If the buses aren?t present and the line doesn?t move, people lose faith. A docile crowd can turn unruly, ruining his reputation in an afternoon.
?You have to know how to handle 5,000 people an hour,? said the 52-year-old businessman, who has been riding the bus business since he was a kid, helping his father?s tour service whisk customers to weekend trips in New York and New England.
?People don?t mind [waiting] if the line is moving slowly, but it has to be moving,? he said.
Buses must be visible. Signage must be present. There needs to be communication.
?When there?s no buses and there?s lots of people, that?s when the [stuff] hits the fan.?
Take the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. It was a combustible mix: 4 a.m., 10,000 early arriving patrons milling about in parking lots. Buses not ready. Ticket lines. A killer deadline to see a dawn launch of hot air balloons.
Sherman sucked it up and took a bath on profits.
?I loaded them all without tickets and sent them on their way,? Sherman said.
Phew!
Sherman?s little-known Horizon Coach Lines is one of the largest privately owned of its kind in North America. His vehicles are strategically located in 15 markets across North America, from Vancouver to West Palm Beach. They are located near wherever big events happen.
His business, headquartered in an office building he partly owns in Sandy Spring, is a daily battle against weather, traffic, crowds and the clock to ensure hordes of people move safely and swiftly between hotels, conventions, sports venues, restaurants and who-knows-what.
The 2,000-employee enterprise includes his high-margin consulting company with the scintillating name of Transportation Management Services.
He also owns Horizon, which runs his fleet of coaches, shuttles and mini-buses.
When Horizon Coach Lines isn?t supplying vehicles for TMS?s special events, it?s operating commuter shuttles for private companies such as eBay.
Sherman studied business at Frostburg State University in western Maryland, then went to work for his father. He struck out on his own in the early 1990s, buying a 40-coach bus charter service in Washington, whose business centered on projects like ferrying student groups around the city.
The bus company, which was struggling, loaned him $4 million to come in and rescue it. Sherman said he allowed the business to expand too quickly, outrunning its cash reserves and not collecting its bills quickly enough. The company went bankrupt.
?I didn?t have enough extra cash to keep the buses running while customers took their 60 days to pay the bills,? he said.
The failure taught him to have a laser-like focus on the numbers. He also learned that being bigger was not always better, which many businesses fail to learn right off the bat.
Source: http://lowbrowse.org/value-added-his-bus-business-moves-big-crowds-for-big-profits.html
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