Portland Limo Company - Blogging a limo startup

Current status

2008-10-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I posted to this blog. We have been publishing articles over to our other limo community site. It never really took off like I wanted. I've had other sites that have grown huge in the video game industry. The market for limos is just not as big.

We did get everything up and running with our company called Portland Limos. With the economy the way it is now we have had a hard time covering the costs of running the company. Thus we now have it for sale. So I wanted to publish a copy of the sale information here.

We've had a great run at this business. I had a lot of fun with it,. But it turned out to just not be our thing. But I will say. I am an expert at other online business areas. One of those areas being how to affiliate market and do sales online. So I may change this blog into an information resource for online sales and bookings for limos. We'll see. If I make more posts here you'll know I've decided to do that.

Here is the information on the sale of our company.

Limo Company and cars for sale: Portland Oregon. Portlandlimos.com

We are selling the entire company. This is the cars and the companies assets. We are willing to sell all of it or part. We are willing to make an incredible deal on the entire package.

3 of the 5 cars have loans. 2 of the cars are free and clear. We will make a package deal for the exact same price of the loans payoff at $188,000. The cars are valued at $220,000. Plus there is other assets such as the domain name http://www.portlandlimos.com that will be included for free if purchasing the entire company.

Quick overview:
-2007 H2 Hummer 18 passenger, Tandem axles, 37 feet in length. Black and Silver
-2007 Chrysler 300, 8 passenger, Black and Silver
-2003 Ford Excursion, 20 passenger, White
-1997 Hummer H1, 20 passenger, Black
-1993 Lincoln, 8 passenger, Black
Domains: http://www.portlandlimos.com | http://www.wideloadlimos.com
Limolinks scheduling software
Full customer list
Currently running full page ad in the NW Gay and Lesbian phone book. Prepaid for this entire edition. This includes entries in their online site. http://www.pdxgayyellowpages.com/p/listing.php?id=3842
Introductions will be made to current business clients.

All cars are in great shape and have been fully maintained.

Detailed information on each car:
==================
2007 Chrysler 300 Limousine
Pictures: http://limonster.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/511

Vehicle Details-
Year: 2007
Make: Chrysler
Model: 300
Miles: 8,388
Color: Black/Silver
Passenger Capacity: 8
Coachbuilder: Krystal Enterprises
Body Condition Rating: 10
Mechanical Condition Rating: 10
Interior Condition Rating: 10
Vehicle Classification/Type: Limousine
Vehicle Status: Used

Warranty and Financing-
Is there a warranty on the vehicle? Yes, coachbuilder

CD/DVD – Sounds System
2 Video Screens
2 Bars

$59,000

==================
2007 Hummer H2 Limousine
This is the longest limo in Oregon.
Pictures: http://limonster.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/512

Vehicle Details-
Year: 2007
Make: Hummer
Model: H2
Miles: 14,699
Color: Black/Silver
Passenger Capacity: 17-21
Coachbuilder: Legendary Motorcars and Coachworks
Body Condition Rating: 10
Mechanical Condition Rating: 10
Interior Condition Rating: 9.9
Vehicle Classification/Type: Limousine
Vehicle Status: Used

Vehicle Description-
CD/DVD – Sound System Level 2
6 Video screens
3 bars
Light-up disco floor
VIP seating area

$105,000

==================
2003 Ford Excursion Limousine
http://limonster.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/514

Vehicle Details-
Year: 2003
Make: Ford
Model: Excursion
Miles: 61,896
Color: White
Passenger Capacity: 17-21
Coachbuilder: Ultra
Body Condition Rating: 9
Mechanical Condition Rating: 9
Interior Condition Rating: 8

Vehicle Classification/Type: Limousine
Vehicle Status: Used

Vehicle Description-
CD/DVD – Sounds System
3 Video Screens (One is in need of repair. It's non functioning, reason unknown.)
4 Bars

$34,000

==================
1997 H1 Hummer Limousine
This is one hell of a macho limo.
Pictures: http://limonster.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/513/page/1

Vehicle Details-
Year: 1997
Make: AMC
Model: H1 Hummer
Miles: 110,168
Color: Black
Passenger Capacity: 22
Coachbuilder: Royal Coach
Body Condition Rating:
Mechanical Condition Rating:
Interior Condition Rating:

Vehicle Classification/Type: Limousine
Vehicle Status: Used

Vehicle Description-
CD/DVD – Thumping Sounds System
2 video screens
4 bars
Fog machine + Lasers

$35,000
==================

1993 Lincoln Town car Limousine
Pictures: http://limonster.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/121
Year: 1993
Make: Ford
Model: Lincoln
Miles: 247,118
Color: Black
Passenger Capacity: 8
Body Condition Rating: 6 - For it's age it is very good. It does show some age though.
Mechanical Condition Rating: 8
Interior Condition Rating: 6
Vehicle Classification/Type: Limousine
Vehicle Status: Used

$4000
==================

We have been very successful in online businesses. Running a transportation company turned out to not be out thing. We will sell all of this at a loss so that we can just move on to business areas we are good at. Our giving up in this area can be your fortune.

