Part 4 of the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study Series

“It cannot lose money.”

That was the condition.

Walt Disney World leadership had decided to bring Minnie Van back.

Now the ideas our team had developed had to work in the real world.

Bringing the service back wasn’t enough.

We had to build a sustainable business.

Run It Like a Business

Minnie Van was different from nearly every other mode of transportation at Walt Disney World.

Guests paid for every ride.

That distinction mattered.

Unlike the other transportation modes, Minnie Van wasn’t simply a service we had to operate well.

It was a business we had to operate sustainably.

We wanted to recreate the exceptional experience our guests had enjoyed before COVID and reestablish the strong culture that had existed among our Cast Members.

But we couldn’t simply recreate the business that had existed before COVID.

So our standard became more demanding.

Could we recreate the exceptional guest experience?

Could we reestablish the strong culture within the team?

And could we make the changes necessary to do both within an operating model that didn’t lose money?

Financial performance couldn’t be something we measured only after making operational decisions. It had to be part of how we made those decisions.

That didn’t mean the cheapest option always won. Sometimes spending more was the right decision because it protected something fundamental to the experience or improved the business's performance.

But every decision ultimately had to support a sustainable operation.

We weren’t trying to make Minnie Van cheaper.

We were trying to build a sustainable business without losing what had made Minnie Van special.

Define the Business Before You Operate It

As we defined the relaunched business, we began thinking more precisely about what guests were actually buying.

It wasn’t just a ride.

It was time.

There are two currencies we all manage every day: time and money. And people are often willing to spend one to get more of the other.

Minnie Van gave guests that choice.

They could use the complimentary transportation available to them, or they could spend money for a direct ride and reclaim some of their vacation time.

That might mean staying longer in a theme park. Enjoying dinner without leaving early to allow for the trip back. Or simply spending less of a vacation they had invested significant time and money in waiting or transferring between modes of transportation.

We were giving guests the opportunity to buy back some of their vacation time.

Understanding that value helped us answer another important question:

Who exactly were we building this business for?

Before COVID, Minnie Van’s operating footprint had expanded beyond Disney Resort hotels to include select Good Neighbor hotels and destinations outside our core operating area.

When we returned, we deliberately made that operating envelope smaller.

Minnie Van would be exclusively for guests staying at Walt Disney World Resort hotels, providing transportation to destinations within Walt Disney World.

There was an exclusivity to that decision. Minnie Van became another differentiator for the Disney Resort experience.

There was also a business benefit.

Keeping the fleet concentrated within Walt Disney World reduced longer trips and repositioning time while keeping vehicles closer to their next potential fare.

We had established a clear productivity target:

At least two rides per revenue hour, with 2.5 as the goal.

That target influenced where we operated, who we served, how much capacity we deployed, and when we deployed it.

A trip could generate revenue and still hurt the business if it pulled a vehicle away from concentrated demand for too long.

Revenue wasn’t the objective. Productive revenue was.

Price the Experience for What It Was Worth

Pricing began with the economics.

What did a ride need to generate for the business to make sense?

Then we looked at the marketplace.

What would a guest pay for a comparable premium experience from Uber or Lyft?

But Minnie Van wasn’t simply a Disney-branded version of a premium rideshare service.

Disney owned and operated it, driven by Disney Cast Members who knew Walt Disney World and understood the expectations that came with a Disney vacation.

And it provided access outside rideshare companies couldn’t replicate, including Disney transportation locations such as the Magic Kingdom bus loops.

So there was a third question:

What premium was that exclusivity worth?

Our pricing had to reconcile all three: the economics of the business, the price of a comparable premium transportation experience, and the additional value of a Disney-owned and operated service.

We weren’t trying to determine the highest price we could convince a guest to pay.

We were trying to establish a price that reflected the value of the experience while allowing the business providing it to be sustainable.

Then we had to see whether guests agreed.

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Every January, many leadership teams step away from the operation to talk about their goals for the new year. They identify priorities, discuss what needs to change, and leave with renewed energy about what they hope to accomplish.

There is only one problem: they are already late.

By January, the budget has likely been approved. Resources have been allocated. Financial expectations have been established. If the planning session identifies a need for another employee, new technology, leadership development, additional safety resources, or new equipment, the organization begins the year trying to fund a priority that should have helped shape the budget in the first place.

Strategic planning should not follow the budget. It should help create it.

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer, but it should also remind us how little time remains in the year. The next few months will move quickly. Soon, operators will be finalizing revenue projections, labor assumptions, capital plans, and oper…

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Earlier this summer, Busline magazine asked me to write about artificial intelligence and how it is beginning to influence the bus and motorcoach industry.

It was a timely assignment. Artificial intelligence has become one of those terms that seems to be everywhere. Technology companies are talking about it. Operators are experimenting with it. Conference agendas are filled with it. Scroll through LinkedIn for a few minutes, and you probably won’t have to wait long before someone tells you how AI is going to transform business.

But the more I thought about the assignment, the more I realized I didn’t want to write another article about the promise of AI.

I wanted to understand what it actually means for our industry.

So I started having conversations.

I spoke with technology leaders developing tools for transportation companies and operators running businesses of different sizes and complexity. Some were already deeply engaged with AI. Others were still trying to understand where it might fit. Their perspectives weren’t identical, nor should they have been.

What interested me was where those perspectives began to intersect.

The resulting Busline article had to fit within roughly 1,000 words. But the conversations left me with far more material—and more questions—than I could possibly explore there.

This is the conversation that didn’t fit into 1,000 words.

We’ve Been Here Before—But This Feels Different

Over the course of my career, I’ve watched technology evolve from rotary phones to smartphones. I remember when caller ID, call waiting, and dial-up internet were revolutionary. I remember life before personal computers, email, GPS navigation, and the internet itself.

Each innovation reshaped the way we worked.

The transportation industry evolved in its own way. Dispatch and reservation systems became increasingly sophisticated. GPS and telematics gave operators visibility into their fleets that would once have been unimaginable. Mobile technology changed how we communicate with drivers and customers. Technology transformed nearly every operational function.

Some operators embraced those changes quickly. Others took a more measured approach, waiting until the technology proved itself. Eventually, each innovation simply became part of operating a modern transportation business.

AI feels like the next chapter, but with an important difference.

It isn’t simply changing the tools we use.

It’s beginning to change what those tools can do for us.

And the pace of that change appears to be accelerating.

First, We Have to Get Beyond the Hype

One challenge with talking about artificial intelligence is that the term itself has become so broad that it can mean almost anything.

AI can describe the camera system identifying unsafe driving behavior. It can describe software analyzing years of reservation data. It can describe a chatbot answering customer questions. It can describe ChatGPT drafting an email. And increasingly, it can describe agents capable of taking actions across multiple business systems.

Put all of that under one label, and it’s easy to understand why people are simultaneously excited, skeptical, curious, and confused.

Louis Bookoff, co-founder of Busie, offered an interesting perspective when I asked where he sees AI creating the most value. He actually started by talking about where it doesn’t.

Writing emails and generating marketing content have become what he described as almost “table stakes.” He also pointed to the growing amount of obvious AI-generated content—what he called “AI slop”—and the resulting fatigue it can create. His larger point was that people still crave authentic human interaction.

That struck me because so much of the public conversation about AI begins with generative tools. Ask someone how they’re using AI and the answer is often some version of writing emails, creating social media content, summarizing documents, or conducting research.

Those are useful applications. I use many of them myself.

But they’re only the beginning.

Louis described work around pricing, dispatch, fleet allocation, accounting, and even identifying events that could create new sales opportunities for operators. In the latter case, AI can identify relevant events, find potential contacts, and help manage a process that would be extremely time-consuming to perform manually.

His distinction was important: the closer AI gets to critical workflows, the higher the stakes become. General AI has value, but use-case-specific applications make the potential easier to understand—and demand greater thoughtfulness.

That may be one of the first lessons for operators trying to make sense of all of this.

Don’t start with AI.

Start with the work.

