's the chris voss on politics show which is always good if you like that sort of thing there's the gaming uh show for the gaming podcast there's also

crypto life podcast and there'll actually be an ai one we're working on with all of our ai friends in the vr and ar sections we'll talk on with all of our AI friends in the VR and AR sections. We'll talk about automation, all that sort of good stuff. And there might be a startup one too, what's on the slate that we're kind of playing and toying around with. So we have a lot of good things. And of course, we always have a lot of great guests and people that are on the show. Today, we have a very interesting guest, very topical guest for some of the events that have happened over the last few months in the news. And it's Tim Rose. Tim is the chairman of the board, North America.

And for Addison, let me pronounce that properly, Addison Lee Group. And it is ranked as number one on the LCT 50 largest fleets this year. It has about an 800 company owned and leased luxury vehicles serving the U.S. market with 700 affiliates worldwide. Holy crap. Its projected revenues for the Americas is $100 million plus in 2018 and roughly $90 million of that amount generated in the U.S. alone and contracts with another 3,400 self-employed drivers that use company-owned vehicles. The total Addison-Lee global revenues are estimated to be about $450 million worldwide and they own or lease another 5,000 plus vehicles and can tap a global affiliate network of 17,000 vehicles. Holy crap, this is a lot of cars. And today it employs about 2,190 chauffeurs, drivers

and employees worldwide with 850 of those in the U.S. Welcome to the show, Tim. How are you doing, man? Good, Chris. Thank you for having me today i appreciate it yes great those are some impressive stats bud yes thank you appreciate that it's uh that's quite a lot of people and cars yeah the company's been in business over 40 years has a great heritage uh built in the united kingdom initially and uh uh you know it has a uh a long you know uh relationship with relationship with his clients in the United Kingdom as well as offices in Hong Kong and now in the U.S. They bought our company here and building upon that success for so many years in the U.K. Wow. It's interesting to see the globalness of the whole thing and how you guys operate. Now, you guys are kind of in a different field than what people think of or what people know of in the Uber and the Lyft market and things of that nature.

And you guys are working on some different things to take and promote where safer riding, safer driving, knowing and understanding what you guys are doing. Give us some background as to how you got in this business first, though, so we can get to know you a little bit better. What brought you into this and how'd you get into it? So I'm part of a family-run business for about 30 years and had a company called Flight Time Worldwide Transportation. It was probably the top five in the LCT list and built that up to about $70 million in revenues here in America. And in 2017, Addison Lee bought my company and merged it with TriStar Worldwide,

another company they had bought, to create the Addison Lee Group for North America. So we've been in the business for many, many years and have been very involved with the National Limousine Association based in Washington, D.C. That is our National Trade Association, as well as the Limousine Associations of New York and New Jersey that we work very closely with to promote safety of the riding public, as well as many of the initiatives to help all of the peers in our industry. Now, we've recently heard about some of the topics. There was a recently huge crash with the limousine service, I believe it was on the East Coast

somewhere, and the race came came i'm not even sure what really happened with it but uh it probably was some kind of a blight on the pr for the limousine industry yes chris it was very unfortunate uh and uh uh there was you know uh there was about uh 20 people i believe involved in that crash who were killed, a horrific crash. And, you know, our hearts go out to the families. And, you know, the National Transportation Safety Board, who has been handling that, still has not come to a conclusion as to what caused that crash. So we don't speculate as to why it happened or what happened until we until we we really know all we know is that uh um the operator was uh was from new york uh he had had some issues with the

uh the new york department of transportation taking vehicles out of service and things like that in past history uh we don't know if the vehicle was properly road worthy at the time. We're still waiting to hear back on that, but our heart goes out to the families that were involved in it. And safety is all about what our business is all about. And it's what the bedrock we build our businesses on. And so it's very unfortunate. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I remember one time I was coming between, and these instances are fairly rare. You don't hear about these much, but that one did get a lot of play in the news because of so many people that died. And there was a lot of suggestion that, yeah, that car shouldn't have been on the road and et cetera, et cetera, and that

maybe the owners and operators, I believe the operator, the owner was in some other country and the other guy who ran the place, I think you tried to take off into the airport and they caught him or something. That's a crazy story.

But you guys are trying to work with all these different groups and and make it so that there's a public awareness people uh can know better what's safe what's what's okay uh certainly we've heard the negative stories with uber uber's almost kind of got that reputation where bill cosby seems to drive for them all the time, especially. Yeah, it's true. And there's a lot of crazy things that have happened with Uber drivers. For a long time there, they really resisted getting their people fingerprinted or probably background checked, and they had a lot of bad PR issues, especially under their prior CEO.

