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The team at Regency Global was proud to see that the company is being featured in the latest issue of Chauffeur Driven magazine. This leading industry publication puts the spotlight on how “Regency Global Thrives During Pittsburgh’s Renaissance” in the September 2015 issue.
The article begins by describing how Regency president Tom Miller resigned from his position at Pittsburgh National Bank to pursue his dream of opening his own business.
During Miller’s frequent trips to New York City in the 1980s, he had noticed a level of sophistication that stuck in his memory. Visions of black car services remained in his head when he was contemplating what business he would found after leaving the bank. Pittsburgh’s infrequent encounters with limousine service typically involved funerals and weddings, he noted. But Pittsburgh soon would see the value of a company providing luxurious ground transportation services for businesses.
In 1987, Miller bought Exter Limousine Service in Pittsburgh, primarily to obtain its valuable PUC license, phone number and ad in the Yellow Pages. With his father, an accountant, Miller built their limousine service from scratch, purchasing two sedans and hitting the streets to drum up business.
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Regency Global is known for its exemplary safety record, stellar on-time service and how the company’s chauffeurs receive ongoing training and are tested to ensure they are providing the safest and most efficient service. At the same time, they are backed up with an excellent dispatch team that plans ahead and has contingencies to enable on-time service despite unforeseen delays.
With that in mind, Miller recently expressed his concern about Uber and its attempts to flout regulations controlling limousine services in Pennsylvania in an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Uber is the leader of a growing number of rogue car services built around smartphone apps.
The brash upstart firm Uber, which has been the subject of controversy across the nation for a variety of issues, wanted to stake a claim in Pennsylvania with its UberBlack offering. However, chief among people’s concerns about Uber and its ilk is the issue of safety. Unlike professionally trained chauffeurs who know just how important it is to respect duty of care, people who drive as freelancers for companies like Uber may be unfit to haul passengers for a number of reasons, including having a hidden criminal past.
When San Francisco-based Uber recently filed documents with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to launch UberBlack all across the state, it petitioned to have regulations waived that govern limousine services. Miller told the Post-Gazette, “If they introduce demand-based limo service, it blurs the distinction between the service we provide and what the taxi industry provides. Uber has a tradition of revolution instead of evolution, where they try to have laws changed rather than work within existing laws.”
Miller declared the Regency Global would never form a partnership with UberBlack, noting that such a venture would never be profitable.
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The professionals at Regency Global are always pleased when any aspect of the limousine industry gets positive coverage in the press, and the article about the company’s continuing success in Chauffeur Driven surely fits the bill. As Pittsburgh maintains the pace of its emerging renaissance and the region’s overall economy improves, local business owners and anyone requiring reliable and luxurious transportation can feel confident relying on Regency Global to get them where they need to go.