Contact Information: Marcus Eikenberry Email markeedragon@markeedragon.com or call my cell 503.484.3279 I am available 8am until 8pm by phone. 24x7 by email. :)
http://www.markeedragoninc.com

Picking up the new H2 Limo

2007-06-23T15:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.limonster.com

Announcing a new limo community site

2007-05-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

We have been working for several months on a new limo community site. It's located at www.limonster.com . There are a couple of limo based communities on the net today. They left me feeling a bit wanting for more. Since I could not find it we decided to create it. Please feel free to bookmark the sites address. We will still post the videos here at this site. But they will also be posted at Limonster as well. All transcriptions will be posted only at the new site.

I look forward to seeing you there!

New offices location

2007-05-13T09:58:00.001-07:00

Finding the right location

2007-04-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Limo Detailing

2007-04-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

New limo community site - Almost.

2007-04-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

A brief Krystal limo review

2007-04-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

Krystal's Website

Fly and Dine - Doing dinner in style

2007-04-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

Responding to comments about Crappy limo service

2007-04-09T17:09:00.000-07:00

See the original here. These are in reply to the comments in that post.

Crappy limo service

2007-04-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

Is it wrong of me to complain about the condition of the car and the service?

Oh man. Look at that mess of wires!

2007-04-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

More shop time

2007-03-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

A few missing videos

2007-03-25T13:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a few missing videos from the trip. Sacramento to Portland.

Getting the limo back to our home town.

2007-03-10T07:58:00.001-08:00

It's been another wild day. It's been interesting though. We got more attention than I was looking for including a guy mooning us and a gal lifting her shirt to the car. Sorry. I did not catch video of that for you all. (GRIN)

We picked up the Money suck. It gets to much attention!

2007-03-08T21:30:00.000-08:00

Several videos today. Being on the road I could not upload them until now. Lots of good viewing. I got all of the good stuff today except for the crazy lady that would not get out of my way. I needed to turn and she was very aggressive. I could not get into the turn lane so I had to start easing into it with her there. Just to let her know I needed to get in. She turned very hostile. Followed us to the gas station. Blocked us with her car. Got out and yelled at us.

That was not all though. She came back 10 minutes later before we had left and yelled at us some more. I was wondering since she came back if she went to get a gun or something. she just wanted to yell some more. She stopped when she saw my son in the car.

What's the kicker of this? She was like 65 years old. I've never seen road rage from a woman senior citizen before. Guess this was the first time.

Final choice for the new limo

2007-03-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Finally picking up the H1 from the shop

2007-03-06T11:26:00.000-08:00

Transcribed by Kimmi Clark

Hello!

Well, I have an update on the H1 Hummer limo, it’s done and we’re picking it up on Thursday. Behind me here you can see a picture here of the Hummer being worked on. This picture was actually taken when we were in Dallas, Texas when we lost our fuel switch. The H1 is finally done; there is still stuff to be repaired on which we will have to get to. We will take care of the damage once it gets back. The damage isn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be. In total the damage it’s over 12k so I’m only going to have to pay out another 5k when I pick it up instead of the anticipated 7k.

We’re going to take it up from Sacramento where it’s currently at right now. We plan to then drive over to SF and hopefully meet up with some friends of mine over there who are developers over at www.EA.com who are currently working on the Ultima Online game. We want to take them all out to lunch but we’ll see and then we’re heading up the coast towards Oregon.

Hopefully we don’t have any more issues. I will take the camera with me and we’ll work on getting videos uploaded from our trip and maybe just show some fun stuff. Hopefully it won’t be stuff “Here I am broke down at the mechanics again.” We’ll gross our fingers.

