Complaint Review: American Coach Limousine

I will write an honest review about American Coach Limousine. I am not one of their competitors or have a personal grudge to settle with them. I just want to speak the truth here about a company that is abusing its drivers like slaves.

I had the misfortune to work for American Coach Limo for about 3-4 months back in 2012. First of all, they charge crazy low fares -- even lower than taxis!!! They advertise their lower fares throughout Chicago on billboards and now even on TV. This helps them get customers. Who doesn't want a super deal nowadays, right? They also don't charge the customers for tolls, airport departure fee of $4, etc.; they instead want the poor drivers to pay for all of that out of their own pockets. They then send you out to a faraway place in humungous V6 automobiles that usually do 18 miles a gallon. So even before you have dropped off your customer, you are already licking your wounds for having paid $4 in airport tax, plus tolls, plus sack full of money for gas. At the end of the journey, the customer smilingly hands you the paltry fare (that's even cheaper than a cab) and out of that, American Coach Limo takes away another 30%!!!! That leaves the poor driver with nothing!!! And that is not the end of the story. Now that you have dropped off your customer and are as far away from the airport as you possibly can be, you implore the dispatchers at American Coach Limo to find you a customer nearby so you'd not waste all of your remaining gas on going back to the airport. Believe me, 99 out of 100 times, they cannot find you a customer!! So now you again drive another zillion miles back to the airport so that you can get in line to pick up your next customer who, you know, would  pay you a fare that’s cheaper than a taxi………

Most drivers at American Coach Limo work about 14-16 hours a day. After you add up all the expenses that a driver incurs in a week (airport tickets, gas expense, car lease payment, dispatching fee, American Coach Limo's cut of 30%, car washes/vacuum), the driver ends up making about $4-$5 an hour.