BY ROB SMENTEK
Cover Art: Carolina Limousine & Coach CEO Joe Reinhardt and CMO Gillian Reinhardt with their team at the company’s Myrtle Beach HQ. Photography by Gillian Reinhardt.
For Carolina Limousine & Coach (CLC) CEO Joe Reinhardt, running a successful luxury ground transportation company is something of an art. In fact, he sees it as... musical.
“I view our company’s structure almost like an orchestra,” he says. “My job as the owner is to write the music, while my management team’s job is to conduct the symphony. Everybody else in the company serves as the musicians within the orchestra. At any time that my management team is operating as a ‘musician,’ that’s not where we need them to be. Likewise, if I’m conducting or, god forbid, I’m working within the orchestra, there’s a problem. That ties into working on your business versus working in your business. Placing the right people in the right places has given me the ability to be solely focused on company strategy.”
After nearly 20 years in the industry, CLC is still making majestic melodies. With three locations across South Carolina—Charleston, Columbia, and Myrtle Beach—the company is a major force in its market.
“We have a virtual triangle in South Carolina by being the only company that’s statewide,” says Reinhardt.
A transplant from Syracuse, N.Y., Reinhardt relocated to Myrtle Beach in the early 2000s. As a successful young medical salesperson, he was looking to find a change of environment, particularly one that was warmer.
CMO Gillian Reinhardt and CEO Joe Reinhardt at their headquarters in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina “I was in corporate America, in a sales position in Upstate New York. Frankly, I was looking to have my cake and eat it too: have warm weather, be closer to the ocean, and keep a lucrative career. It took me about two years of working with recruiters to find a position in an area of the country that I thought was going to grow,” he says.
Eventually securing a high-end sales position in August 2001, Reinhardt soon found himself unemployed due to the financial collapse after 9/11.
“I didn’t have a job and a good friend of mine said, ‘Hey, do you want to work? Do you want to drive a limo?’ I had worked in other service positions in college and thought, why not? So, I drove a limo for a five-hour trip, made good money, and had some fun as a chauffeur,” he says.
Reinhardt soon realized he was in the middle of what he calls a “service town,” which relies on tourism and related vertical industries.
“I realized that Myrtle Beach is a tourist area without high-end corporate jobs, but I loved the area so much I wanted to stay. I eventually took a position selling vacation ownership and drove a limo part time. I did that for three or four years. Soon the owner of the limo company asked me if I wanted to become his partner,” says Reinhardt.
CLC’s management team (L to R): Executive Vice President Michael McNeff, Safety Manager Tom Bradley, CMO Gillian Reinhardt, CEO Joe Reinhardt, Director of Sales and Affiliate Relations Dave Erdman, Charleston General Manager Rosie Becerra, and Fleet Manager Ralph Flach Although the operation quickly expanded from three to six vehicles, the partnership did not last. Reinhardt soon found himself on his own, establishing Carolina Limousine with a single car.
“In the spring of 2007, we had the quintessential origin story of starting with one vehicle. It was a 2001 Lincoln Town Car 120-inch stretch made by Royale,” he says.
In CLC’s first five years, Reinhardt says that retail was king.
“Initially, all I knew was the retail world,” he says. “You know ... nights on the town, long limos, the old days of stretch Hummers and Cadillac Escalades. You can only imagine there was very little car service. But after five years, the company grew. To a certain degree, we had a little bit of a monopoly in Myrtle Beach. Before COVID, we had a fleet of 14 or 15 vehicles.”
Eventually, Reinhardt would abandon the vacation ownership business (as lucrative as it was) in favor of running CLC full time. After all, it was his goal to be an entrepreneur.
L to R: Executive Vice President Michael McNeff, Safety Manager Tom Bradley, and Director of Sales & Affiliate Relations Dave Erdman “I always wanted to run my own business,” he admits. “My father was a World War II veteran who fought on Iwo Jima before his business career. While successful, he was an employee building someone else’s dream. As parents do, he wanted me to be better. Being a master sergeant in WW2, he built my work ethic in hopes that someday I would have the chance to run my own company.”
While Reinhardt could have been content—and successful—running retail jobs in Myrtle Beach, he would ultimately expand his operation’s reach.
“We were innovators, bringing the first luxury car service, along with party buses and trolleys to the Myrtle Beach area. It was an emerging market regionally but relatively unknown nationally,” he says.
Active softball player Joe Reinhardt But perhaps the biggest change to his fleet was when he introduced motorcoaches to his clients—during one of the most perilous times the industry faced.
“When COVID was announced in early 2020, we had just taken delivery of two brand-new MCI J4500 motorcoaches. We were a $1.4 million company that bought $1.2 million worth of equipment. Fortunately, we were in a region of the country that recovered quicker after COVID. Whereas folks in the Northeast were essentially shut down for two years, we were up and running and back to 100% of our pre-COVID revenue by October that year. After my experience with my former career being eliminated due to 9/11, I decided to go on a mission, putting a virtual ‘foot on the gas.’ We procured some college and shuttle contracts while expanding to Charleston. Now our fleet is 60 vehicles with 30 motorcoaches,” says Reinhardt.