Anyways I also wanted to mention John Husting. I wanted to mention him because I paid him $9.00 today for mentioning how many “uhms” I had in my previous video. Just so you know I’m paying out $1 per unintentional “uhm” because I am trying to break myself of this habit and the more expensive it is the harder I’ll work at breaking it. He counted my “uhs” and my “uhms” but I am working on them one at a time. Let’s get rid of the “uhms” and I’ll hit the “uhs”. If anyone is watching this and future videos for every “uhm” I am paying a buck for each one. If you’re the first to email me and tell me about it I will pay out as long as you’re correct.

Take care, that’s all for today

Picking the best limo manufacturer

2007-03-03T15:57:00.001-08:00

Video Transcript
Transcribed by Kimmi Clark

ME: Hey everybody. I am here with Dennis, he is our Operations Manager.

DH: Hello.

ME: We’re looking to purchase a brand new limo after our problems with the H1 that keeps costing me more money. My buddy Tim has started calling me and asking me “How’s the money suck?”, and that’s all it’s been. I don’t even have it home yet, I’m hoping today to find out more information about that.

So we’ve been looking at brand new limos and I’ve found this Hummer that I fell in love with. It has a 240 inch stretch, tandem axel, and a large screen HD television in it. There is also a dance floor, a fog machine, laser lights, the whole works. It seats around 24-26 people with a really nice bar configuration inside. It was from California limos, http://www.kalifornialimos.com , if you go to their site right now though; unfortunately it says that their web domain has been suspended. Maybe that means they’ve gone out of business, I really don’t know. All of the information I had for contacting them was on that site so I can’t get to it now. I guess they’re out of luck.

I did some searching around in the limo forums, www.limos.com. I got recommendations and questions answered about what I need to look for in a brand new vehicle and everything. The biggest thing that they were all telling me is about warrantee. The first recommendation was www.krystal.cc and I didn’t call them first, instead I looked at the California limousines picture and started looking around at some of the other builders. I found that www.royalcoachbyvictor.net looked to be the limo that we wanted. So I called Royal and I talked to them there, I got a quote from them and everything. In the background here you can see a picture of the H2, 200 inch stretch. I asked them about a 240 inch stretch with tandem and everything and I didn’t get what I wanted. Dennis and I were talking about it and the best that they’ll give us is a 200 inch.

DH: Why don’t they do the 240 inch stretch?

ME: Well what they told me was that they manufacture five cars per week in an assembly line and for safety reasons they don’t do the 240. Even though they acknowledged that the one I saw on the California site was probably made by them. It appears that’s a policy made within the last year.

DH: What about the tandem axel option?

ME: The tandem takes an enormous amount of time and this goes back to their five a week assembly line. If one car takes longer than the other cars it holds everything up.

DH: Will money buy what you want?

ME: I did offer more and they said it just wasn’t possible. I’ve decided after talking to them that I really like the way this car looks. I really like the Lamborghini style front doors and the suicide doors in the back. It’s really cool looking, two-toned with really nice rims. I can show you the inside interior in just a minute.

So let’s get back to www.krystal.cc, their website is 100% flash and is very hard to navigate. You have to wait for menus to pop open; you can’t just look at pictures. It also has noises on everything you click on. This is the standard option for Krystal, they do offer a two-toned option but they don’t offer some of the other things I wanted. For example, let me show you the Victor one here again (Royal Coach). Here is the site and a picture of the limo I was just showing you. They have a dance floor, the large screen TV, (By the way the television I am using here as a monitor is a 46” Sony Bravia, I talked to them about it because it will do really high computer resolutions, it will do 1920 by 1080. I talked to them about putting these in there and they said it was just fine. So we’re going to use one of these puppies up in the front.), and they talked about having the dance floor style stuff up in the head bars up here. It’s pretty nice interior; I actually like what I see there.

Then I talked to Krystal about their warrantee because they have a 3 year 36k mile warrantee on all their Hummers. All I would have to do is take it to their dealership and it will be fixed. They also had a warrantee on their own electronics and they would ship out new warrantee parts of there was a situation. Although, with Krystal, this is it! You don’t get extra frills. The interior is just one design that I could get out of them. It looks very nice but it’s not quite the seating capacity I was looking for. Their seating capacity is 14 people. We can do 24 in the Victor but we have to give up some stuff. We wouldn’t have to give up the TV up front but there would have to be seats across that portion. The problem with that is I can see people banging the back of their heads into the TV and I don’t think that it would be very smart. We could do really high seating capacity, around 24, but what it really looks like is that we’ll end up doing about 20 in order to get all of the features we want.

www.royalcoachbyvictor.net , I talked to them about warrantees as well, including Krystal’s, and what they said was that the warrantee was an after market warrantee (when you cut a Hummer in half you void the warrantee) and so the after market warrantee is not an actual hummer warrantee even though you take it to a hummer dealership for service. It’s an extra warrantee and if you dickered with them you get take that off of the price, roughly around 2k. They also told me that if I wanted a warrantee like what Krystal offered I’d have to add a couple thousand dollars to the price. I guess that sounds very much the same although maybe it’s the way the presentation is between the two warrantees that makes Krystal’s sound more like a factory warrantee.