The Opportunity Is Already Inside the Business

My conversation with Niall McKeever of Zaui added another dimension.

Niall spent many years as an operator in his native Northern Ireland before moving to the technology side of the industry. That background gives him an interesting perspective because he understands both what the technology can do and the realities of running a transportation business day after day.

Much of our discussion centered on something transportation companies already possess in abundance: data.

Think about how much information an established operator accumulates.

Trips. Customers. Routes. Pricing. Seasonal demand. Maintenance. Driver activity. Sales history. Cancellations. Utilization.

For years, much of that information has existed primarily as a historical record. AI makes it possible to use it much more dynamically.

Niall described systems capable of examining years of past performance around a holiday, for example, and using that history to forecast schedules and routes. He also discussed the potential for that same intelligence to inform dynamic pricing.

That’s a fundamentally different value proposition from asking an AI tool to write an email.

The information already exists.

The opportunity is to understand it better.

And that idea surfaced elsewhere.

Bill Adams of First Class Charter talked about wanting greater integration between dispatch, maintenance, drivers, and finance. His vision was a system that could monitor maintenance intervals and help the organization become proactive before a mechanical issue turns into what he called a “chaos situation.” Importantly, he immediately connected that operational visibility back to protecting margin and profitability.

Bill also saw opportunity on the other side of the business: customers.

First Class has hundreds of customers in its database. As Bill pointed out, no one can manually stay in meaningful contact with all of them or continuously monitor who traveled six months ago, much less two years ago. He sees AI helping identify customer patterns, determine how individual customers prefer to be contacted, and maintain relationships at a scale that would be difficult to accomplish manually.

He also connected customer history to pricing—using patterns in demand and travel behavior to become more confident about peak and off-season rates rather than defaulting to discounting to win business.

That’s not replacing sales.

It’s giving salespeople better information about where to focus their attention.

AI and Automation Aren’t the Same Thing

Another important distinction came from Ben O’Day of Initek Consulting.

For years, companies like Initek have helped organizations connect systems, move and normalize data, and automate processes. None of that began with generative AI.

What’s changing is how quickly and flexibly that work can now be done.

Ben described how building an adapter to connect a new telematics platform might previously have required multiple days of software development. With AI-assisted development tools, that work can happen much faster. But he raised an even more interesting question: in some situations, does a traditional software integration need to be built at all, or can an AI agent perform the work another way?

That distinction matters because AI didn’t invent automation.

What it is doing is lowering barriers that once made sophisticated automation difficult, expensive, or inaccessible—particularly for smaller organizations.

Ben also sees an interesting divide in how operators are approaching the technology. Larger organizations may have internal resources that allow them to experiment and develop applications themselves. Smaller operators, meanwhile, may know they need to understand AI but not know where to begin, increasingly looking to their technology partners for guidance.

That may be one of the most important challenges surrounding AI right now.

The technology is advancing faster than many organizations can reasonably absorb it.

Get on the AI Bus—or Get Run Over by It?

Niall described a pressure to learn AI that I suspect many people are feeling.

The message can sometimes sound like: AI is here. Get on board.

For those of us in transportation, there’s probably an even more appropriate metaphor.

At times, it can feel like get on the AI bus or get run over by it.

I don’t think those are the only options.

Niall compared some of the anxiety surrounding AI with earlier technology transitions. There was a time when businesses were being told they needed a website. Later came mobile technology and other digital tools that created new expectations for how companies operated and interacted with customers. Each transition created its own uncertainty and its own pressure to keep up.

AI may be moving faster, but the leadership challenge is familiar.

Operators don’t have to automate their entire back office tomorrow.

They also can’t afford to simply ignore what is happening.

Somewhere between chasing every new AI application and dismissing the technology altogether is a much more practical path: understand what is becoming possible, identify the problems in your own organization worth solving, and begin experimenting where the potential value is clear.

Operators are already showing just how far that experimentation can go.

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Some of the most important leadership work happens when very little seems to be happening.

There’s no announcement. No major breakthrough. No obvious result to celebrate.

Sometimes there isn’t even certainty that the work will pay off.

Yet as I looked back at the three articles published in August, that idea kept resurfacing.

Great organizations are rarely built in the exciting moments alone. They’re built in the middle—when leaders continue reinforcing expectations after the initial enthusiasm fades. They’re built when experienced leaders remain willing to learn, adapt, and challenge what they think they already know. And they’re built when teams prepare for opportunities that may never come.

In different ways, each of August’s articles explored what leadership looks like before the results show up.

If you missed one, here’s a look back at the month.

Most organizations believe in the right things. Accountability. Leadership development. Safety. Communication. Operational discipline. Continuous improvement.

The harder question is whether those beliefs consistently show up in their behavior.

Believers, Behavers, and the Middle explored what happens after the kickoff meeting ends and the excitement around a new initiative begins to fade.

That’s when the real work begins. The twentieth leadership meeting. The fiftieth review of the scorecard. Another coaching conversation. Another opportunity to reinforce the same expectation.

Strong cultures aren’t created because organizations announce the right priorities. They’re created when leaders reinforce those priorities consistently enough that the behaviors eventually become part of how the organization operates.

Belief may begin the journey. Behavior sustains it. And discipline carries organizations through the middle.

Clint Hurdle spent more than three decades in professional baseball before becoming manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He knew baseball.

But when the organization began embracing advanced analytics, Hurdle initially wasn’t convinced.

What happened next offers an important lesson for leaders in any industry.

Rather than forcing a choice between experience and data, Hurdle and Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington learned to combine them.

Hurdle didn’t abandon his experience. Huntington didn’t abandon the numbers. They learned from one another. The result helped produce three consecutive playoff appearances and end a 20-year losing streak in Pittsburgh.

The same tension exists in ground transportation today. AI. Telematics. Cameras. Maintenance software. KPIs. New approaches to recruiting and operations.

The technology changes, but the leadership challenge doesn’t.

The strongest organizations won’t be those that blindly embrace every new idea—or those that reject new ideas because experience tells them the old way works.

They’ll be the ones willing to learn, test, adapt, and improve.

Experience still matters.

So does remaining teachable.

The third installment of the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study explored one of the most unusual periods of my career. When COVID shut down Walt Disney World in March 2020, Minnie Van stopped operating. Eventually, its drivers and dispatchers were laid off.

There was no reopening plan. No budget. No timeline. And no guarantee the service would ever return.

But we kept preparing. We simplified the fleet and reduced financial exposure. We maintained the vehicles and equipment. Once the leadership team returned from furlough, we challenged old assumptions, refined financial models, and began redesigning the operating model—even though we had no idea whether we’d ever get the chance to use it.

Then, just before Christmas 2021, the opportunity finally came. Minnie Van was coming back. With one condition: “It cannot lose money.”

For nearly two years, we had been preparing for a conversation we weren’t even sure would happen.

When it finally did, we were ready.

The August Throughline

At first glance, these are three very different stories.

One began with a sermon. One began with a baseball manager. One began with a business shut down by a global pandemic.

But all three point toward something I’ve come to believe strongly about leadership.

Results are often determined long before they become visible.

Culture is built through ordinary behaviors repeated when no one is celebrating them.

Experienced leaders get better when they remain humble enough to keep learning.

Organizations become ready for opportunity by doing the work before opportunity arrives.

None of those things provides immediate gratification. That’s what makes them difficult.

It’s easy to remain committed when progress is obvious. It’s easy to embrace change when the results are immediate. And it’s easy to prepare when you know exactly what you’re preparing for.

Leadership is tested when those things aren’t true. That’s where discipline matters. That’s where curiosity matters. And that’s where preparation matters.

The results may come later. The work comes first.

Looking Ahead to September

September will be a special month for Ground Transportation Insights.

First, I’ll conclude the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study Series.

The first three installments have explored why a popular service struggled financially, how we discovered that the real problem wasn’t what we originally thought, and how nearly two years of preparation created an opportunity for the service to return.

The final installment will share what happened next—how dozens of decisions across pricing, labor, fleet, operations, and leadership ultimately transformed the business's economics.