A lot of bad stuff under PR, under their original CEO. And they seem to have cleaned up a bit and everything else. But so what are you guys doing to take and kind of resolve some of those reputation issues or PR issues, even though they're kind of unique and rare? Yeah, we're really in, in, you know, two different businesses.

Our, our businesses is all about investment in the people as well as the vehicles and the safety and security of the, of the riding public. The ride share companies, the TNCs, as we call them, the transportation network companies or ride share companies,

Uber and Lyft are really in the taxi replacement business. And, you know, they're in a little different, you know, business than we're in. They're working off the investment of each individual driver who they hope has the right insurance and the right, you know, background in order to do that type of work. We, in turn, have a completely different approach where we do drug testing, background checks, fingerprinting of all of our drivers. As a matter of fact, we even promote that when dealing with government entities because we want to make sure that there aren't rogue operators who are able to cut corners.

And so that's really important. But when you look at the TNC companies, one of the things that we're trying to do to differentiate ourselves, being a chauffeur transportation business, is our Be Safe Rides program with besaferides.com, as well as Ride Responsibly, which is the NLA program, the National Limousine Association program. And those programs are important to educate the riding public on the difference between what they're getting, should they hire a limousine service or should they hire a TNC company? And if you look at some of the incidents that you mentioned, recently there was a CNN article that came out that said that TNC companies are having over 1,200 incidents a week.

Holy crap. Yeah. And it was actually mind-boggling. The teams that they have in place trying to track down these incidents of assaults and other things are completely overworked. And it was a situation where it's very very difficult for uh for those teams to respond so let me understand this um is the tncs what you're referring to they're the ubers the lift these ride share companies i think is what you call them correct and then can they join

the national associate limousine association is that totally two different things and they can't they can't no they no they can't because they're they're not structured okay the same the same way as you have to meet certain criteria to become a member of the national limousine association so you're working with the national limousine association to make sure people understand what the differences are how to be safer on their rides you've got the be safe rides calm and make it so that people can get some self-awareness some education as to what the differences are between these two and kind of know if when they take a ride if they're gonna be safe or not correct and and the goal is really you

know to educate the the riding public to do their homework and to you know you know the the cheapest opportunity and and option is not always the the the best you know option when you especially you know you we have a lot of uh you know very very uh uh you know important female travelers and and female travelers uh you know we all have sisters and wives and, you know, girlfriends and things like that. And we know how we would want them to be treated by a professional, you know, chauffeur instead of, you know, putting them into a TNC car, especially if they're alone. So we always tell people, you know, travel together if you're going to do that. And just, you know, you together. If you're going to do that and just, you know,

you have to be your own advocate. You have to, you know, safety is the number one thing and you have to make sure that you keep that in mind. So for companies, cars, and drivers that are working with you guys, the National Limiting Association, they can join there. Is it more of a business setup where you know there's a company that's there they own the cars they run you know all the background checks of their employees they they have a kind of more tighter control over those employees and drivers um whereas the the tncs are more of like uh well they have an app and then then you and then you you know some joe goes i

want to drive this week and drives people around you you're you have sometimes has to be concerned about either profession that person uh etc etc yeah it's it's it's really you're right it's about the investment we have we have significant investment in the vehicles the training the background checks the drug testing and it's ongoing the fingerprinting and things like that, DMV records. And it's ongoing and it's annual and it's consistent. And as you mentioned, what we did was to bridge the gap from a technology standpoint is that, you know, many of our companies, like our company, has a fantastic app for our travelers to use. And it complements our service. So the nice thing is you can call for a car if you want to make a reservation over the telephone.

You can make one on our online booking tool, or you can use our mobile app. And that's how we've bridged the gap with our clients because that's really one of the things that the tncs have been successful at is the legacy taxicab companies didn't have that good technology and that's where they you know ended up you know yeah they really got their edge on that yeah correct and so now we all we all have bridged the gap as as it relates to technology and And there's no investment there. Like you said, they sign up online and they mail you an iPhone and you're in business. Have at it. You know, I know what you guys are going through because I went, I had this years ago. We owned a courier company that did deliveries and much like FedEx and everything else. And at the time we were regulated by a state group that actually oversaw everything when it came to transportation.