DH: Krystal is selling the warrantee more as a feature, more than Royal is.

ME: Correct. In fact Royal does have a warrantee, their warrantee is on all of the electrical and components put in for 1 year and then the exterior is 3 years, I believe it’s either 3 years or 300k miles. I wouldn’t quote me on that but I think that’s what they said it was. The exterior warrantee is for the paint not to bubble, and no issues with the body, and they guarantee that it will not sag or crack on the frame. That to me actually sounds really good because with the H1 we found some stress cracks, and those are going to have to be repaired now too. I’m sure that will be a fair deal of money!

So for features, I really like the Royal version, the only thing I don’t like is the length, I really wish we could get it longer. We will be able to get the flat screen TV, two 17” TV’s, and a 7” TV. It will also have a nice sound system, bass boxes, and an intercom system. Since where the TV (on the picture from the monitor) goes is actually where the partition will be it does not raise and lower. Since it doesn’t raise and lower there is an inferred camera, in the interior on the passenger section, so you can see what’s going on back there. I’ll assume that we’ll have to make our camera very visible or we’ll have to let our clients know about that. We don’t need any extra curricular activities going on back there and catch it on camera. It has other stuff like an Xbox 360 with wireless controls and we’ll have computer input on the screen. We will also have a disco floor and disco parts on the ceiling rails. We’ll get the suicide doors, even though it’s a 10k option. I think it will make it much easier to get and out of the vehicle, plus it looks really cool. The total that they’re quoting me right now is 134k so that is within our ball park for what we’re looking for, for our new limo.

DH: I still can’t get past the fact that we’re not going to be a really monster limo with it. If we can’t do the tandem axels and we can’t do the longer stretch, I personally don’t see a reason why we would get it.

ME: That is a concern, especially since one of the things we’re doing is going for the biggest limos in town. I think we’re going to look some more, I might have to settle on this because I do believe that warrantee is very important. I haven’t been able to find very many manufacturers that our going to do the extra length. In Oregon we can go up to 40 feet and I would like to do that if I can find one, ideally a 240”-260” stretch with a tandem axel (mostly for the breaking power).

Are there anymore questions?

DH: No that’s it!

ME: Thanks everybody for watching!

H1 limo delayed AGAIN!

2007-02-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

Today was the day is was to be ready. I got voice mail last night stating it will not be done. Uggg!

Transcribed by Kimmi Clark:

Ok I’ve got a bit of a rant here; I’m getting really ticked off. I’ve talked about my H1 Limo that I purchased back around the first of January. We drove across country and it broke down in Sacramento. So we took it to Hummer of Sacramento and I flew back home here to Portland because it wasn’t ready. We weren’t able to get it done very quickly. They assessed the vehicle and we’ve got the transmission out, we’ve got the transfer case out, and we have break problems. The wrong break fluid was put into the system, the fluid put in was actually acidic and the wrong type. There are several other issues as well.

I’ve been working on it and it’s just been one delay after another. Right now it is February 27th, we dropped it off before the 15th of January and so now were looking at six weeks that the H1 has been sitting in the shop. It may very well happen that we’ll get the second limo before the first one even arrives. I’m a little irritated today, I got a phone message last night from Hummer of Sacramento that said basically that they just got started on the work it was scheduled to be done today. I’ve been trying to call them the last few days so I could get my airline tickets and go down and get it. Apparently they are behind and so they also found some other things wrong with it, like welds that need to be done. I guess they’re helpful on things but these delays are just killing me. That’s my rant for today. I’m getting thoroughly disgusted with having purchased a used vehicle, most likely never again will I purchase a used limo. They’ll all be new from here on out.

What an expensive lesson to learn. So far I’ve paid 50k for the car and up to 70k in expenses and I’ve got another 7k-10k expenses before I get it home. What an issue!
End of rant!

Purchasing a custom H2 limo

2007-02-25T06:15:00.001-08:00

Transcribed by Kimmi Clark

Welcome to another video for the blog “Portland Metro Limos”, its http://portlandlimo.blogspot.com. I just want to go over a couple of things that have happened recently and to welcome you all to the first official video, there was another video just kind of explaining things. For those of you who have been following, this will be transcribed; transcription will be up in a few days. In the future most of the videos will be transcribed right away.

