Traveling in Style: J. Howard Fisk Limousines Inc.

The companies sending recruiters to the university – Tandy Corp., Texas Instruments and Burroughs Corp. (now Unisys) – didn’t interest him.

Fisk was looking for a business venture that would allow him to stay close to Springfield – “I had been in the Navy and felt I had seen the world,” he recalls – and work in the field that interested him most: cars.

J. Howard Fisk Limousines Inc. was born after Fisk purchased two classic British cars. Three decades later, the company is a driving force in the local ground transportation industry.

Big names, big groups

Fisk says his company was the transportation service for most of the big-name touring acts that came through Springfield in the 1970s and early 1980s – everyone, as he puts it, from Itzhak Perlman to Elvis Presley.

“In the 60s and 70s, groups toured,” he recalls. “If you wanted somebody to buy your record then, you needed local air play and you needed to tour. You needed to be in Springfield, Mo., and Waxahachie and Texarkana, Texas.”

While the list of Fisk’s celebrity clients is impressive – it has included Vincent Price, The Beach Boys, The Captain and Tennille, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and John Denver – more than 75 percent of the company’s business now comes from corporate shuttle services.

Missouri State University has contracted with Fisk for its shuttle, now called the BearLine, since 1984. Gary Snavely, the school’s director of safety and transportation, said the company owns the vehicles and provides them, along with drivers, to the university. Fisk’s contract is worth about $1 million a year for three years.

Snavely added that Fisk began providing the vehicles in 2006; before that, Fisk provided drivers for shuttles the university had purchased with federal grant money.

MSU’s athletics department also uses Fisk’s coaches to transport players to away games.

Corporate carrier

Fisk’s shuttles have a corporate side, transporting employees between business sites and meetings. Among the groups that use the services: Branson Hospitality, to transport guests between hotels and shows, and the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau, to show the city’s highlights to visitors.

Conco Cos. has been using Fisk’s services for more than decade, mostly to transport visiting groups from other companies as they learn about quarry operations.

“We’ve had an excellent working relationship with (Fisk),” says Bill Adams, Conco’s director of business development. “They do a good job; they’re always there when we need them to be.”

Fisk Limo even helped during the recent ice storm by transporting employees of City Utilities, Laclede Electric and Empire District Electric, as well as busing people to and from Branson hotels.

The most fun jobs, though, continue to be the smaller ones.

“We may book a limousine for a wedding, but we’re also booking cars to take girls to get their hair done,” Fisk says, noting that his company has booked more than 6,000 weddings.

A wide variety

Vehicles in Fisk’s fleet range from a Rolls Royce convertible and London Sterling limousine to 35-passenger mini coaches.

The variety, Fisk says, is a response to a transportation market that has changed dramatically since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Corporations have cut back,” Fisk says. “They cut back travel, they cut back incentives and meetings away from the home office, and that impacts us. We see fewer of those trips, and they’re smaller.”

That’s a big financial hit on a company that used to get a large portion of its business taking groups from the airport to destinations in and around Springfield and Branson and then shuttling them back and forth between meetings, meals and field trips.

Prices range from $85 to $100 per hour per vehicle, and the reason the business continues to expand, Fisk says, is its ability to diversify.

“Our convention market, our Branson tour market, has not grown,” he says, declining to disclose revenues. “Where we’ve been able to grow is in more people using us to solve their simple needs, whatever those are.”

Fisk met two needs in downtown Springfield with its custom trolleys that premiered in December 2005. Those vehicles – modeled after the trolleys that moved people between downtown and Commercial Street 20 years ago – have been used in the city’s First Night celebrations and the city’s now-defunct Dash & Dine lunch shuttle service, shut down due to inactivity.

First Cars

Howard Fisk’s two original vehicles – a 1953 Rolls Royce, right, and a 1958 Bentley – were both imported from the United Kingdom. The Bentley was previously owned by Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond series.

J. Howard Fisk Limousines Inc.

Owner: Howard Fisk

Founded: 1976

Address: 2001 E. Trafficway St., Springfield, MO 65802

Phone: (417) 862-2900

Fax: (417) 866-1542

Web site: www.fisklimo.com

E-mail: FiskLimo@aol.com

Services/products: Ground transportation services

Employees: 55 to 80, depending on season[[In-content Ad]]