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Vice President of Product Integration
My vanpooling career started in 1979 while still in college. A recently retired Chrysler leasing executive was working for a local Chrysler dealership and was leasing passenger vans to the State of Michigan for their State Employee Vanpool Program. I had no idea what vanpooling was, but I found it paid ten dollars for about two hours work delivering vans from the dealership to the state capital in Lansing.
That same leasing executive moved from the dealership to a company called Van Pool Services, Inc. (later changed to VPSI) where he managed an office that operated a state-wide vanpool program under contract to the state of Michigan, which came to be known as Michivan. As the Michivan office began to grow, I was offered a job in June of 1981 as an administrative assistant. After a brief training stint at Michivan, I moved over to the Home Office and began managing Chrysler's Employee Vanpool Program.
I've always been kind of a "car guy", so maintaining vehicles or more accurately arranging for the maintenance of vehicles was something I enjoyed. That passion led to a position as VPSI's first National Fleet Administrator with responsibilities for vehicle ordering and purchasing, maintenance and repair, used vehicle sales and the development of procedures to handle these functions. It was in this position that I first met and soon reported to Jeff Henning. Jeff had recently moved to Detroit and been promoted to National Operations Manager and shortly thereafter to Vice-President. Jeff and I have worked together in one form or another ever since.
In 1982 I moved to Los Angeles to become VPSI's California Project Manager. Working with Commuter Computer in Los Angeles, the Orange County Transit District's Commuter Network, Rides for Bay Area Commuters in San Francisco and other state and local ridesharing agencies, our fleet grew from 160 vans to well over 400.
I became Western Area Manger in 1985 with responsibility for eight VPSI field offices and new business development in a 16 state region of the west including establishing a VPSI office in San Francisco in 1986. I oversaw VPSI's growth in the fields of specialty leasing, special mobility and para-transit programs including an eighty-van special mobility operation in the San Fernando Valley.
Central Area Manager was my next position which included a move to Chicago in late 1987 and responsibility for twelve VPSI offices and a 27 state area in the central US. In 1988 I moved back to Detroit and in 1989 became the Manager of National Leasing and Diversified Operations with responsibilities for all vehicle leasing, used vehicle sales and business licensing and compliance activities. I was also responsible for evaluating and managing all "non-core" business opportunities.
In 1991 I established an outside sales organization for the company that was modifying VPSI's vans. That assignment proved so successful that I left VPSI in 1992 to ultimately become Vice-President of Commuter Conversions, Inc. (CCI) with responsibility for sales and assembly operations. CCI was sold in 1995 to a company called TDM World Conversions (TDMWC) where I became Vice-President with responsibility for the commuter van conversion work which included attaining Ford Motor Company's Modified Vehicle Engineering (MVE) and Qualified Vehicle Modifier (QVM) status.
Early in 1997 Jeff Henning invited me back to VPSI. I focused on commercial passenger van leasing as a growth opportunity and began adding clients. That segment of VPSI's business grew quickly and would soon include some small specialty rental car companies, which VPSI eventually bought and later sold, and some quirky little start-ups in a new kind of business called car-sharing. VPSI actually facilitated the birth of the American car-sharing industry by leasing the first vehicles to: Carsharing Portland in Portland, Oregon; City Carshare in San Francisco; Flexcar in Seattle and Zipcar in Boston.
I became a Vice-President of VPSI in 2001 with responsibility for VPSI's commercial fleet leasing and rental car operations. These days I can be found managing a broad spectrum of activities from technology applications to new business ventures in support of VPSI's objectives. I'm really lucky because I truly love working with our talented team to face each new challenge in the ever changing landscape of daily commuting.