This is back in the Clinton era where the trucks were still regulated before deregulation of the trucking industry. But we had to go through, we had to, we had to get approved and apply and, and we had to pay just outrageous car insurance for our vehicles and stuff. And we had to comply with all sorts of rules, laws, checks,

audits, and everything to make sure that our cars were safe on the road and that we were, of course, operating as a legitimate, well-oiled business. Every now and then, we'd find these people that would just be some guy would have decided to start delivering packages or something to cut in on everyone's business. And I remember turning a few of those people into the, to the service and the Utah highway patrol would have to go out and, and take them down. And I remember one time I was on the phone with him and he's like, well, I understand what the big deal is. And it's like,

well, or what it was, he had to go get licensed after we turned him in. And he's like, I can't afford to operate this way because the insurance is too expensive it's like well the insurance is there for a reason for if you kill somebody to run somebody down with the company vehicle it's it's there's a reason this is there absolutely and of course our our cars you know you had to pass as uh

tighter inspections than you would for just some Joe running his car. And yeah, and we've all heard the stories. I mean, there's all, even drivers have been attacked and vice versa. And I think in the pre-show we were talking about, I think there was a guy you mentioned recently where some Uber driver or something ended up killing people between rides or something. Yeah, in kalamazoo michigan he he was uh he was killing people in between rides and uh yeah he was he was just recently convicted and uh wow yeah so i we we think the complete lack of supervision

okay is the biggest issue and what does that mean What it means is that when we hire a chauffeur, that chauffeur comes in for an interview, a background check, drug testing, training. If at any point during that process, we see that somebody is not properly qualified or has the temperament to deal with, you know, the riding public that we're comfortable with, then they won't continue. And that's really the key. You, and you, you know, even if you have a clean record and, and, and a background check, the clear lack of supervision is part of the problem. And they probably have to come in the office and, you know, you get to see them and spend several weeks in a training class and then pass a test.

So that clear lack of supervision by the ride shirt drivers is really the issue. And they have 96% turnover. And so they're in a situation where they need to get people on the road fast, because as fast as they're coming, you know, in the front door, they're going out the back door. And, you know, that's really the key. And so, you know, that's why we spend a lot of time and effort training them, paying them so that this way they, they make a proper wage. And that, you know, the key for us is consistency with the passengers. We want the customers to come back and, you know, use us, you know, again and again.

And that's really why we spend so much time and money on it. I remember years ago I got into an Uber for an event in L.A. And I got in and I go, okay, yeah, we're going. They know where they're supposed to know where you're going. And the guy goes, well, how do you get there? I go, I don't know. You're the professional. That's why I'm paying you.

This isn't something I'm supposed to be doing. This is something you're supposed to do. I believe it was a black car too. I was like, don't you have like Waze on your phone or something? Some sort of mapping system to figure. Well, oh yeah, I probably can do that. You're just like, don't you have like ways on your phone or something, some sort of mapping system to figure? Well, oh yeah, I probably can do that. You're just like, come on, dude, you drive. Although you can say it the other way too.

I was in New York and a taxi picked me up and I said, I want to go to the AT&T store that's downtown in Times Square. And he's like, I don't know where that's at. I'm like, you don't know where Times Square is? It's at the AT&T store. And he did know where Times Square was, but he didn't know where the AT&T store. And it's this giant store that has like, you know, it's right in the center. And, you know, it's got this giant AT&T sign.

I'm like, how do you not know where that is? I mean, like I can see it over there. I don't live in your bloody city. So, uh, yeah, definitely. Um, definitely people that are trained really well is a, is a big deal and can make a difference. And, and the question, and like you say, the quality of it, I mean, I, I, I've always been, I was astounded. I had some friends that the early picked up on the Uber thing. And they're just like, I'm going to go drive tonight.

So I just flip on the app and say I'm going to drive. And I'm just like, really? That's how it works? This seems really cavalier. Yeah, it's crazy. It seems really cavalier. And it was interesting to watch the rise my friend robert scoble um was actually in a car at our other friend leo uh lemur um at uh at a france

it is a france conference that he used to put on every year. And he was in a car with, I forget the CEO's name, but him and his partner that started Uber. And he had on his lap the gal from Yahoo who left Google, who was the CEO of Yahoo for a while. I forget her name too. I'm forgetting everyone's name on Friday. The whole brain is just gone. And he pitched, he didn't really pitch him. He wasn't pitching gone. And he pitched.

He didn't really pitch him. He wasn't pitching him. But he pitched him the idea of Uber. And it was still in the idea phase at that point. And, yeah, my friend Robert Schole, you heard it all from the beginning when they were pitching it at La France? Le Marc? Le Parc? I can't.

