H1 limo delayed AGAIN!

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

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

Good news

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

Transmission is finally on the way

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.

Announcing our names.

Yes names. We are going to use two of them. We will be using one name for business customers and the other for the party crowd. For the business end of things we will be using "Portland Metro Limos" We have the domain www.PortlandMetroLimos.com . For the party crowd we will have "Wide Load Limos" at www.WideLoadLimos.com .

The sites right now point to the blog here. But they will repoint to the sites as we get them up. We will make a few sites. There will be two different business class sites and then a couple of party sites. They will both have the same information but when you go to them the target audience will clearly be different.

We registered both of these names with the state. so we are good to go. Now all we need are some car!


As for the car. The H1 limo is still stuck in California. We finally got a date on when the backordered transmission will be in. It will arrive on the 16th of this month. I am planning to pick it up on the 23rd. As for other cars. I'm working on a business class limo. I'm working on getting a 6 to 10 passenger Cadillac or Chrysler 300. For the party side I'm looking at an H2 hummer. It's very possible I could end up with one of these other cars before car number 1 arrives here in town.

My goal right now is to be available for bookings March 1st with the H1. We will see though.

Properly naming our Limo service

Sometimes a name for a business is very apparent. Other times it is not. Our current name we are running the business under is not proper for a Limo service. It's good for all of the other stuff we do. But it does not project the proper image we need. So we brainstormed a bit and we did not come up with much that we liked. So I took our brain storming to the next level. We did the Solution People (link) version.

The solution People method is to work in a group but independent at the same time. The method uses a group of people. We did this at our company meeting. We even had my youngest son and my dad who are not on staff help out with this. There was 11 of us total and in 10 minutes we came up with exactly 200 ideas for names. It was the first time I had used this method since I learned it last year. Here's a list of some of the names we came up with. Some of the ideas are very good. Some were very stupid and some were just outrageous!

Limos "R" Us
Choose Us First
Treat You Right
Markee Limos
Top Rated Livery
Big Black Whale Limos
White Trash Limos
Large Limo Livery
Esquire Carriage
Dragonrunners
mEr
Paramount Limos
Magnum Opus
Portland Limos
Columbia Limos
Sex Party Bus
Aphrodite's Carriage
Tux Limo Company
Killer Limos
Dragon Limos
Your Total Limo Company
Special Time Limos
Fun time limos
Super Limo Service
Better Limo Company
MD Limos
Long Load Limos
Leg Room Limos
Beautiful Limo Company
Markee's Awesome Limo Company
Shack's Caddies
First Class Limos
Busboy Inc.
Celebrity Magnet
Markee Motors
Markee Machines
Dragon's Tail
Love Machine Tours
Big Big Buses
Limo of Love
Death Trap Limos
Dragon Coaches
Hummer Livery
Masterpiece Transport Services
Big Butt Carriages
Smokin! Long Limos
Uppercrust Carriage
Troop Transports
Freakin' Huge!
Fantasy Trips
Portland Assault
TLC Limos
The People's Limos
Monster Limos
Skid Marks Limos
Over the top
AAA Limos
Cat Snot Limos
Red Dog Limos
Big Wheels
Fo Shizzle
Enchanted Limousines

and my favorite of the goofy ones: Tyrannosaurus Trux!

I did not want to type out all 200 of them. So I just picked some of the best ones. Or should I say most interesting.

We did choose two of them that we really like. One that is more of a business customer name and another that is a party name. You'll have to wait for another post before I'll announce what they are. We need to get them set in stone. Registered and such before we mention them.

The list I think is pretty funny. Do you think we would get good funeral business if we called ourselves "Death Trap Limos"? lol

Brakes done by a Hummer Dealership

About 2 months ago the brakes were redone on the limo to the cost of $1800. The work was done by a Hummer Dealership in South Carolina. Just to bring everyone up to speed on this. On our trip from South Carolina to Oregon we lost our front brakes in California. Must of the fluid mysteriously disappeared in the front reservoir. We looked in the manual for what kind of brake fluid was needed. The manual states DOT5.

After we finally found some DOT5 fluid (Most everyone carries DOT3) we opened the reservoir and filled it. To our surprise the fluid in the system was clear and what we were putting in was purple. DOT5 is purple or yellow. DOT3 is clear. DOT3 is assidic to the system and will eat the seals in a DOT5 system. See the problem here?

So today I called the company I purchased the limo from. I know that the brakes had been done. But I assumed that they were done by some joe blow shop. In fact he told me today that they were done by a Hummer Dealership. If that's the case I should be able to get some sort of warranty to help cover the costs of the breaks. We'll see. I put in a call to the Hummer dealership where the car is at right now. I'll ask them to pull the receipt from the glove box, take a look at it and see if this is in fact a warranty situation. Hopefully so. It will save me a few thousand if it is.

*Crosses Fingers*