I’ll also take a deeper look at AI in bus and motorcoach operations—beyond the hype.

Building on an article previously published in Busline Magazine, I’ll explore where AI can realistically create value for transportation operators, where its limitations remain, and why the opportunity isn’t about replacing experienced people but giving them better tools to make decisions and operate the business.

And September will mark another milestone:

The 100th article published by Ground Transportation Insights.

When I started writing GTI, my goal was relatively simple: share lessons from more than three decades of leading transportation operations and organizations, while continuing to learn from the people and businesses shaping the industry today.

One hundred articles later, I’m grateful for everyone who has read, subscribed, commented, shared an article, challenged an idea, or simply joined the conversation.

There’s still plenty more to explore.

A Closing Thought

August reminded me that leadership often requires doing the work before there is evidence that the work is working.

Keep reinforcing the expectation. Keep reviewing the numbers. Keep coaching the leader. Keep asking questions. Keep learning. Keep preparing.

Most of it won’t generate headlines. But over time, those ordinary decisions accumulate.

They become habits. Habits become culture. Preparation becomes readiness. And eventually, the results begin to show.

Great leadership isn’t only about what happens when the opportunity arrives. Often, it’s about everything you did before it did.

Question for readers: What is your organization doing today that may not produce an immediate result—but you believe will matter a year from now?

If your organization is working to strengthen leadership, improve operational performance, or build the systems needed for sustainable growth, I’d be happy to help.

Through coaching, advisory support, consulting, and fractional leadership engagements, I work with transportation organizations to turn good intentions into stronger execution and sustainable results.

Learn more at Bus Business Consultants.

Part 3 of the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study Series

March 12, 2020.

I was sitting at home watching the evening news when Walt Disney World announced it would close due to COVID-19.

Within seconds, my phone started buzzing.

Text messages.

Phone calls.

Questions.

“What does this mean?”

“What happens next?”

The truth was, I didn’t know.

I had learned the news at exactly the same time everyone else had.

I remember telling the team, “We’re finding this out together. We’ll work through it together.”

No leader wants their team to learn something that significant from the evening news.

But that’s how quickly events were unfolding.

The next morning, we all reported to work.

Not to operate the business.

To shut it down.

For the next three days, we worked around the clock winding down an operation that, until then, none of us had ever imagined would stop.

In the first two articles of this series, I shared how we had diagnosed the challenges facing Minnie Van before COVID abruptly changed everything.

The diagnosis was complete.

The future wasn’t.

From Operations to Survival

The following week, we were all working from home.

Like everyone else at Walt Disney World, we assumed the closure would eventually end.

We just didn’t know when.

The conversations weren’t about Minnie Van.

They weren’t about long-term strategy.

They were about helping Walt Disney World navigate one of the most uncertain moments in its history.

A few weeks later came furloughs.

Like thousands of other Cast Members, I suddenly found myself wondering when—or even if—I would return.

When I returned in early June, the Transportation offices were almost unrecognizable.

Hallways that had once been busy were silent.

Many offices sat dark.

Parking lots were nearly empty.

For a place that had operated almost continuously for nearly fifty years, the stillness was striking.

Walt Disney World reopened on July 11th.

Transportation returned.

Parking returned.

Guests slowly returned.

But everything was different.

Attendance remained dramatically lower, and health and safety protocols shaped nearly every operational decision.

More importantly, Walt Disney World wasn’t operating in isolation.

Disneyland remained closed and would so for over a year.

Several international parks continued to open and close as local conditions changed.

Across the Walt Disney Company, the Parks and Experiences business was operating under extraordinary financial pressure.

Against that backdrop, I completely understood why Minnie Van wasn’t a priority.

There were many bigger issues demanding Walt Disney World leadership’s attention.

And there were many bigger issues demanding mine.

Transportation also wasn’t reopening in isolation.

Every day required close coordination across Transportation, Parking, Security, Park Operations, and Front Entrance teams as we worked together to safely reopen Walt Disney World under entirely new operating conditions.

Between helping lead that effort, I continued moving Minnie Van forward whenever the opportunity allowed.

A Business Many Thought Was Gone

As summer turned into fall, another difficult chapter arrived.

Disney announced significant layoffs.

Within Minnie Van, our drivers and dispatchers were laid off.

Fortunately, we were able to retain the management team by placing them in other leadership roles throughout the Transportation division.

From the outside, Minnie Van appeared to be finished.

People occasionally asked me a simple question.

“Why are you fighting so hard for Minnie Van?”

It wasn’t an unfair question.

By then, the service had developed a reputation.

Guests loved it.

Disney Finance...not so much.

Around Transportation, Minnie Van had become known as the operation that ran at a substantial loss.

To many people, continuing to spend time on it simply didn’t make sense.

The operation wasn’t running.

There was no approved reopening plan.

The company was focused on much bigger challenges.

Yet whenever there was an opportunity, I kept moving it forward.

From the outside, I’m sure some people thought I was wasting my time.

Looking back, I understand why they felt that way.

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One of the best leadership lessons I’ve read this year didn’t come from a business book.

It came from a former Major League Baseball manager.

As the industry gathers in Pittsburgh this week for ABA’s BISC/BusMARC Summer Summit, I can’t think of a more fitting place to reflect on a leadership lesson that also began in Pittsburgh.

Clint Hurdle spent more than four decades in professional baseball. After an 11-year playing career, he worked his way through the coaching ranks before managing both the Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates. He led the Rockies to their only National League pennant in 2007 and later guided the Pirates to three consecutive playoff appearances, ending a 20-year losing streak.

In 2025, Hurdle published Hurdleisms: Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball, a collection of the lessons he learned throughout his career. While there are plenty of memorable stories in the book, one in particular caught my attention.

Hurdleism #8:

“Let’s drop this old-school versus new-school debate.”

At the time, Hurdle was managing the Pittsburgh Pirates, while General Manager Neal Huntington was among the early believers in using advanced analytics to build a winning baseball team. Huntington had assembled an analytics department staffed by some of the brightest minds in the game.

Hurdle wasn’t immediately convinced.

As someone with more than 35 years of experience as a player and coach, he knew the game. He understood players. He trusted what he saw on the field.

The numbers? Not so much.

As Hurdle admitted in the book:

“To say that I bought in right away would be a flat-out lie. Actually, it took me two years in Pittsburgh to understand all the different metrics, what they meant, and which ones to value most.”

After the 2012 season, Huntington came to Hurdle’s home for what turned into a marathon strategy session. They reviewed the organization’s player development process, challenged each other’s thinking, debated ideas, and ultimately found common ground. As Hurdle described it, they “threw their egos out the door” and committed to doing what they believed would build a winning ball club.

By the end of the conversation, something had changed.

Hurdle didn’t abandon his decades of baseball experience.

Huntington didn’t insist the numbers alone had all the answers.

Instead, they became partners.

As Hurdle wrote:

“We truly became a partnership that day. I got on board with becoming analytically driven, and we agreed we would honor the human analytics of the game as well.”

Then came my favorite line in the entire book.

“Let’s all just be in school together.”

The results speak for themselves.

From 2013 through 2015, the Pirates won 280 games, reached the playoffs three consecutive seasons, and finally ended one of the longest losing streaks in professional sports.

Reading Hurdle’s story, I wasn’t really thinking about baseball.

I was thinking about our industry.

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This is not my typical Ground Transportation Insights article. It’s a personal reflection I felt compelled to share, and I hope it encourages someone to have a conversation they’ve been putting off.

Last Saturday evening, my brother-in-law, Will, suffered a heart attack.

Over the next few days, our family lived on phone calls, text messages, and prayers. We waited for updates from thousands of miles away, hoping each one would bring better news than the last. We didn’t know what the coming days would hold or whether surgery would even be possible.

Tuesday night, he passed away.

He was in his mid-50s.

Adding to the heartbreak, his family lives in an area currently affected by severe wildfires. Even being together has been made more difficult by circumstances beyond anyone’s control. It has been an incredibly difficult few days for everyone who loved him.

