Fine Airport Parking keeps its shuttles on schedule with Verizon Connect

For many travelers, the stress of flying starts long before they board their plane. Finding a convenient parking spot, hauling luggage across a lot, and getting to the terminal on time can make even a short flight feel like a long journey.

To help travelers start their trips stress-free, family-owned Fine Airport Parking has provided fast, reliable shuttle service since it was founded in 1983. Its mission? To make parking as easy as possible for travelers.

As Fine Airport Parking's Vice President of Operations for Fleet and Facility, Russ Lyles ensures every shuttle in his fleet stays on schedule, so passenger wait times never exceed ten minutes.

"A customer shouldn't wait longer than that. If something happens to cause a delay, I want our dispatchers to have everything they need to get another shuttle on the road to get us back on track," Lyles said.

As Fine Airport Parking expanded into new markets, maintaining visibility across its growing fleet became difficult, leading Lyles to seek a new approach for delivering a stress-free experience.

Navigating a lack of fleet visibility

Lyles was put to the test as the company expanded beyond Tulsa into Denver and two Houston locations. New traffic patterns and distant lots made maintaining a consistent customer experience more challenging, while his rapidly growing fleet size meant dispatchers struggled to track shuttle locations at any given moment.

"Each city is unique, and every shuttle could have two people on it or 14, making it challenging to keep our tight seven-to-ten minute rotation target for each location," said Lyles.

Technology was a challenge. Dispatchers worked with an outdated telematics system that had poor mapping capabilities and unreliable service. As Fine Airport Parking grew to nearly 400 employees and a fleet of almost 90 vehicles, its old telematics system could no longer keep pace with the company's busy schedule. As a result, dispatchers lacked the near-real-time visibility they needed to redeploy shuttles to places where passengers were stacking up, leading to long wait times and negative reviews.

In addition, Lyles needed better tools to address safety and compliance. Should a Fine Airport Parking shuttle be involved in an accident, Lyles' investigations often came down to conflicting eyewitness reports that exposed the company to potential liability issues and lawsuits. Lyles struggled to mitigate claims against drivers because he lacked objective proof.

Lyles struggled with enforcing company policies, with no way to monitor if drivers were distracted by cell phones, eating while driving, following tipping rules, driving safely, or even staying within their assigned loops. Customer complaints about driver safety and performance were difficult to validate, with drivers rarely admitting to breaking policy.

"I needed more visibility to help us figure out what was really happening behind the wheel," Lyles said.

Expanding to four locations also meant that manual mileage tracking was no longer viable. However, keeping accurate records is crucial to ensuring that each vehicle receives timely maintenance. Because repair shops could take days to schedule maintenance, Lyles needed automated, real-time visibility into vehicle mileage to anticipate and mitigate downtime.

Verizon Connect powers fleet insight for Fine Airport Parking dispatchers

To meet the demands of its growing multi-city operations, Fine Airport Parking switched to Verizon Connect for fleet management. After a brief testing period with five shuttles, Lyles added Verizon Connect to his entire fleet.

"We did not like the results our previous solution provided, so we evaluated our options and decided Verizon had the best system for us. The Verizon name gave us full confidence," Lyles said.

By providing dispatchers with a modern fleet management platform, Lyles improved his ability to keep shuttles on schedule, promote passenger safety and enforce company policies.

Dispatchers now rely on Verizon's GPS tracking and geofencing to monitor every shuttle's location. When a shuttle reaches a key landmark on its route, the system immediately releases the next vehicle, ensuring customers never wait more than a few minutes. Meanwhile, dedicated dispatchers use two-way radios to designate pickups at specific locations, reducing the time it takes to get a shuttle to a waiting customer. Verizon 5G, as a backup for each facility's primary ISP, gives dispatchers the connectivity they need to stay online.

Integrated dual-facing dashcams inside and outside each shuttle help protect the company, drivers and passengers. Video from these dashcams provides evidence during accidents, while in-shuttle cameras help monitor driver performance and passenger behavior.

Lyles also relies on Verizon Connect to keep his fleet on the road. Automated mileage tracking across nearly 90 vehicles helps him anticipate and schedule preventative maintenance.

Fine Airport Parking achieves 24/7/365 fleet visibility

With Verizon Connect, Lyles now has the visibility he needs to keep his operations running smoothly.

By using near-real-time GPS data to trigger shuttle dispatch, Lyles consistently meets his seven-to-ten-minute rotation target, even in traffic-heavy markets like Denver. With better mileage visibility, Fine has reduced downtime by anticipating service needs in advance, while geofencing reports validate or disprove passenger wait time complaints with hard data to ensure accountability.

"If a customer says, 'I waited 35 minutes for a shuttle,' we can run geofence reports. It can show me if we had six or seven shuttles through that terminal during the time they mentioned, or if there really was a gap. It's really beneficial for our upper management to know where to direct training and resources," Lyles said.

Dashcam footage has already changed the outcome of multiple incidents. In Denver, another driver crossed the center line and struck a shuttle carrying five passengers underneath the driver's side. Investigators quickly cleared the shuttle driver of fault, sparing the company a costly liability battle.

"Everyone was pointing fingers, but the minute we said, 'You know what, we've got video of this accident,' all the questions came to a screeching halt," Lyles said.

In a fender-bender incident in Houston, a video showing the other driver at fault helped overturn an insurance claim within 24 hours, while in-shuttle footage disproved a false injury claim from a passenger who appeared unharmed throughout the incident.

"In one accident, the cameras helped us twice," Lyles said.

Cameras also help Fine Airport Parking improve safety and enforce company policies. Lyles uses footage to review customer complaints of drivers rolling through stop signs and drivers not following company policy.

"We 100% use it as a coaching tool to help our drivers improve," Lyles said.

By partnering with Verizon, Fine Airport Parking has gained the visibility, accountability and confidence it needs to deliver a consistent experience across every market. "We have dispatchers at every location looking at the Verizon GPS map every day. It's up on our monitors 24/7/365; we never close. It keeps us in a great position at all times to know exactly where we need to go," Lyles said.