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Can someone guide me in figuring out airport rates. Determining what rates per Zone and how to set the zones.

Thanks

Jim does it the right way. Now if you were an operator in Detroit, you would probably pay your Chauffeur $15.00 flat rate to the airport, have him/her wait at the airport for four hours with no pay and then $15.00 flat rate for the back haul. Then to add insult to injury, call him/her an Independent contractor and expect him/her to pay .153 percent FICA and cover their own tax and workers comp. This is how the operators squeeze some profit out of what would other wise be a looser competing with the Guys who are in the Airport transportation business.

Now because Jim does do enough of these, he enjoys the economy of scale to make it pay but the Guy doing 5 or 6 a week is just wasting his time and money unless he does them as an as directed and charges accordingly.

I charge $85 per hour for "as directed" super stretches that seat 8. However, my LAX round trip rate is based on $53.50 per hour. But, we never present it that way. It is quoted as $535.00 round trip. LAX is a two hour drive from my home town of Bakersfield but we figure the total round trip on ten hours to locate luggage etc.

So, round trip, to take someone to LAX on a Monday and pick them up on Saturday, the base rate is $535.00. It is considered a Point to Point trip and ANY stops (other than restroom) are $35 per stop. 2nd pickiup? $35!, Meal stop? $35! We add a fuel surcharge, a 15% service charge (not a tip) and we make an average of five trips a day to the airport with many backhauls. As a rule of thumb, if we have a flight arriving within 4 hours of a drop off, we hold the car at the airport for an average cost of $50 in payroll. The savings in gas alone makes this a no-brainer, not to mention wear and tear on the car at 240 miles for each trip.

If I did not discount it the way I do, I seriously doubt that I could get five trips a day with a round trip price of $850, plus, plus, plus. What would be the point? A group of four can fly to LAX from Bakersfield round trip for $900.

Those LAX trips are the staple of our business and if we didn't do so many of them, we would be unable to do so many backhauls and enjoy the double dipping.

The best is when you have an LAX drop off at 7:30pm and an arriving flight at 8:15pm! You essentially get a complete job from LAX to Bakersfield with no expense. Your fuel and wages to return home were factored into the first trip down to the airport.

I am propaply quite opinionated when it comes to Limousine services doing Airport runs. There are thoes set up to do Airports, (in the Detroit area it is Metro Cars and Checker Sedan) and then there are thoes who are not. which is probably 99% of the other Limousine operators in the state. Metro Cars and Checker Sedan have the Cars at the Airport 24/7/365. They can respond to a call like a Taxi. The rest of the Limo services must preplan everything call in a Chauffeur, pay minimums (well some do). The Metro Cars and Checker Sedans of the world have the luxury of backhauls on most evey trip eliminated the kiler dead head mileage that the retail Limousine operator has. Because the Metro Cars and Checker Sedans of the world enjoy this "economy of scale" they can perform this service at a much lower price. When the retail Limo services try to compete price wise, they loose "BIG TIME". If you want to be in the Airport business join up with the Metro Car/Checker Sedan types of your area. Other wise, treat evry Airport just as you would an As Directed. In My humble opinion.

If it takes you three hours round trip to do an airport, charge the client three hours at your highest retail rate. You are paying that Chauffeur for all the time his Butt is in the seat(well most reputable operators do anyway) and for all the time that car is on the road. If you are lucky enough to catch a Backhaul then good for you, you double dipped. If you don't like in most cases, dead head cost you the same to operate as live miles.

Depending on the car, we used to figure it out at a Rate/Per Minute. Of course this was circa 1995.

For example, if the job, on average, would take 45 minutes, we'd rate it at 45 X $1.50/min = $67

Rates were determined on time and car; not distance. Short distance trips into the city would be more than a longer trip in the suburbs simply cuz it took longer.

Traffic was viewed as costly both in time, wear-and-tear on the car, and gas consumption.