I'm losing it in my old age. But it was really interesting to watch that whole thing evolve and grow from all of our time in Silicon Valley and tech and watching it come out. And you're just like, what are you doing? And then my experience of owning a courier company and knowing the regulations of the industry and seeing them skirt around it with the app.

It was really, I mean, I'm just like, I don't think that's legal. And they had to work pretty hard to get around the laws that were put in place so that someone couldn't do what they were doing. But it was really interesting. Yeah, that's for sure. And like you said, we spent a lot of time, effort, and money to make sure that everything from our customer standpoint is professional and the training is all in place and the safety is all there. And really, we're working on educating the writing public on those differences, and that's so important. Yeah.

It was Marissa Mayer who sat on Robert Scoble's lap. She was still with Google at the time. And they got into a taxi cab. And Luik, I forget his name. He has a, he has a, he has a thing in the thing and they literally were talking about it. It was still in the idea of concept phase. So watching it evolve and hearing the stories firsthand from our Silicon Valley friends, um,

it was just interesting how the whole thing got built. And then of course the problems it had and, and, uh, I think they kind of cleaned up their act a little bit once they got a new CEO. But there just seemed to still be problems where there's, you know, crazy stories happening every now and then in these cars. And, yeah, I've had some interesting experiences as well. Sometimes they're better than taxi cabs. Like here in Vegas, the taxi cab business is really rough um and uh you know even then like the taxis have done a great job of bridging the gap i think in many places because now they have the apps as well um and you got to remember they have significant

investment in in as well uh you know in in many cases they're whether they they bought a medallion or they bought uh a franchise or whatever you know the cities uh regulated those so it made it you know very difficult for the taxi cab companies to uh to compete in many cases but now they're uh a lot of the cities are changing their regulations to help the taxi cab companies to uh to compete as well uh yeah i know they have the taxi cabs now have an app as well and they they kind of a general one they all got together and they built a general one so it can compete with uber and lyft and and all these other services um and vegas you know we had our times with them too i mean vegas shut them down when they first tried to muscle in

here uh and they i think it took them a year or two and they had to get some special legislation to get them around it. And even then they, you know, they've fought tooth and nail. But you can see why with some of the stories that have gone on here in Las Vegas, you know,

the regulations for the taxi and limo services are huge because you can have somebody who comes here to have a good time they get a little too drunk because it is vegas or whatever you know their poison is and leave a ten thousand dollar winnings from you know a craps table in the back of the car and and the uh you know in any other city or wherever the the taxi cab driver might that, but they actually have like these huge police forces here in Las Vegas that will do stings and they'll, they'll fake, they'll have like a fake cop that will pretend he's really drunk and he

leaves a lot of his money behind in the car. And then of course, if the drivers are report that in a timely fashion, they do a sting on it. So there's a lot of stuff that goes on uh with these with the regulations for these companies to make sure that they're held to the highest levels of integrity uh and uh you know protect the thing because you know here in vegas we don't want to burn tourists man because that's bad for business we want them coming back and giving us all their money some

more absolutely absolutely yeah i mean this you don't want to ruin tourists in this business them back and giving us all their money some more. Absolutely. Absolutely. You don't want to ruin tourists in this business. Vegas has some great limousine operators too. Some really large great limousine operators do a great job for all of the big events there. Especially even

for the Consumer Electronics Show. It's world renowned about how many limousine transactions are done there for the big show. And the operators out there who are our affiliate partners do a fantastic job. Yeah, one of my friends is Gary Shapiro, who's the CEO of CTA and CES Show. And, in fact, we had him on this, we had him on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, right before the show. And I've,

I complained to him a couple of years ago about how they need more taxis and more service for, for the CES show. And I think that resolves some of it. It's just such a hugely growing show to try and keep up with, but having professional stuff is really important so tell me more about the website the besaferides.com so the besaferides.com was a an initiative that our limousine association put together to educate the riding public on the differences between chauffeur transportation uh versus you know, taxi and, you know, TNC,

you know, companies. And it was all about, you know, explaining to them about the investment in hiring, background checks, drug testing, and ongoing training of chauffeurs and the investment all of these companies have, as well as in the equipment and the vehicles and the insurance limits and everything else to make sure they're protected, as well as licensing from the states and municipalities that are involved wherever they travel. And that's really the key. We won't put people in anybody's vehicle that's not properly licensed, insured, with a fully vetted and trained chauffeur. And so that's really what it's about. about some of the incidents related to the TNCs and some of the horrific complaints that have been received by a lot of the different agencies. And it's really about differentiating.