This isn’t the article I planned to write this week.

In fact, it isn’t really a Ground Transportation Insights article at all. But sometimes life has a way of reminding us that some conversations are simply more important than the ones we had planned.

The truth is, this story didn’t begin last Saturday.

It began several years ago.

Like many people, life got busy. Over the past few years, I left Disney after a career that spanned more than two decades, accepted a new position in Texas, started my own consulting business, and eventually moved back to Florida. They were exciting changes, but somewhere along the way I kept telling myself I’d get back to taking care of my own health.

I wasn’t ignoring my health because I didn’t care. I was doing what so many of us do—I convinced myself there would be time later.

I have a bicuspid aortic valve with mild regurgitation that should be monitored annually. Instead, several years slipped by before I finally scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist.

Thankfully, I did.

At that appointment, my cardiologist updated my evaluation, performed an EKG, and recommended a more comprehensive workup because of my age and other risk factors. That included a coronary artery calcium (CAC) scan.

The scan found calcified plaque in my coronary arteries.

It wasn’t the news I wanted to hear.

But it was the news I needed to hear.

That one test changed the conversation.

My cholesterol medication was increased. We talked about diet. We talked about exercise. When I mentioned that I had noticed a decline in my stamina and was becoming more winded doing activities like yard work, my cardiologist ordered a nuclear stress test to make sure the plaque wasn’t significantly limiting blood flow to my heart.

Thankfully, those results were reassuring.

The stress test showed normal heart function and no evidence of significant blood flow limitation during exercise.

I don’t share any of this because I want sympathy.

I share it because, just a few months ago, I probably would have told you I felt reasonably healthy.

Would my brother-in-law’s story have been different if he had undergone the same testing?

I don’t know.

No one can honestly answer that question.

Heart disease is complicated. Every person is different. Every medical history is different.

But I do know this.

My calcium scan changed my story.

Not because it found an emergency.

Because it prompted a conversation...

...and that conversation led to action.

It prompted additional testing.

It changed my treatment plan.

It gave me an opportunity to make different choices before a problem became a crisis.

As someone who has spent a career in transportation, I’ve always believed in preventive maintenance.

We inspect buses before they leave the yard.

We monitor tire pressure.

We change fluids before engines fail.

We invest thousands of dollars preventing breakdowns because we know the cost of waiting.

Yet many of us don’t approach our own health with the same discipline.

We postpone physicals.

We ignore fatigue.

We assume getting older simply means slowing down.

We tell ourselves we’ll get around to it.

Sometimes we don’t.

It’s now been a little over two months since that appointment.

I’ve changed my diet.

I’ve become much more intentional about exercise.

And I’ve already noticed something encouraging.

My stamina has improved.

Activities that were leaving me unusually winded just a few months ago are becoming easier, even in the Florida heat.

I still have work to do.

But I’m moving in the right direction.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds for any of us.

What I do know is that this week reminded me how quickly life can change.

I can’t tell you whether a coronary artery calcium scan would have changed Will’s story.

I can only tell you what it changed in mine.

For me, it was a cardiology appointment. For you, it may be something entirely different. Whatever it is, don’t keep telling yourself you’ll get to it later.

If you’ve been putting off that physical...

If you’ve been ignoring symptoms...

If you’ve been telling yourself you’ll get around to it someday...

Make the appointment.

Have the conversation.

Ask the questions.

Then act on what you learn.

Your physician will help determine what screenings or tests are appropriate for you based on your age, medical history, family history, symptoms, and other risk factors.

Please don’t wait.

The people who love you need you here.

Author’s Note: A coronary artery calcium (CAC) scan may not be appropriate for everyone. Whether this or another screening test is right for you depends on your age, medical history, family history, symptoms, and other risk factors. My hope in sharing this story is simply to raise awareness that this screening exists and to encourage you to have a conversation with your primary care physician or cardiologist about what is appropriate for your individual situation. In my case, the out-of-pocket cost was approximately $100.

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In early July, I listened to a sermon by Pastor Andy Stanley of North Point Ministries. One observation, in particular, stayed with me.

He talked about the difference between being a believer and a behaver—someone who believes something intellectually but hasn’t yet allowed that belief to consistently shape their actions.

He shared the story of a man describing his own faith journey. At first, he didn’t think he had the discipline to make a lasting commitment. Rather than waiting until he felt ready, he simply kept showing up. Over time, his commitment deepened, and with it came the discipline he thought he lacked.

That story reminded me of something I’ve observed throughout my career.

Organizations can be believers, too.

They believe in accountability. They believe in leadership development. They believe in safety. They believe in operational discipline. They believe in coaching, communication, and continuous improvement.

But believing in those things and consistently behaving in ways that reinforce them are two very different things.

Later that same day, I read a thoughtful LinkedIn post by Michael Sprague, Chaplain at Capital Commission in Louisiana, about what he called having “faith in the middle.” His point was simple but powerful: it’s relatively easy to have faith at the beginning of a journey, when everything is new and full of possibility. It’s also easier at the end, when you can finally see the results of your efforts.

The middle is different. The middle is where enthusiasm fades. It’s where the work becomes repetitive, progress feels slower than expected, and the temptation to quit quietly creeps in.

As I reflected on hearing Andy Stanley’s message and then reading Michael Sprague’s post later that same day, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was more than a coincidence. For me, it felt like a gentle reminder that this was a lesson worth paying attention to. Two different people. Two different messages. Yet both pointed to the same truth: belief, commitment, and discipline are tested not at the beginning or the end of the journey, but in the middle.

As I read Mr. Sprague’s words, I couldn’t help but think about how this too can be applied to an organization.

They also experience “the middle,” too.

The kickoff meeting is exciting.

Announcing a new leadership initiative is exciting.

Rolling out new performance metrics, safety initiatives, or leadership expectations creates energy and optimism.

Everyone believes this time will be different.

Then comes the middle.

The twentieth leadership meeting.

The fiftieth review of performance metrics.

Coaching the same supervisor again.

Having another difficult accountability conversation.

Reinforcing the same expectations once more.

The excitement fades, but the work remains.

Read more

As I looked back over July’s articles, something unexpected stood out.

Each week began with a completely different story.

A World War II veteran recalling D-Day.

A controversy involving Major League Baseball.

A struggling transportation business.

A leadership document I wrote more than twenty years ago.

At first glance, they don’t seem to have much in common.

But as the month unfolded, I realized they were all pointing toward the same lesson.

Better leadership begins with greater clarity.

Clarity about what we’re seeing.

Clarity about what truly matters.

Clarity about the assumptions shaping our decisions.

And clarity about the timeless principles that continue to guide great leaders, even as the world around them changes.

Below is a brief recap of July’s articles. If one of these topics resonates with you, I’d encourage you to read the full article. Several readers shared that these pieces sparked meaningful conversations with their leadership teams, and I hope they do the same for yours.

The July Throughline

Looking back, I don’t think July was really about D-Day, baseball, Disney, or even leadership documents.

It was about clarity.

Great leaders see beyond today’s obstacles.

They distinguish between appearance and reality.

They challenge assumptions rather than accept them.

And they consistently return to the fundamentals when complexity threatens to distract them.

Perhaps that’s one reason leadership can feel so difficult.

Not because the principles are especially complicated, but because clarity requires discipline. It requires leaders to slow down, ask better questions, remain curious, and resist the temptation to react to the first explanation that presents itself.

When leaders see more clearly, they make better decisions.

And better decisions shape stronger organizations.

Looking Ahead to August

Coming in August, Ground Transportation Insights shifts from understanding leadership to practicing it.

The upcoming articles explore the difference between belief and behavior, the discipline required to sustain organizational change long after the excitement of a new initiative fades, the importance of remaining teachable throughout a leader’s career, and why many of the greatest transformations begin long before the opportunity to implement them ever arrives.

If July was about seeing leadership more clearly, August will explore what it takes to live it consistently.

A Closing Thought

One observation keeps coming back to me.

Leadership isn’t usually transformed by discovering one revolutionary new idea.

