Reston Limousine Keeps the Wheels Turning Day and Night

I hate driving.

If I were rich enough to have just one personal assistant, I would choose a driver.

I probably could afford one now, but I would be so broke that I would have nowhere to go. The next best thing would be to buy the services of a company like Reston Limousine, which is actually a bus company hauling 5,000 people around the Washington region on any given weekday.

Reston Limousine, founded in 1990 by William Bouweiri, has 30 sleek sedans and stretch limousines. Its 31-foot Hummer rents for $175 an hour; a Lincoln Town Car sedan runs $75. Those vehicles do the glamorous work of carting athletes to clubs, Virginia horse country doyennes to the Kennedy Center and politicians to Georgetown dinner parties.

But the company's workhorse, and its greatest source of revenue, is its fleet of 100 shuttle buses, which serves clients such as Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Justice and George Mason University. The shuttles, like the ones you ride at airports, ferry clients' workers on scheduled routes between their various office branches, Metro stops and other locations. George Mason pays Reston Limo $2 million a year to carry students between campuses and parking sites.

William's wife, Reston Limousine President Kristina Bouweiri, and I were standing outside the offices of one of her biggest customers last week, and that's when she let me in on a little secret: "I double dip," she said.

I was aghast for a nanosecond. Then she explained.

"Let's say I have two shuttles serving the U.S. Geological Survey during the day, which was true until recently. In the evening, those shuttles go to 40 hotels in the Dulles Corridor and take guests into D.C. for tours at $35 for each person." (Hotel concierges earn $3 for each customer they refer.) "The bus holds 25 people. So the value of the USGS contract that was worth $240,000 was worth $150,000 more because sightseeing adds revenue. It's all utilization."

Reston Limousine does this with all its vehicles. Call it "asset utilization," "throughput" or whatever you like. But the business practice guiding Reston Limousine's profits is the same as a steel plant or a McDonald's franchise: Once you've acquired your business assets, make them work as hard as you can.

Lebanese immigrant William Bouweiri was a limousine driver back in 1986 when he used an extraordinary $5,000 tip to help buy a couple of cars and start his own company called Unique Limousines. Bouweiri relocated the enterprise to Reston in 1990, renamed it Reston Limousine, and soon after met and married Kristina. Their five vehicles at the time generated about $400,000 annually, mostly from airport trips and small jobs around town.

The big break came in 1992 when a man knocked on the door of their Reston office and said he would bring them the paperwork for a federal contract if they would hire him as a driver.

"We said, sure," said Kristina.