Ab Ahmadpour Shuttle Owner

Ab Ahmadpour

Shuttle Owner

Ab Ahmadpour, 51, an Iranian native and owner of A&M; Supertime and co-owner of E-Z Ride Super Ride, has been in the shuttle and limousine business for nearly three decades. He has 20 cars on the road, with 40 drivers.

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In general, the economy is not in good shape and that’s affecting me very badly. I am struggling to keep my business open.

The last six years, before this administration, we had a good economy. My business was booming. I’m not against this government, but the economy for some reason is getting bad.

Before Sept. 11, I had bought 10 cars to add to my fleet. Now, I have a lot of debt on these cars and they are just sitting in my garage. This event has had a bad effect on all of the transportation business.

I compared last November to this November, last Thanksgiving to this Thanksgiving. I tell you, our business is almost 70% down in reservations. This Thanksgiving was absolutely different, worse, than last year. Last year we had so much overload we could not handle it. We needed more cars, more drivers.

And now at Christmastime I compare the number of reservations to last year and we have a 45% drop.

For 2002? I really don’t think the economy is going to get good fast. We had problems with the economy before Sept. 11 and now it’s more complicated.

In a couple of months the economy is going to be much worse than it is now. I see it. Everybody’s closing their business. I have customers in Ventura County and they are going out of business. When they go out of business, they don’t travel.

I struggle. I hope I can keep my small business alive. We brought our prices down, but still there is a lot of competition in my business.

I am not a lazy boy. I will continue to work. If this work doesn’t give me bread, I’ll quit and go to another job.

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As told to Karen Robinson-Jacobs