And so when that buyer is trying to discern what type of service that they're looking for so that they have, we want to just make sure that they're aware of the options. Sometimes the cheapest, you know, option is not always the best option. You certainly find that rule out in life. So I imagine you guys have a lot less incident, a lot lower incident rate than these TNCs. Incredibly, you know, low, you know, incident rate. And again, it's all about supervision.

We have 24-hour days, seven days a week, full customer service wrapper. What that means is we have the call center, we have the car control dispatch center that's monitoring the chauffeur's whereabouts at all times, as well as their on-time performance. And, you know, in addition to that, they're being monitored by our, you know,

chauffeur services department based upon if there's any, you know, complaints from passengers, whether the complaint is on the app, whether it's via the telephone, whether it's via email, instantaneous responses to clients so that they don't go into some, you know,

you know, gigantic, you know, black hole of, you know, 1200 serious complaints a week. It's not what we're about. And then of course you've got,

you've got inspectors that inspect your vehicles, check them, probably surprise inspections, you know, from the government. It's in the national safety board is is it's a you're dealing with the feds you're dealing with people that you don't want to screw around with because they can really make things unhappy for everyone if you don't follow the rules absolutely yeah so um so uh

let's see i think i think we covered most most of some of the different things there. So you guys are going to keep rolling along, and the TNCs are going to be separate from you guys, and the public should just be aware. I guess the best way for the public, if I'm listening to this show, if I want to know what the difference is and kind of educate myself more, what's a good way to do that? Go to that website?

Yeah, absolutely. So besaferides.com is one of the ones that we put together for the Limousine Association of New Jersey. The National Limousine Association also has Ride Responsibly, where Pamela Anderson is our national spokesperson as it relates to that safety and security of passengers. And really, it's about, you know, a lot of, you know, she advocates for how many females have been attacked and about, you know, how do you not become a victim? And what we're trying to do is educate people so that they don't become a victim.

And it's crucially important, we think. Yeah. One of my friends, she has a company called WanderSafe and they make a kind of anti-attack, anti-rape device. And one of the stories that she had was a gal went over to France and she got in what she thought was a taxi. And the taxi driver took her off, you know, and here she is, she's in another country, took her off into the woods and, and tried to rape her. And I guess she got away, but you know, here she was in this, you know, foreign country, doesn't speak the language. And it was just crazy. And she thought she was getting into, you know, a car that was a legitimate operated thing. So definitely being aware of what you're in. And certainly those families that lost a lot of loved ones. In fact, I think the sad part about that big limo crash was that a lot of those people

were family members and, you know, husbands, wives, and relatives. I mean, you're just wiping out a whole wedding fleet. Certainly, if you're thinking about getting married or any of those different things where you're going to be in a huge limo with a bunch of people, you may want to really think about the investment you're making because, you know, something like that happens. You'll wipe out a whole family if you're not careful. No question. No question.

It's all about being your own advocate. Yeah, most definitely. And you just never know, too. I mean, there's lots of rules that you guys have to follow. One of the big things that happens here in Las Vegas is people drink and start partying before they get to Vegas when they come from California. And that's where you see some of the weird stuff happen. Like I think one time we had someone, I think the limo driver was drinking or something and partying with the people in the limo.

I'm not even sure if it was a working lim was a uh working limo it might have been a private one but it rolled out in baker and when those things roll they just keep rolling uh and so it can be it could be a really dangerous business you think you're in a big giant vehicle and you're like oh i'm surrounded by a lot of steel i should be okay but uh sometimes those end up worse uh when worse when bad stuff happens. So definitely being a vehicle that's very safe, that has inspections, you know, the brakes are going to work. Okay. No question.

And, again, you know, that's all public, you know, record as well. So, you know, some of those companies, you know, as far as, you know, their safety violations and things like that are public records. So it's a good opportunity for you to be your own advocate when you're doing web research. Do your research. All right. Well, anything more we should know, Tim? No, I think it's all about trying to educate the riding public Chris and we sincerely appreciate the

opportunity to talk to you today alright well everyone check out the website give me the website one more time if you would Tim besaferides.com besaferides.com everyone check it out make an investment always remember the cheapest way isn't always the best if you've ever bought furniture at Ikea

you probably learned that valuable life lesson. If you're ever trying to put something together from IKEA, too, as well. But definitely protect your loved ones, protect your investments, and know what sort of cars you're getting into. Thanks to Tim Rose for being with us today. We certainly appreciate you guys for tuning in our audience. Be sure to go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss and hit that bell notification. So you get all the notifications for all the shows we're doing. Be sure to go to the CVPN.com to see all the Chris Voss podcast shows on the

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