Our Story
Me circa 1993
Hello, I'm Scott Tinkham founder of Driven. Whenever I visit a website to check out a business that I'm thinking about patronizing, I always look for the “About Us” or “Company” tab because I enjoy learning about their history, who the characters are and where they came from. I think it's important to communicate the spirit and the ” way we do things here” of your company. More importantly, the “Company Story” should be a compelling description of the inspiration behind the business. So here for your perusal is the story of Driven. It starts a ways back, I feel it's important to tell you a bit of my history in the business to try and justify what gives me the right to offer this somewhat personal service to the public.
In November of 1989 I was baptized by fire into the chauffeured transportation industry, aka “The Limo Biz” by breathing life into Blue Chip Limousine, Inc. an executive transportation company consisting of one limousine, one driver (me)……..no sleep. Always the optimist I worked half days (12 hours). Check out the picture of me back then to the left, I had a pretty good set of hair under that hat. Thank God I was only 29 because very quickly I found myself fully engulfed in one of the most folicly challenging and competitive industries known to entrepreneurial man. The clientele was unforgiving, the hours were long and unstructured, the pay was average and you can wear a suit of clothes out in 60 days. Sure the occasional mini portrait of Ben Franklin given to you by a gracious client or the thrill of driving 95mph with a police escort to a Dallas Cowboys game so your passenger will make it in time to sing our National Anthem was pretty exciting, but what I found out I enjoyed the most was all the different people I got to meet. Thousands of people, from famous to not famous at all, from business chieftain to pro athlete, I honestly think I've met one of each kind of person. I remember back when we used to meet our clients arriving at DFW at the gate. It was neat because when you got there early you would get to see things like a business man reunited with his wife and 4 year old son at the gate of his arriving flight. When I was doing a wedding transfer It was cool to see two newlyweds run to their awaiting limousine and their new life together. Anyway back to the “the Story”.
By 1995 we had grown our little one car operation to 15 vehicles and 20 employees. Then in August of 1999 Blue Chip merged with another transportation company called Aircar and I became president of one of the largest chauffeured transportation companies in Dallas Ft. Worth consisting of 35+ vehicles and 50 employees performing over 40 thousand trips a year.
So, I had this regular client that we would often provide chauffeured services for. He was a very recognizable famous pro quarterback, I can't tell you his name, but it rhymed with “
Somewhere around 2000 I almost went into the airport valet business with a guy. Then about halfway through 2003 I decided it was a good time to cash in my chauffeured transportation chips and I sold my interest in the merged company to my partner. I then settled into a blissful purposelessness for a couple of years. I still did consulting work and I helped coordinate group transportation for a local executive conference center. Fast forward to 2006.
Now this will probably sound strange, have you ever watched one of those sitcoms on TV where the main character is visited in a dream by a famous person who speaks to him directly and gives him some kind of obscure advise?. Well, one night in a dream in the summer of 2006 the afore mentioned quarterback (now retired)whose name rhymes with Roy said to me that his current limo service was getting expensive and that the hourly rate for a sedan after all the add-ons was north of $70 an hour not including the 30% fuel surcharge and he wanted to know if I could send a driver to his house to drive his car. Now I'm thinking call me crazy, but that's the second time “Roy” mentioned this to me, counting the first time back years ago when he actually really did. well, remember the valet guy I mentioned back in 2001, his name is Ken Kundmueller, President and Founder of Freedom Park Airport Valet Services, Ken and I have known each other since around 1990, anyway I really respect Kens opinion so I mentioned to him the idea of a limo service with no vehicles just well trained drivers. Which led to a discussion about how his airport valet business has grown and how he thought a lot of his customers were former airport limo service users. So I said to Ken, “do you think this driver only thing would be a good service to offer to your airport valet customers”, he said “sounds like a good idea let me think about it” another two years goes by and its June 2008, obviously Ken's a thinker but a good idea is a good idea. So Ken agreed to poll a few of his customers to see if there was any interest, the response was over whelming, in fact he said "It will fly", and this my friends is where our story begins………