In NYC It's A Black Car. In LA It's....

Within the terms we have outlined above, there are also several sizes of limo company. Some may be retailers and some may be wholesalers. Here is a short list of the types of companies we have run across in our time in the industry:

• Dispatch Service Provider “DSP”
  A DSP is a company with no vehicles or drivers. The simply aggregate business and use other, licensed TCP companies for fulfillment. Most states including California do not allow this type of service although one could get around that by owning and maintaining at least one commercial vehicle with a TCP number.
• Owner Operator or “OO”
  These are small companies with one car and one driver. 
• Independent Operator or “IO”
  These are also small companies but they usually have a few different vehicles and a small number of drivers. 
• Small Fleet Companies
  This title speaks for itself. The sweet spot for this type of company is about 5 vehicles. If the operator is smart, these can be incredibly profitable enterprises especially if they continue to maintain a small fleet and use IOs or OOs for overflow. What usually happens is these companies want to be larger and their overhead kills them.
• Medium Fleet Companies
  Running from around 10 to 15 vehicles, these companies can have a tough time of things as they need a lot of staff to maintain thier business. At this lever you must have a dispatch office with staff, a parking lot big enough to house your entire fleet and in-house vehicle maintenance staff.
• Large Fleet Companies
  These larger companies are heavily invested and have 20 cars and up. Some have as many as 50 or 100 vehicles and all of the ancillary infrastructure to support their business as well as a corporate management team and an outside sales team that works on commission. These companies will usually be quite expensive for the end user as their overhead is so high.
• National or International Companies
  These are the big players in livery such as Empire CLS, Carey International, Boston Coach etc. They have offices or large affiliate offices in major cities in the US and around the world. Some are better than others but they all have very high rates to support their massive operations.