Word: jefferson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Success at Jefferson Lines...
...company that has profited handsomely from deregulation is Jefferson Lines of Minneapolis. The company was skidding into the red and facing a strike in 1978, when Louis Zelle, 59, a Minneapolis real estate developer who owns 60% of the company, set out to find someone with "no background in the bus industry" to run the firm. He explains: "Most bus executives are only interested in meeting schedules. Passengers are incidental...
Prins first persuaded his new employees to call off the strike, then talked them into accepting a profit-sharing plan instead of increases in salary and benefits. Next he traded in Jefferson's aging fleet of 120 buses for 100 new red-and-white ones that carry more passengers in greater comfort and at lower cost...
...Example: for $49.95, passengers can take a two-day trip from Des Moines to Minneapolis, complete with dinner and one night at a good hotel. Greyhound and Trailways charge more than $80 for the same round trip, without the hotel or the meal, and airfare is $100 one way. Jefferson now offers tours from coast to coast, and has even jumped the Atlantic to carry vacationers to Paris, Venice and the castles along the Rhine...
...addition to introducing imaginative marketing, Prins also found new sources of income inside the company. Jefferson began selling the service of its mechanics to competing firms. And while maintenance is usually a heavy drag on earnings in the industry, Jefferson's operation now produces $3 million in revenues. A training school for bus drivers that Prins started in 1980 also makes money and earns Jefferson a 30% reduction in insurance rates. The result of the new services: in the past four years, the privately held company's revenues have increased by 33%, to $20 million, and profits have...