James River Transportation’s Stephen Story: On the road to success

Jan. 27--Stephen Story was in the bus business long before he made a nickel at it.

Growing up in a "bus family," he spent afternoons and weekends washing buses, painting buildings, filing papers and making baggage tags for tours.

And this, he said, was before he collected an actual paycheck.

Now president of James River Transportation, an 85-year-old company owned by his family, Story has driven buses, turned wrenches, sold charters, overseen safety, done inspections, and run the maintenance shop.

While its sober-hued buses are a Richmond fixture, James River is a small business as businesses go.

Propelled by its Richmond International Airport passenger transportation business, the company posted revenue of about $12 million last year and expects to exceed $13 million this year.

James River employs 150 people and operates a fleet of more than 90 vehicles, from locations in Richmond, Williamsburg and Norfolk. Its administration and maintenance operations are lean -- fewer than 20 people.

Nonetheless, James River Transportation has attributes of an industry-leading business:

--training its drivers using a state-of-the-art simulator;

--seeking long-term improvement by taking part in a warts-and-all industry benchmarking group;

--pushing for safety measures even when they are not government-mandated, including adding seat belts on all of its buses; and

--making Inc. magazine's 2013 list of the nation's 5,000 fastest-growing companies with a three-year growth rate of 50 percent -- $12.6 million in 2012, up from $8.4 million in 2009.

James River Transportation has not only survived but flourished in an industry notable for the transience of many of its members.

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"They were always considered, I'd guess you'd say, the Tiffany of the charter people," said transportation economist George E. Hoffer at the University of Richmond.

In its early years, the firm was primarily an intrastate common carrier with defined routes, Hoffer said, "in essence, an intrastate Greyhound."

Founded in 1928 as James River Bus Lines, the company sprang from modest beginnings in rural central Virginia. Its lone bus would bring passengers to Richmond for their daily shopping, the company said.

Now doing business as James River Transportation, the firm ran its last regularly scheduled intrastate bus service in 1994. "As people got cars, as elsewhere in the U.S., the rural-to-urban, common-carrier bus line business model failed," Hoffer said, "and they osmosed by necessity further into the charter coach and tour business."

The company is unusual in a number of ways, Hoffer said: James River has survived for 85 years, the Story family retains control of the firm, and the company has consistently "used first-class equipment, not tired 'hand-me-downs.'" The firm's newest bus cost $530,000.

"They never took their eye 'off the road,'" Hoffer said. "They were always in it for the long run, not the short run."

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At James River Transportation, the 51-year-old Story has directed the company through recessions, fuel crises, industry insurance crises, and the impacts of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America and the global war on terrorism.

On Sept. 12, 2001, half of his business went away, Story said. The bottom line took a beating.

"The terrorism threats prolonged the financial situation," he said. "Every time an 'Orange Alert' was announced, all of our field trips would cancel."

Through the financial crises caused by 9/11 and the recession in 2008, Story said, "we did not cut our staff, reduce hours and change their pay."

"Our team is our most valuable asset," he said. "We were willing to reduce, or eliminate, our profit rather than retrain a new staff."

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James River Transportation handles about 8,500 charters and 29,000 airport runs a year.

The company measures everything about those trips, Story said: complaints, breakdowns, safety issues, "so we can fix the problem before it gets out of hand."

James River has had zero reportable accidents in the last 48-month reporting period, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Its breakdown rate -- and for James River Transportation that includes any mechanical problem causing a delay -- is less than 1 percent per trip, he said, whether the trip is 10 miles or 100.

GPS systems track every bus, and every driver gets a background check.

Of its customers, 97.8 percent give the company the highest rating, 2 percent give James River just satisfactory rating, and less than 1 percent says its service was unsatisfactory, the company said.

"We hired a person to do nothing but customer service training," Story said. "It's all in how you treat people."

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During his last few years at J.R. Tucker High School in Henrico County, a distributed education business program allowed Story to leave school early and work half a day at James River in the office or as a mechanic's helper.

"I just wanted to get on with life and not get stuck in a classroom all day," Story said.

He spent his high school summers almost entirely in the maintenance department. After high school, Story worked in the sales department where he sold charters, planned tours and called on potential customers.

But Story still earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Richmond in human resources management.

He really wasn't much interested in going to college. Story's plan was simple: "I'm going to work at James River and make things great."

But his older brother had gone to UR and student adviser Jean H. Proffitt with UR's University College and School of Continuing Studies urged him on.

Completing his degree took Story a decade: "I worked full time." His responsibilities increased to supervisory roles in sales, maintenance and operations, and ultimately president in 1990.

He holds a commercial driver's license for vehicles over 26,000 pounds, as well as a state vehicle safety inspector certification. Story still makes sales calls on potential clients, provides mechanical assistance when needed, and takes the wheel for the occasional bus trip.

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He's applying what he learned about human resource management at the University of Richmond.

"Apparently you can't just yell at people and order them around, and create a good environment," he said wryly during an interview at the company's neatly-kept headquarters on Allen Avenue in Richmond.

Instead, he espouses the servant-leadership style.

For James River, its management is providing all types of necessary support for drivers, mechanics and sales people, Story said, "people that have contact with our clients and the customers."

A driver might be a customer of the company's dispatchers, a key relationship for a smooth operation, he pointed out.

"If we can't work together," Story said, "the chances of providing great customer service to external customers, the passenger, are zero."

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Story has widened the scope of services James River provides, adding convention transportation management, and contract and tour services, including wine region tours and casino trips to West Virginia and Maryland.

The firm runs large motorcoaches, executive sedans and vans, minicoaches and town cars.

The Williamsburg location does mostly meeting and event transport using smaller vehicles -- 30 passengers or fewer -- Story said, while the Norfolk operation runs on steady contract work. For instance, James River handles the Old Dominion University's transit service.

The company also has on-site operations at Richmond International Airport and Norfolk International Airport, offering executive sedan, limousine and shared-ride services, as well as providing the Norfolk airport's employee shuttle service.

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James River Transportation is very much a family firm.

Story's father, L. Woodrow "Woody" Story, who is the company chairman, bought the bus line in 1977.

Stephen's sister, Diane Story Hall, is the company's vice president for human resources, and his brother, Dr. L. Woodrow "Woody" Story Jr., an optometrist by profession, is corporate treasurer.

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Story has donated bus service -- and has himself driven motor coaches -- for area organizations devoted to helping kids, such as the Virginia Winter Special Olympics, an annual circus trip for under-privileged children, and an annual K-mart Christmas shopping trip for intercity youth.

He's also spent time working in the PTA organizations at Henrico'sGlen Allen Elementary and Hungary Creek Middle schools and volunteering on a variety of projects, said GayDonna Vandergriff.

"He really comes from a good place," said Vandergriff, who has worked with Story in the PTA groups, "if it's making things better for the kids."

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Story participates in a group of 20 non-competing motorcoach operators in North America who benchmark themselves against one another.

"We compare ourselves on financials, safety, pricing," he said. "We know everything about each other. We look at the books, do site visits."

"We learn from each other's successes," Story said. "We learn from each other's failures."

Working with the comparison group has had a bottom-line impact on James River, helping improve its business methods.

"It enables us to know all our numbers," Story said, "and know with reasonable certainty what's coming up."

"Owners come up with all sorts of excuses for their own incompetence," he said. "You can buck that trend."

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