David Loe

Special to Ventura County Star

This is the last month Roadrunner Shuttle will be taking Ventura County residents to Los Angeles International Airport.

It’s been quite a run (so to speak), but service to all Los Angeles airports ends July 31st.

Why?

The company changed hands last year and the new owners have other priorities. Maybe even more importantly, Uber and Lyft have really cut into the rideshare business over the years. They’re tough competitors.

That competitive landscape was quite different when Desmond Sandlin started the company in 1991. He named it after the youth football team he coached, the Camarillo Roadrunners. Over the years, he grew Roadrunner Shuttle from one van to 200, from one driver to over 400.

“The first four years I put everything I had into it.”

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And by that Sandlin was talking about all his money...and all his energy. His success is demonstrated by the fact that those white vans became ubiquitous in Ventura County over the years. I'm guessing most of you reading this have spent some time in one.

It wasn’t always a pleasant experience.

Living in Ventura, as I do, I’d usually be the first pick up. For a morning flight out of LAX, the van often arrived in my driveway at an unbelievably early hour. That’s because we had to work our way through the county zigzagging from one city to another.

Only then could we make a beeline to the airport. To expedite that process, I’d occasionally scramble out in total darkness to help search for a street address or apartment number. In the days before GPS, getting to the airport was a team effort!

I learned over the years that their private car option, though considerably more expensive, was the only sane way to use Roadrunner’s airport transportation when you reside on the very far end of their service area.

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The van driver’s were terrific for the most part. Although I still chuckle about the one who took complete advantage of his “captive audience” by sharing his strong political views non-stop.

All seven of us in the van, who had never met one another before, mumbled our concurrence grudgingly whenever our “talk show host” solicited response. We all silently kept praying for traffic to lighten up in hopes of getting to the airport as soon as possible.

On a more positive note, one driver I had a few years back was particularly memorable.

It was Desmond Sandlin himself. I recognized him right away though I didn’t know him well.

“What’s the boss man doing behind the wheel,” I asked.

“This is the way it was when I started the company, and when things get crazy busy, I chip in,” he replied.

Over the years, Roadrunner’s business expanded into bus service. That seems to be where the future is.

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In an email to customers announcing the discontinuance of transportation to local airports the new owners (RAPT Dev) said they had “decided to focus on growing our Charter business.” They felt they could “accelerate as an organization, with a more singular approach.”

With the impending end of Roadrunner’s airport shuttle service, founder Sandlin said he feels very sad for his former drivers that will be losing their jobs.

Though he added, “I saw the writing on the wall” with the continued success of Uber and Lyft. He built his ride-sharing company as an employee based operation.

That translates to a much higher overhead than companies that use independent contractors as drivers. He bemoaned what he called “the less stringent rules” for the internet ride-sharing companies.

Sandlin’s creation in Ventura County may not be featuring those white Roadrunner vans scurrying back and forth to the airport much longer, but he can take pride in knowing that what he started in 1991 was deemed attractive enough to be purchased by one of the world’s biggest international transportation companies.

Although the corporate name, RATP Dev, may not be familiar, it is a big player. Their parent company operates everything from the Paris Metro system to transit systems all over the world.

In the United States they own dozens of transit systems, and that includes one named after a youth football team in Camarillo, California.

David Loe was the co-owner of a travel business in Ventura County for 25 years. His column appears monthly. He welcomes your feedback at davidloe@sbcglobal.net.