It’s transformed by seeing familiar ideas more clearly.

Sometimes that clarity comes from looking at a challenge from a different perspective.

Sometimes it comes from questioning an assumption we’ve carried for years.

Sometimes it comes from rediscovering a principle we learned long ago but needed to be reminded of.

That’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing Ground Transportation Insights.

Each article begins with a different story, but I’m continually reminded that the best leadership lessons often point back to the same enduring truths.

Thank you for reading, for sharing these articles with others, and for being part of the conversation.

Question for readers: Which article resonated with you most this month, and why? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

If your organization is working to strengthen leadership, improve operational performance, or build a stronger culture, I’d be happy to help.

Through executive coaching, advisory support, consulting, and fractional leadership engagements, I partner with organizations to develop leaders, improve performance, and create sustainable results.

To learn more, visit:

www.busbusinessconsultants.com or www.dicksonleadership.com

A few weeks ago, I came across a one-page leadership document I created for my Disney management team in June 2005.

At the time, I had already spent about nine years as a Disney leader and four years leading other leaders. Looking back, I expected to find something that felt outdated, overly simplistic, or reflective of a younger manager who still had a lot to learn.

Instead, I found something that surprised me.

While there are certainly things I would change today, much of the foundation still holds up remarkably well.

The document was called “The Five Things to Know.”

The five expectations were simple:

• Know Your Purpose

• Know Your Guests

• Know Your Cast (the Disney term for employees)

• Know Your Business

• Know Your Role

As I reread it, I realized something.

The reason those ideas still resonate isn’t that they’re particularly sophisticated.

It’s because they’re rooted in awareness.

Awareness of why you’re there.

Awareness of the people you serve.

Awareness of the people you lead.

Awareness of how the business actually works.

Awareness of the responsibilities you’ve been entrusted with.

Twenty-one years later, I still believe leadership failures often begin when leaders lose that awareness.

Read more

Part 2 of a Leadership Case Study Series

In Part 1, I shared how I assumed responsibility for Minnie Van just months before COVID shut down Walt Disney World.

As I immersed myself in the operation—training as a driver and shadowing the dispatchers and managers, it became clear that the challenges facing the business ran much deeper than guest demand.

At the end of that article, I shared the realization that changed everything.

The issue wasn’t demand.

The issue was the operating model supporting the demand.

Once I reached that conclusion, the obvious next question became:

If demand wasn’t the problem... what was?

My first instinct wasn’t to start changing things.

It was to understand why the business had arrived where it was.

That meant studying more than the operation itself.

It meant studying the decisions that had shaped it.

Smart People Had Already Been Working the Problem

One thing surprised me almost immediately.

This wasn’t an operation that had been ignored.

Quite the opposite.

Over the previous two and a half years, finance teams had analyzed it.

Industrial engineers had analyzed it.

Operational leaders had analyzed it.

Changes had already been made.

The business wasn’t standing still.

Yet, despite all of that effort, the operation continued to struggle financially.

What struck me wasn’t that people hadn’t cared.

They absolutely had.

Intelligent people had invested countless hours trying to improve the business. They had studied demand, analyzed costs, modeled scenarios, and implemented changes. Every recommendation had been made with the best of intentions.

That’s an important leadership lesson in itself.

Struggling organizations are rarely struggling because nobody is trying.

More often, they’re struggling because everyone is working hard to solve the same problem from the same set of assumptions.

Then a different thought occurred to me.

Everyone was looking for better answers.

The breakthrough came when we started asking better questions.

That led me to one question I couldn’t shake.

What if the answers we’d been finding were perfectly logical...

...but they were answers to the wrong question?

That became the turning point.

Read more

Recently, several San Francisco Giants players made headlines after writing Bible verses on their Pride Night hats. Major League Baseball responded by warning the players that altering uniforms violated league rules.

Predictably, the story quickly became another political flashpoint.

Some viewed the players as standing up for their religious convictions. Others viewed their actions as disrespectful to the LGBTQ community. Before long, the conversation became another battle in our seemingly endless culture war.

I’ll be honest.

My initial reaction to the story wasn’t particularly charitable.

As someone who has often questioned whether highly visible gestures achieve the outcomes organizations hope for, my first thought was that this was another example of symbolism taking precedence over substance.

But the more I thought about it, the more I found myself asking different questions.

Why did this story generate such strong reactions?

Why were reasonable people viewing the same situation so differently?

And what can leaders learn from it?

I’ve spent much of my career leading teams and organizations. Along the way, I’ve come to believe there is an important distinction between telling people how to act and telling them how to think.

Organizations have every right to regulate behavior.

In fact, they have a responsibility to do so.

They should establish expectations around professionalism, safety, ethics, performance, and respect.

If we ever worked in a place where people were excluded or denied opportunities because of who they were rather than their ability to contribute, shame on us.

But behavior and belief are not the same thing.

A leader can require respectful behavior.

A leader cannot require genuine conviction.

Organizations can require compliance.

Genuine belief is another matter entirely.

One of the earliest lessons I learned during my years at Disney involved something as simple as pointing.

Cast Members were taught to point with two fingers rather than one because a single-finger point is considered offensive in some cultures.

The lesson wasn’t really about pointing. It was about recognizing that intent and interpretation are not always the same thing.

Disney understood that people from different backgrounds could experience the same gesture differently. Rather than dismissing those differences, the company adjusted its standards accordingly.

Looking back, I’ve come to appreciate the lesson behind it.

Disney required the behavior, but the lesson wasn’t really about the behavior itself.

It was a recognition that people can experience the same action differently.

That reality didn’t require agreement. It required awareness.

It was a simple but important reminder that people do not all experience the world in the same way.

I’ve thought about that lesson often while watching many of today’s cultural debates unfold.

The rainbow controversy in Major League Baseball is a perfect example.

For some people, the rainbow represents inclusion, acceptance, and belonging.

For others, the rainbow carries religious significance rooted in the biblical account of Noah and God’s covenant with humanity after the flood.

Both perspectives are rooted in beliefs that people hold deeply.

The same symbol can carry very different meanings depending on who is looking at it.

If people come from different backgrounds, experiences, cultures, and belief systems, why would we expect them to interpret every issue the same way?

The goal isn’t necessarily to eliminate those differences.

The goal is to recognize that they exist and create an environment where people can work together effectively despite them.

Great leaders understand that people don’t have to agree on everything in order to treat one another with dignity and respect.

Read more

With Independence Day approaching, I recently read an account from veterans who participated in the Normandy landings.

What struck me wasn’t just their courage.

It was the lesson their stories revealed about perspective.

On the 50th anniversary of the invasion, two men were interviewed about their experiences on June 6, 1944.

The first was a soldier who landed on Omaha Beach.

He described the chaos as landing craft came ashore and soldiers charged the beaches under relentless German fire from the cliffs above. Surrounded by explosions, casualties, and confusion, he remembered thinking:

“There is no way we can possibly win.”

The second interview was with a pilot flying over the battle.

Unlike the soldier on the beach, he could see the massive Allied force assembled in the English Channel. He watched wave after wave of troops, ships, equipment, and reinforcements moving toward Normandy.

From his vantage point, he remembered thinking:

“There is no way we can possibly lose.”

Same battle.

Same moment.

Two completely different conclusions.

The difference wasn’t courage, intelligence, or commitment.

It was perspective.

Before going further, I want to be clear. Nothing I’ve experienced in business compares to what those men endured during the D-Day invasion and the long months of fighting that followed as Allied forces pushed across Europe toward victory.

Their sacrifices helped preserve freedoms that many of us enjoy today, and I am grateful for their service.

What struck me wasn’t the scale of the challenge.

It was the lesson.

Throughout my career, I’ve seen how people can experience the same situation and reach dramatically different conclusions based on what they can see.

When You’re Standing on the Beach

Many years ago, I was involved in a transportation operation that was struggling financially.

Revenue was declining. Costs were rising. Morale was suffering. Customers were frustrated.

