Limousine Contracts Forms: Fill & Download for Free

I’m going with a surreal nice guys story if you don’t mind. I was driving limousine back in the big early 1990s. The company I worked for scored a contract driving various artists from the 4 Seasons hotel in Boston for the Kiss108 radio station concert and party(s) around the city after. Get this crazy combination: The guys from RATT jump in my limousine with LL Cool J. (And I believe a gentleman who was his agent). Both acts were at the top of their respective popularity at the time. You couldn’t put together a different group of people from different backgrounds if you tried. Am I right or am I right? Ha! And yet—They had a blast! All Humble, All regular guys who seemed to really appreciate having made it. I’m talking non stop laughing all night. Lots of “smoke” in the back. But such a positive feel. Thrilled when I took them to the 24 hour bakery in the north end before heading back to the hotel. I wasn’t allowed to take tips for the job and they were stunned at this. And legitimately to a man seemed upset by it. Later when I got back to the garage. I went to clean out the back of the limousine and all over the Seats were 20 dollar bills. Everywhere. $180.00 in total. One of my favorite nights.

Picture a construction site for a major project.Hard helmets. Steel toed boots. Pickup trucks.Loaded with contractors battling to squeak out a profit, cutting corners wherever they can.Now imagine a stretch limousine rolling up just prior to the kickoff meeting for this project.Who is in it?We’ll get to that.This particular project was led by Turner Construction who had several contracts to build out AT&T data centers in the late 90’s.I was a sales rep hoping to convince the lead project manager to use General Electric for the power system installation, a big job involving equipment and substantial engineering. Just our startup and installation would cost Turner $300,000.I was 23 years old and just starting my career in sales. Desperate for a big order, I was happy to take his abuse and there was plenty of it.This is pretty standard for a large construction company. They bid on large deals knowing the margins will be thin. Once they secure a contract from an end user, they go to work beating up their subcontractors for lower prices.He has a past with General Electric and feels strongly that our bloated organization results in higher costs than the market warrants.He is mostly correct.By 2000, General Electric was still pricing as if they had a talent advantage and our field engineering rates were routinely 50% higher than competitors.Our talent advantage was nowhere near that premium.On large jobs like this, we did have one advantage which was size. Locally, we had more resources than just about anyone so we could typically finish a job on time. Executing on time is critical to a large general contractor, who might have performance targets in their contract.I assure him that his past experience with GE is not indicative of the amazing local team that I represent. I emphasize the size of our local team and introduce him to our local operations manager.We both assure him that we have scrubbed this proposal for every inefficiency. We will be Spartan-like in our workmanship and efficiency.Two of his local supervisors are not helping. They want to choose our competitor and are not shy in telling their boss about it.“Don’t listen to this. They always say these things. GE can’t manage cost. It’s not in their DNA.”Fortunately, this project manager is very concerned with on-time delivery and we win out, in spite of a higher cost. I am bullish that we will win the remaining contracts after we do a great job on this first deal.As it happens, we closed several more big deals with other customers shortly after this victory. This was great for our office but the timing made execution difficult.In essence, we didn’t have enough resources to fulfill the jobs locally, which is what I counted on when I sold them. Our operations team went looking for support elsewhere, trying to find qualified engineers with availability.I was assured that we would have enough resources and trusted the operations team to come through. On the day of the project kickoff, all of the pertinent vendors were onsite.My customer contact was leading the kickoff meeting and his boss was there to make sure it got off to a good start. This meeting was to focus on the importance of cost and deadlines.Our lead engineer would be coming in from Florida and his flight was cancelled the night before due to storms. We made sure to get him on the first flight so he would make it with time to spare.As the meeting was about to kick off, nearly 30 people congregated outside of the trailer where we would have the meeting. I was sweating it out as I waited for our Florida engineer to arrive, hoping he would make it on time.In rolls the limousine, shiny and white. For a second, I think the CEO of Turner Construction or AT&T might be making a surprise appearance.You never see a limo on a job site like this.I saw it in slow motion. My engineer opened the door and popped out as if nothing was out of the ordinary.Every other contractor who had cut their proposals to razor-thin profit margins stared in disbelief. I wanted to dig a hole and bury my head in it.Spartan-like efficiency, indeed.My customer’s gaze is fire and brimstone. Directly behind, his manager is giving him the same look while his supervisors are wearing smirks that scream “I told you so!”“What are you doing?”, I whisper to my oblivious teammate.“Oh this? I met him at the airport and he offered me the same rate as a taxi. The line for a taxi was long so it just made sense.”“Did you stop to think about the optics of pulling into a job site in a stretch limousine?!?”He shrugs.Most of our engineers were great at GE but this was the exact engineer that our customer was concerned with in the first place. He had 35 years with the company and remembered an era when the company could charge anything because of our talent gap.Those days were over.And so were mine with Turner Construction.I made my customer look ridiculous in front of his boss and subordinates.The project manager makes a big show of the situation in the kick-off meeting. He is embarrassed because he beat all of the other vendors up on cost and our ostentatious arrival makes it seem like he took it easy on us.In front of everyone, he announces that this will be the last contract that GE gets of their remaining data centers. Those were deals I was counting on to make my quota, worked months to secure and lost in the time it takes to say “Town Car”.It wasn’t all bad though. He did offer some career advice.“Find another job kid. This isn’t for you.”Ice cold.As with most embarrassing failures, I wouldn’t benefit from this defeat for a few months. It stung and I wanted someone to blame. I started off mad at my customer. Then, I was mad at the Florida engineer. Next, the operations manager who brought him in.It wasn’t until the next project that I realized how much more control I had. I attended every internal meeting on resources and made sure to explicitly detail the hot buttons of my customer. I added details that were not in the contract and contacted the engineers who were assigned to the job.I was not going to play the victim card.I owned each contract through execution. I left nothing to chance.It taught me that I needed to take responsibility for follow-up on the projects that I sold. Regardless of whose fault a customer service issue was, it was my business and income that would suffer.I learned to “trust, but verify” and thankfully, didn’t take my customer up on his “career advice”.That engineer and his sweet ride from the airport did me a favor that day.

Most of the professionals who provide wedding services (venues, caterers, DJs, bands, photographers, limousine companies, etc.) issue contracts for their services. The contract should detail any consequences of the customer cancelling the event.Legally, the only person(s) responsible for paying any fees associated with cancelling the wedding are the person(s) listed as clients on those various contracts. So if it’s a case where the bride’s parents are signing everything, but the groom causes the cancellation (cold feet, infidelity, got arrested/jailed, whatever), it’s still the bride’s parents on the hook because it’s their names on the contracts.However, it would certainly be fair and appropriate for the bride’s parents to demand the groom reimburse them for their losses, provided the cancellation was entirely his decision or a result of his negative actions. And it would be the right thing for him to honor that request, repay his debts and move forward with a clear conscience.