First off, for those of you that are counting, every time I say “uhm” I will pay out a $1.00 to the first person who emails me at Markee Dragon at Markeedragon.com listing the number of times I said it in the video. I do this once for each video, I’ll pay you via PayPal so the payment will be instant. I know that my first video was very costly. It’s a habit I am trying to break so I’ll just pay out on it. So if you catch me go ahead and email me, Markee Dragon at Markeedragon.com and I will pay up if you’re the first one to email in about it.

So the status of the H1 Limo, well, it has really been a disaster. So our first car, we bought it used and it didn’t go quite as planned. We bought it in South Carolina and started driving it back and we only got as far as California (we’re in Portland). We blew out the transmission and the transfer case. It’s been there for 6 weeks now at Hummer of Sacramento. They finally got the transmission put in it this week and it should be finished on Tuesday. We might have our first limo back here on location the following week.

In other BIG news, I’ve been working a loan for our second car. It’s kind of funny because our second car is almost arriving before our first. We’ve been working on financing and that has gone pretty good. I managed to get all the documentation for the bank and was able to get 100k approved for our first brand new car. My price range for the new car is around 120k. The car that I have been looking at on www.kaliforniaLimoSales.com is a pretty interesting car. It’s a 240” H2 stretch and comes with 42” widescreen TV in the back, disco floor, laser light show, fiber optic and LED lighting. It is also tandem rear axel. It looks pretty spiffy and looks like a b*tch to drive around town. We are however going for the niche of being the biggest and most bad a$$ limousines in Portland, Oregon.

I did a little checking and I’ve been a member of the Limo Forums sponsored by www.limo.com. Their web address is actually www.limos.infopop.cc/eve. The forums there have been really helpful for me. I got a lot of good advice. I asked whether or not this would be a good vehicle to purchase and asked what things I needed to look out for. It seems that the number one thing people replied with was the warrantee. They said I need to be concerned about what kind of warrantee California Limo’s had to offer. They don’t have anything on their website about a warrantee.

Most of the recommendations were that Krystal is probably the best place to get a custom car and to have a good warrantee. I’ve been checking out their website but they don’t list any information about making custom cars. They have 200” limos but their H2’s look like they hold only around 14 passengers. Now the 240” from Kalifornia Limo Sales can hold 24 passengers.

We got all of our D.O.T stuff and we are registered motor carriers. Plus we’re all CDL drivers at the company here. We might as well go for the really big stuff because that’s where we are going to make our money.

A couple of guys on the forums recommended a couple of people that we plan to call on Monday. Hopefully they can build us a quality car.

That’s the update today and thank you for watching this.

Introducing Video entries

2007-02-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

Good news

2007-02-22T14:13:00.000-08:00

Finally some good news today. The transmission finally arrived at the dealership. Did I mention before it got lost in the snow storm on the east coast? I'm very happy that we will be able to start moving forward.

In other news. We are working on financing for a brand new H2 Hummer limo that will be 22 to 24 passenger. I'll finance $100,000 and then cover the rest of the cost out of pocket. I have a few builders that have designs that I find to be very attractive. Once I have the financing in place I'll start talking to builders and custom order.

Both of the builders I'm looking at are in California. If anyone can recommend a builder that is in the Pacific North West USA please feel free to suggest them to me. I would be interested to use a builder closer to home.

No I didn't blow my transmission this way

2007-02-18T17:26:00.000-08:00

Transmission is finally on the way

2007-02-10T17:11:00.000-08:00

It looks like the transmission that has been on back order is finally arriving on the 16th. Thank God. The 16th will make one month and one day that the limo has been in the shop. They expect to have the car available to me on the 23rd. So hopefully that weekend I'll be picking it up.

Sacramento Hummer contacted me and since the bill is up to $14,000 now they wanted some money. I don't blame them. So I sent them a check for $7000.

So how about I bring us up to date on how much in the hole I am. :)

Previous balance was -$56,033
Part payment to Hummer of Sacramento -$7000
Purchase 4 domain names registering them for 10 years. -$350
BOC-3 -$30
Company dinner to brainstorm for company names. -$135
Subscriptions for industry mags. -$85

New total: -$63,633

We also start our insurance on the 12th. We have to get that started or we loose our DOT application. So we will start commercially insuring the car on the 12th even though we don't have it yet. By the end of this month I might hit -80k. Fun fun.