For employees closest to the day-to-day operation, it often felt like the organization was fighting a losing battle.

And honestly, I understood why.

They were dealing with customer complaints, staffing challenges, equipment issues, and operational disruptions every day.

What they saw was real.

What they couldn’t always see were the contract negotiations, business development efforts, cost initiatives, operational changes, and strategic decisions taking place behind the scenes.

Their perspective was shaped by the challenges immediately in front of them.

Mine was shaped by a broader view of the organization.

Neither perspective was wrong.

One was simply wider than the other.

I’ve seen this same dynamic play out during turnarounds, start-ups, rapid growth, and periods of significant uncertainty.

I saw it while helping turn around operations in Orlando and Las Vegas.

I saw it while helping stabilize and improve a newly launched transportation operation in Austin.

And I saw it during the COVID-19 shutdown of Walt Disney World and the uncertainty surrounding when and how the resort would eventually reopen.

In each situation, people closest to the daily challenges often felt overwhelmed by the immediate reality they were experiencing.

Again, they weren’t wrong.

They were standing on the beach.

I remember seeing this firsthand while helping stabilize the operation in Austin.

Early on, the challenges seemed endless. We were addressing facility issues, refining processes, improving financial reporting, adding vehicles, and building organizational structure at the same time.

To many employees, it probably felt like there was always another problem to solve.

But by the summer, the broader picture was becoming clearer.

We had moved into new office space. New vehicles were arriving. Our maintenance facility was nearing completion. Financial performance was improving. Most importantly, we had greater confidence that our budgets, reporting, and operating processes accurately reflected the business's reality.

The day-to-day challenges hadn’t disappeared.

But from a leadership perspective, we could see signs that the operation was moving in the right direction.

The people closest to the work saw the obstacles.

We could see the progress.

Both perspectives were real.

Read more

If May focused on culture and reinforcement, June focused on something different:

What isn’t immediately visible.

The strongest organizations aren’t always the busiest.

The most popular services aren’t always the healthiest.

And the greatest risks rarely arrive all at once.

More often, pressure builds gradually beneath the surface—hidden behind growth, activity, familiarity, or assumptions that have gone unchallenged for too long.

This month’s articles explored that idea from three different perspectives.

Below is a brief recap, along with links to the full articles if you’d like to revisit them.

June 3

Much of the public conversation surrounding Spirit Airlines focused on fuel prices, economic conditions, and the failed merger with JetBlue.

But a review of the company’s filings revealed a much deeper story.

Declining revenue. Grounded aircraft. Lease obligations. Shrinking financial flexibility. Operational disruption. Rising pressure across multiple areas of the business.

The lesson wasn’t really about airlines.

It was about recognizing pressure before options begin to disappear.

Transportation businesses often operate with high fixed costs and relatively little room for error. When revenue declines faster than expenses can adjust, pressure builds quickly.

One of the article’s central themes was simple:

You can be busy—and still be in trouble.

The businesses best positioned to weather uncertainty are usually the ones paying close attention to profitability, utilization, debt, cash flow, and operational performance long before a crisis forces them to.

👉 Read the full article

https://www.groundtransportationinsights.com/p/what-ground-transportation-operators

June 10

The first installment of the Minnie Van case study series examined a challenge many leaders eventually face:

What happens when a service is loved by customers but struggles underneath the surface?

By late 2019, Minnie Van had become one of the most recognizable transportation services at Walt Disney World. Guest satisfaction remained strong. Demand remained strong.

Yet concerns about the long-term sustainability of the operation were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

The issue wasn’t demand.

The issue was the operating model supporting the demand.

As I immersed myself in the operation through driver training, dispatcher training, and frontline observation, it became clear that many of the challenges had been building over time.

Then COVID arrived.

The shutdown didn’t create the underlying weaknesses.

It exposed them.

The article explored an important leadership lesson:

Growth can sometimes mask problems that become visible only when conditions change.

And sometimes the most important work isn’t growing the business.

It’s redesigning it.

Read the full article

https://www.groundtransportationinsights.com/p/the-service-was-popular-its-future

June 17

This article began with a question many operators have debated for years:

What role do brokers play in the transportation industry?

But the deeper issue turned out to be something else entirely.

Customer access.

Using Spotify and the music industry as a comparison, the article explored how leverage often shifts toward whoever controls access to customers—not necessarily the party delivering the product or service.

The lesson wasn’t that intermediaries are inherently good or bad.

The lesson was that customer access matters.

Market presence matters.

Relationships matter.

And operators who become overly dependent on any single customer, broker, contract, or channel may eventually find themselves with less influence over pricing, margins, and future opportunity than they realize.

In fragmented industries, the businesses best positioned for the future are often those that strengthen their visibility, diversify their channels, and become harder to replace.

👉 Read the full article

https://www.groundtransportationinsights.com/p/who-owns-the-customer

The June Throughline

Although these articles explored very different subjects, they shared a common theme:

Important truths often exist beneath the surface.

Spirit Airlines appeared to be fighting a fuel-price problem.

It was actually dealing with years of accumulated operational and financial pressure.

Disney’s Minnie Van service appeared to be successful and growing.

It was also carrying structural challenges that growth had helped conceal.

Broker discussions often focus on pricing and commissions.

But the deeper issue is usually leverage, customer access, and market position.

In each case, the visible issue wasn’t the whole story.

The lesson for leaders is straightforward:

Don’t confuse activity with health.

Don’t confuse popularity with sustainability.

And don’t assume that today’s conditions will continue indefinitely.

The most important leadership questions often begin by looking beneath the surface.

Looking Ahead to July

July continues several themes introduced in June while exploring them through a different lens.

In Seeing Beyond the Beach, I share a leadership lesson inspired by two veterans’ memories of D-Day. The article explores how people can experience the same situation and reach dramatically different conclusions based on what they can see—and why one of leadership’s most important responsibilities is helping teams understand the broader picture during periods of challenge and uncertainty.

July will also feature the second installment of the Minnie Van case study series. In Part 2, I’ll explore what happened when we began pulling apart the operation piece by piece, the assumptions we challenged, and the structural changes required to preserve the guest experience while creating a healthier and more sustainable business.

If June focused on recognizing pressure beneath the surface, July will focus on perspective, leadership, and the difficult work of helping organizations move forward when the path isn’t always obvious.

A Closing Thought

One of the easiest mistakes leaders make is focusing exclusively on what is immediately visible.

The customer complaint.

The staffing shortage.

The financial result.

The operational issue.

Those things matter.

But they are often symptoms rather than causes.

Strong leaders learn to look deeper.

To understand not only what is happening, but why it is happening.

Because the issues that ultimately shape organizations—culture, profitability, leverage, sustainability, and performance—usually begin beneath the surface long before they become impossible to ignore.

Thanks for reading and being part of the conversation this month.

And if your organization is facing questions around operational performance, leadership effectiveness, organizational alignment, profitability, or growth, I’d be happy to help.

Through executive coaching, advisory support, consulting, and fractional leadership engagements, I work with organizations to identify challenges, strengthen performance, and create sustainable results.

To learn more, visit:

www.busbusinessconsultants.com or www.dicksonleadership.com

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If you’ve spent any time in the motorcoach business, you’ve heard some version of this statement:

“Brokers are ruining the business.”

Usually followed by frustration about thinner margins, price shopping, shrinking leverage, and operators carrying most of the operational risk while someone else controls the booking.

Most operators already know this dynamic.

None of it is new.

What got me thinking differently was an article I recently read about Spotify.

At first glance, music streaming and motorcoach transportation seem unrelated.

But the more I thought about it, the more familiar the pattern felt.

Because the real issue may not simply be:

Who owns the customer relationship?

It may be:

Who controls access to customers?

And in fragmented industries, that question matters.

Because the party controlling access often has the leverage.

The Pattern

Years ago, the music industry controlled distribution.

If you wanted music, you had to go through the industry.

Then streaming arrived.

At first, it looked like a win.

Easier access.

More reach.

Instant availability.

The industry embraced it.

Over time, however, platforms like Spotify increasingly positioned themselves between artists and listeners.