The change in his fleet has led to a shift in the way Reinhardt considered his business.
L to R: Technician Lee Edwards, Fleet Manager Ralph Flach, and Technician Kasey Butler “A positive about running motorcoaches is that you’re now a ‘need’ instead of a ‘want.’ Because, in most cases, the limo industry is based on being a luxury item—It’s a want. Conversely, being a motorcoach company, you’re a need to the clients. You’re moving colleges, you’re moving corporate shuttles. When troops need transportation—we’re DOD approved—we move troops. If there’s a natural disaster, motorcoach companies get notified and are asked to respond to evacuate people from certain areas. And so, in the motorcoach world, it’s nice to be a need versus a want. As such, I now see us as a motorcoach operation that’s come from the limo world, taking the best features of both worlds,” says Reinhardt.
Because of his background in the luxury chauffeured space, Reinhardt feels that he brings a heightened service level to the motorcoach world.
Detail Team: Supervisor Jose Lemoine (left) and Joel Winstead “If you call most motorcoach companies at 1 o’clock on a Saturday, or better yet, 7 o’clock on a Sunday, just see what the level of communication is compared to our operation. We’re built to be 24/7. We also excel at service not only because we’re 24/7, but because we’re putting a chauffeur versus a bus driver behind the wheel.”
Furthermore, CLC’s chauffeurs are salaried staff members. There are no “freelance musicians” on the payroll.
“We don’t employ IOs or 1099s. Everyone is an employee,” he says.
Reinhardt’s conductors—that is, his team of managers—includes a who’s who of the luxury ground transportation industry. He’s focused on creating the best team in the industry.
L to R: Dispatch Manager Brett Mendivel, Charleston General Manager Rosie Becerra, Salesperson Bayliegh Knotts, and Sales Lead Taylor Owners “We’ve recruited talent from all over the industry and across the country,” he says. “Because this space is so boutique-ish, I’ve found that you can’t put just anyone in these positions; it’s really hard to teach people the business. We’ve brought in people like Executive Vice President Michael McNeff, who came out of Atlanta, as well as Director of Sales & Affiliate Relations Dave Erdman, who is well regarded in the industry. We also hired General Manager of Charleston Rosie Becerra, who came from a motorcoach company in San Antonio. We brought in General Manager Travis Wright, who used to run his own motorcoach company. The beautiful thing about my management team is they’re young, energetic, and willing to continue honing their craft while being good teammates.
Another key staffer is the company’s Chief Marketing Officer and Reinhardt’s wife, Gillian.
“My wife came on board in 2021 and has been instrumental in the design of our facilities. She also plays a role in marketing, as well as overall mentoring of our team,” says Reinhardt.
Property Manager Heather Meekins Having a 60-vehicle fleet (48 of which require a CDL—and area unto itself), requires more than a basic parking lot. As a result, CLC’s Myrtle Beach headquarters is a new state-of-the-art facility on close to seven acres.
“We opened our new HQ in June 2024. It’s 20,000 square feet with 7,500 square feet of office space, all wired for technology. It’s on 2.6 acres, with another 4.5 acres we are developing right next to it. We have a full-service garage with 26-foot peaks that allow motorcoaches to be lifted for maintenance work by our in-house mechanical team.
Reinhardt is very proud of his success, but he still seeks guidance and mentorship from others. Although he’s a member of several industry and regional peer groups, a key influence on his business has been his acceptance as a certified member into the International Motorcoach Group (IMG), which comprises the top 53 motorcoach operators in North America.
Gillian and Joe Reinhardt with many of CLC’s awards “It’s an exclusive invite-only group, that is very hard to get into, especially being from the chauffeured transportation world. They perform two-day site visits for their prospective members. My DOT audit was the day after IMG did their site visit, and my team will tell you that IMG’s visit was more extensive than the DOT Audit. They review business practices, focusing on safety and ethics. Once you go through that process, you have to be unanimously selected by all 53 operators. IMG is like a family with most members being multi-generational family led enterprises. The network is set up for the group to benefit from shared knowledge as well as support each other’s services when our motorcoaches are traveling nationwide.
Reinhardt admits that balancing three operations across South Carolina, with 115 employees, can be a challenge at times. But at the end of the day, his “orchestra” makes it worthwhile.
“It’s amazing that my staff trusts in my vision,” he says. “I think besides my family (which will always be first), one of my most rewarding accomplishments is creating an infrastructure of passionate, talented people that believes in the mission and the vision that we set. I can’t think of anything more flattering. The next step is to guide our team to continue to elevate so that they can ‘write the music,’ allowing me to focus on maintaining our place as being one of the best the ground passenger transportation industry has to offer. [CD0426]
