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Local Driver is Chauffeur of the Year
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7/28/2005
Imaging making the roughly 42-mile drive from Mobile Regional Airport to the Grand Hotel in Point Clear. Now imagine making the equivalent of that drive roughly 95,238 times without ever having an accident. And that’s just the beginning of David Robinson’s excellence as a chauffeur. Robinson, who works for Mobile Bay Transportation Co., was recently named the 2004 Limousine and Sedan Chauffeur of the year by the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that represents more than 1,000 owners and operators transporting some two million passengers every day. A professional driver for more than 40 years, Robinson was chosen from among about 150,000 drivers whose companies could have nominated them for the award. And he won, hands down. Said TLPA Executive Vice President Al Gasse: (Judges) narrowed it down to three truly exceptional drivers, but when you see 4 million miles without an accident…that’s unheard of in out industry; truly exceptional.” The key, Robinson said last week during a brief drive through downtown Mobile, is thinking ahead. “You always watch out for the other person,” he said “Driving in the city, I always think three blocks ahead…what I might encounter. If I’m on the highway, I think two or three miles ahead.” Robinson moved to Mobile in 1956 and, at 18 years of age, got a job as a skycap at the Mobile airport. He began driving shortly after, and said he has worked for whatever company had “the airport transportation contract” ever since. He started driving in a city where the big hotels were all downtown, the west Mobile shopping developments didn’t exist, and the route to the airport was along McGregor Avenue. One of his most memorable came early. Robinson said he saw the young girl, wondered where her folks were and asked where she was headed. When she replied “the St. Francis Hotel,” he inquired as to whether she might be meeting her parents. She was, she told him, meeting her husband, Jerry Lee Lewis, it turned out was performing in the area. Robinson is not a chatty driver, but he does come equipped to answer questions about Mobile. He is quick, for example, to share a page clipped from a 2001 Mobile Register, folded neatly and within easy reach from his driver’s seat, that details the birth of Mardi Gras. “Most people start talking about New Orleans and Mardi Gras and Mardi Gras,” he said. “I let them know real quick this is where Mardi Gras originated. It may not be as big, but we enjoy ours just as much as New Orleans enjoys theirs.” Robinson said one of the things he most enjoys about his job is meeting the different people who cross his path. At 40 years and counting, he has no plans to retire, though he isn’t working quite as many hours each week. “Go to you job and enjoy what you are doing,” he said when asked the keys to a successful working career. “That, and you have to be dependable.” His fellow drivers see Robinson as a mentor or even a father-figure, said Margie Wilcox, owner and president of Mobile Bay Transportation, which employs 20 people, about 15 of them drivers. Robinson was working for the company when she joined in the early 1980s, she said, and in his own way “raised” her in the business, which she bought in 1992. “Everyone that he works with cares about him and respects him,” she said. If the occasion ever demanded it, “he quietly showed me the error of my ways without embarrassing me in front of anyone.” “I have never heard him say one bad thing about anyone else” Wilcox said she’s know for years that Robinson would wind the national award, given annually at the TLPA national convention, once the company nominated him. “For us it was a matter of geographic locale,” she said. “He won’t fly. He won’t get on an elevator.” They watched as the convention moved through places including Phoenix and Reno, then took their shot for the 2004 meeting in Orlando. Even when they learned Robinson had won, the logistics were not settled. “He’s such an unassuming and humble man,” she said, “if we had just told him, he never would have told anybody else.” So a few weeks back, when Robinson got called into work unexpectedly, his company had invited his children and grandchildren to an awards announcement. “I was shocked,” he said, “I’d never thought anything about winning.” A son and daughter even made the trip to Orlando with him earlier this month. For once, he let someone else handle the driving.
K. A Turner
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