Today, they influence discovery, listener access, and much of the customer relationship.

Artists still create the product.

But many no longer control access to the audience.

That’s why more artists are now investing in direct fan communities, subscriptions, email lists, and other owned channels.

In short:

They’re trying to regain influence over customer access.

That’s what felt familiar.

Because transportation isn’t that different.

How Transportation Got Here

To be fair:

Much of transportation was commoditized long before brokers began to scale nationally.

In many local markets, customers had already learned to compare:

• price

• availability

• equipment

• timing

Buying decisions often became:

Who can do it?

Who has availability?

Who can do it cheapest?

That reality existed long before today’s national booking platforms.

And once anything becomes easier to compare and contrast...

Someone eventually builds a business around simplifying access to it.

Brokers didn’t create this dynamic.

They stepped into it.

More importantly, they solved a problem.

There is no true national motorcoach brand, and while there are some larger multi-market operators, the industry remains highly fragmented.

So when an organization needs transportation in Orlando, Chicago, Dallas, and Phoenix, they face a choice:

Build and manage relationships market by market...

Or work through an intermediary.

That intermediary became the broker.

One point of contact.

One invoice.

One relationship.

And this is where I think many discussions miss an important point:

Brokers didn’t just compress pricing. They expanded access.

That’s why they succeeded.

Read more

Part 1 of a Leadership Case Study Series

When most people think about struggling operations, they picture unhappy customers.

Low satisfaction scores.

Declining demand.

Negative reviews.

This wasn’t that kind of problem.

Guests loved the service.

Originally launched in 2017 in partnership with Lyft, Minnie Van is Disney’s premium rideshare-style transportation service at Walt Disney World.

The service combines Disney guest experience standards with the convenience and flexibility of rideshare transportation.

One of its biggest advantages is that it delivers guests directly to the same front-door pickup and drop-off locations used by Walt Disney World bus transportation—including the parks and Disney Springs—but on demand.

Traditional rideshare services often require guests to use pickup and drop-off areas located well away from park entrances. Minnie Van eliminates much of that friction by integrating directly into Disney’s transportation ecosystem.

That matters more than many people realize.

Walt Disney World’s transportation system largely operates as a hub-and-spoke network. Depending on where guests are traveling, reaching their destination may require multiple transfers—sometimes between entirely different modes of transportation.

In some cases, transportation itself can consume an hour or more of a guest’s day on each end of the trip.

Minnie Van provides guests with a more direct, flexible, and personalized alternative within a transportation system that serves millions of visitors annually.

The service combines the flexibility and responsiveness of rideshare with Disney-level service standards and operational integration.

For many guests, it becomes more than transportation.

It becomes part of the Disney experience itself.

Guest response was overwhelmingly positive.

But popularity and long-term sustainability are not always the same thing.

Behind the guest experience, the business was facing growing challenges.

And most guests never saw them.

A Service Built Around Experience

Minnie Van was intentionally designed with convenience, accessibility, and the guest experience in mind.

But the operation itself was significantly more complex than many people realized.

Behind the scenes, the business relied on a dedicated vehicle fleet, a rideshare technology platform, complex labor scheduling, operational coordination, third-party maintenance support, and Disney-level service expectations layered across the entire experience.

The operation wasn’t simply moving guests from one location to another.

It was delivering a premium hospitality experience inside one of the world’s most recognized brands.

And in the early years, guest response reinforced confidence in the concept.

Demand grew.

Guest satisfaction remained strong.

The service became highly visible throughout the resort.

From the outside, the operation appeared successful.

But appearances can be deceiving.

The Problem Behind the Popularity

By late 2019, concerns about the long-term sustainability of the operation had become increasingly difficult to ignore.

The service was popular.

Demand remained strong.

But the business underneath the guest experience was struggling.

The challenge wasn’t attracting riders.

The challenge was turning demand into sustainable financial performance.

That distinction mattered.

Because growth can sometimes hide inefficiencies that become harder to ignore as an operation matures.

The question was no longer whether guests valued the service.

They clearly did.

The question was whether the business model itself could support long-term success.

That's when I was asked to add Minnie Van to my responsibilities.

At the time, I was already leading another transportation division at Walt Disney World. While I was familiar with Minnie Van operationally, I also understood that familiarity and understanding are not the same thing.

Minnie Van was a very different operation.

Different labor model.

Different operating rhythms.

Different guest expectations.

Different challenges.

Before making major decisions, I believed I needed to understand the operation from the ground level.

Learning Before Leading

So I went through Minnie Van driver training.

Dispatcher training.

And I shadowed opening and closing shifts alongside the managers responsible for daily operations.

I wanted to understand the operation as the frontline team experienced it.

Not through reports.

Not through presentations.

Through the work itself.

The deeper I immersed myself in the operation, the more I began to see things that weren’t immediately obvious from a spreadsheet.

There is a difference between reviewing performance metrics and understanding how an operation actually functions.

Some of the most important insights don’t appear in dashboards.

They appear in handoffs.

In delays.

In utilization patterns.

In scheduling decisions.

And in the countless small operational realities that shape performance every day.

But they also appear in the decisions that shaped those realities.

Decisions made months—or even years—earlier.

Assumptions that had become accepted as fact.

Processes that made sense when the operation launched, but no longer served the business as it evolved.

The deeper I immersed myself in the operation, the clearer it became that the challenges we were facing hadn’t emerged overnight.

They had been building over time.

And the deeper I got into the business, the clearer it became:

The issue wasn’t demand.

The issue was the operating model supporting the demand.

Then COVID arrived.

Read more

Much of the conversation around Spirit Airlines’ collapse has focused on fuel prices, the economy, and the failed merger with JetBlue Airways.

And to be fair, all of those things mattered.

Spirit itself pointed to rising jet fuel prices and instability in the Middle East as part of the pressure the airline was facing.

But after reviewing the company’s filings and restructuring history, it's clear those issues were the final blows to a business already under significant pressure for years.

The problems had been building for years.

Much of this becomes clear when reviewing Spirit’s 2025 SEC 10-K filing and January 2026 operating results disclosed in its 8-K filing.

The filings paint a much more complicated picture than simply “fuel prices” or a weak economy.

They show a business that had been dealing with shrinking revenue, grounded aircraft, lease pressure, operational disruption, and tightening financial flexibility long before the latest fuel spike arrived.

Spirit’s collapse was really the result of several pressures hitting the business at the same time:

• shrinking revenue

• high fixed costs

• grounded aircraft

• lease obligations

• labor pressure

• operational disruption

• debt

• and failed strategic options

In many ways, Spirit became a case study in what happens when a company’s business model, cost structure, and operating realities stop lining up.

And there are lessons in that for ground transportation operators too.

The Problems Started Long Before Fuel Spiked

The easy explanation is to say fuel prices killed Spirit.

But the numbers tell a much bigger story.

Revenue dropped from about $4.9 billion in 2024 to about $3.8 billion in 2025 — a decline of nearly 23%.

That’s not just fuel.

That’s a business under real pressure.

Even worse, Spirit was spending about $1.20 for every $1.00 it brought in before interest expense and restructuring costs.

That’s almost impossible to sustain for long.

And while the company cut costs, many major expenses didn’t fall fast enough to keep up with the shrinking business.

Transportation operators understand this very well.

When revenue drops, the bills don’t suddenly disappear.

The payments are still there.

Insurance is still there.

Facilities are still there.

Leases are still there.

Payroll is still there.

That’s where businesses start getting squeezed.

The Fleet Problems Ran Deeper Than Overcapacity

At first glance, Spirit’s fleet problems looked like a simple overcapacity issue.

But the filings point to something more complicated.

Spirit had invested heavily in newer Airbus Neo aircraft that were supposed to improve fuel efficiency and support the airline’s long-term strategy.

Then Pratt & Whitney engine issues began grounding aircraft for extended periods.

Read more

If April focused on decisions, May focused on something deeper:

What those decisions become over time.

Culture doesn’t appear overnight.

It forms through repetition.

Through what gets reinforced.
What gets ignored.
What gets normalized.

Across this month’s articles, one idea kept surfacing:

Organizations become what leaders consistently tolerate and reinforce.

Sometimes that shows up in a facility's condition.
Sometimes it shows up in behavior behind the wheel.
And sometimes it shows up in the consistency of how an operation runs day to day.

Below is a quick recap of May’s articles, with links if you’d like to revisit them.

May 6

https://www.groundtransportationinsights.com/p/what-leaders-tolerate-defines-culture

This article started with an unexpected lesson from becoming an empty nester.

As my son moved into his new apartment, he explained that not everything could come with him because it didn’t fit the “vibe” of the next chapter. That moment led to a larger leadership question:

What are organizations carrying forward that no longer belongs?

Drawing from Disney’s idea of “show readiness” and an early experience walking into a neglected client restroom at my first executive operation, the article explored how standards quietly erode—not through dramatic failure, but through normalization.

Because once leadership accepts:

“It’s just a bus garage.”

The organization begins aligning around that belief.

The takeaway was simple:

Culture follows standards.

And standards follow leadership.

May 13

https://www.groundtransportationinsights.com/p/one-bad-decision-on-the-road-can

This article moved the conversation from facilities and internal standards to something much more public:

What happens when your brand is on the move down the highway?

A single decision behind the wheel—a risky maneuver, poor judgment, aggressive driving, or an avoidable interaction—can shape how people perceive a company they might otherwise never encounter.

Every vehicle on the road is surrounded by potential customers.

And every mile creates impressions.

The article reinforced a belief I’ve held for years:

Every driver is a brand ambassador.
Every vehicle is a rolling billboard.

The challenge for leaders isn’t simply reacting to complaints.

It’s creating visibility, accountability, and reinforcement before behavior becomes a pattern.

Because what gets ignored rarely disappears.

More often than not, it becomes the standard.

May 20

https://www.groundtransportationinsights.com/p/when-discipline-becomes-culture

The final installment of the ACLO turnaround series focused on something leadership teams often underestimate:

Stability.

Turnarounds rarely happen through one big moment. They happen through smaller disciplines reinforced consistently over time.

At ACLO, performance improved when:

• expectations became clearer

• supervision became more consistent

• accountability became predictable

• variability across the operation began shrinking

Pressure created movement.

Discipline created sustainability.

Over time, operational discipline changed the organization’s trajectory—improving performance, strengthening credibility, and creating the operational consistency necessary to support growth.

Because successful organizations don’t drift into excellence.

They operate their way there.

The May Throughline

May reinforced something leaders often know intuitively—but don’t always stop to articulate:

Culture is reinforcement.

Not slogans.

Not mission statements.

Not posters on walls.

Culture forms through what gets repeated and reinforced every day.

It shows up in:

• the condition of your operation

• the professionalism of your people

• the consistency of execution

• the expectations leaders actually uphold

Organizations learn quickly what is optional.

And over time, what’s optional becomes visible—in service, performance, trust, reputation, and results.

What leaders tolerate becomes normalized.

What leaders reinforce becomes culture.

Looking Ahead to June

June shifts the conversation from reinforcement to pressure, leverage, and reinvention.

Among the topics coming in June:

What Ground Transportation Operators Should Learn from Spirit Airlines looks beyond headlines about fuel prices to explore how shrinking margins, grounded equipment, fixed costs, and tightening operational flexibility can reveal financial pressure building beneath the surface.

Who Owns the Customer? examines what platforms like Spotify, brokers, and fragmented markets reveal about customer access, leverage, and why market presence matters more than many operators realize.

And in the first deep-dive Minnie Van case study, The Service Was Popular. Its Future Wasn’t Guaranteed., I’ll explore what happens when growth no longer hides operational weakness—and what reinvention looks like when a premium transportation service must evolve to survive.

If May focused on what organizations reinforce, June shifts to what organizations must recognize—pressure building beneath the surface, who controls access to customers, and what reinvention looks like when old assumptions no longer work.

A Closing Thought

Culture rarely changes all at once.

It shifts through repetition.

Through standards.
Through accountability.
Through consistency.
And through what leaders quietly decide is acceptable.

Organizations become remarkably good at reflecting what leadership reinforces.

The question is:

What are you teaching your organization to normalize?

Thanks for reading and being part of the conversation this month.

And if this month’s themes—culture, accountability, standards, operational discipline, or organizational consistency—sound familiar in your own business, sometimes an outside perspective helps clarify what’s being reinforced, what’s being tolerated, and what may be quietly limiting performance.

That’s the work I do through executive coaching, advisory support, operational consulting, and fractional leadership engagements.

If you’d like to have a conversation, you can learn more at:

www.busbusinessconsultants.com

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Part 3 of 3 — The ACLO Turnaround Series

In Part 1 of this series, I shared the moment I realized the issue wasn’t effort.

It was structure.

In Part 2, I wrote about the difficult alignment decisions that followed — redefining standards, rebuilding parts of the middle layer, and reinforcing accountability more consistently across the organization.

But alignment alone doesn’t improve performance.

The organization had to start operating differently — consistently.

The real question was whether we could sustain it.

When the Organization Starts to Stabilize

Turnarounds rarely happen all at once.

There’s no single meeting where everything changes. No dramatic moment where performance suddenly snaps into place.

What actually happens is quieter than that.

Small inconsistencies begin disappearing.

Communication becomes clearer.

Expectations stop shifting from leader to leader.

Supervisors begin reinforcing standards consistently across shifts and teams.

People begin understanding not just what is expected, but what will actually be reinforced.

And over time, the organization starts becoming more stable.

That stability matters more than most people realize.

Because organizations don’t perform consistently when accountability is inconsistent.

They perform consistently when discipline becomes part of the normal day-to-day operation.

The Difference Between Pressure and Discipline

Early in my leadership career, I believed urgency was enough to drive change.

It isn’t.

Pressure can create short-term movement. It can temporarily increase focus. It can force activity.

But pressure is difficult to sustain.

Discipline is different.

Discipline is what allows performance to hold over time.

Survival mode creates a reaction.

Discipline creates stability.

At ACLO, the turnaround accelerated once the organization stopped operating in a situational manner.

Standards became clearer.
Supervision became more consistent.
Expectations became more predictable.
Accountability became more evenly reinforced.

That reduced variability across the operation.

And when variability decreases in a thin-margin business, performance improves.

Not overnight.

But steadily.

Read more

A few weeks ago, I watched a box truck force another car off the road as it exited the interstate.

Traffic was backed up due to construction. Lanes were full.

The driver created a lane where there wasn’t one—and pushed another vehicle out of the way to make the exit.

It’s hard to believe it wasn’t intentional.

What stood out just as much was the box truck itself.

The company branding hadn’t been fully removed.

You could still see traces of the original logo—just enough to connect that behavior to a company that may no longer own it.

And once you see something like that, you don’t forget it—especially when the driver behaves that way.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only time I’ve seen poor driver behavior like this—and instantly connected it back to the company’s brand.

A while back, I was nearly run off the road by a branded roofing truck.

I saw the name on the side.

And I made a decision right there—I won’t be calling them if I ever need a new roof.

That driver didn’t just create a safety issue—they cost the company business.

In both situations, the outcome can be the same.

The people around that vehicle see the driver’s behavior—and may make a decision about the company.

That’s the part many operators miss.

Your vehicles aren’t just out on the road.

They’re surrounded by potential customers.

And every interaction—good or bad—shapes decisions you may never even know about.

There’s an adage in sports—the name on the front of the jersey matters more than the name on the back.

The same applies in ground transportation.

The name on the side of the bus—that’s your brand.

And it matters a lot more than whatever may be going through a driver’s mind in a moment on the road.

Because your brand doesn’t live in your marketing materials.

It lives out there—on the highway.

Every operator should remember:

• Every driver is a brand ambassador

• Every vehicle is a rolling billboard

• Every mile is a chance to reinforce—or damage—your reputation

Read more