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Buckle up, because we’re diving into the untold stories of the mobility world.
From monitoring the policies influencing how we move to tracking down stolen cars, we’re bringing you inside the busy, high-stakes world of transportation - including everything from autonomous vehicles and micro-mobility to public transportation and air travel.
Brought to you by the American Car Rental Association, each episode tackles the big issues driving the future of mobility: autonomous vehicles, data rights, new business models, and the laws that could flip the industry on its head.
With jaw-dropping stories, bold opinions, and no holds barred, we’re here to challenge the status quo and get you thinking about the future of how we move, whether by car, bike, plane, or train, and why it matters to everyone.
[00:00:00] Ian Kusinitz: Have wide shoulders and a strong back, be able to take your licks. Carry a lot of weight on your back. So there is promise, there is longevity. We are able to overcome those channels and obstacles all the way through different insurance, 2008 financial crisis, 2020 COVID crisis. So external factors from all areas we’ve been able to overcome and ride ourselves through this.
[00:00:31] Don Lefeve: This is The Mobility Perspective powered by ACRA, driving the future of mobility with insights, innovation, and industry expertise.
[00:00:41] Sharky Laguana: Welcome to the ACRA Podcast.
[00:00:44] Ian Kusinitz: Awesome. Love it.
[00:00:47] Sharky Laguana: Do you like our fancy studio?
[00:00:49] Ian Kusinitz: Yeah. I love the fancy studio.
[00:00:52] Sharky Laguana: Ian Kusinitz, which I don’t think I’ve ever said your last name before out loud. I just say Ian.
[00:00:58] Ian Kusinitz: Did
[00:00:58] Sharky Laguana: I say that right?
[00:00:59] Ian Kusinitz: You said it close enough.
[00:01:01] Sharky Laguana: How do you say it? I
[00:01:02] Ian Kusinitz: Would say Kuzanitz.
[00:01:04] Sharky Laguana: Kusunitz.
[00:01:05] Ian Kusinitz: Kusunitz.
[00:01:06] Sharky Laguana: What’s the ethnic origin
[00:01:07] Ian Kusinitz: Of that? Eastern European.
[00:01:10] Sharky Laguana: Eastern European.
[00:01:10] Ian Kusinitz: Eastern European. Like your wife. Yes. Naomi. Just like Naomi. I got it now. Now I remember it.
[00:01:18] Sharky Laguana: Yeah, that’s
[00:01:19] Ian Kusinitz: Good. Yeah, I’m good.
[00:01:21] Sharky Laguana: Yes. All right. So Ian like myself is in the passenger van rental business.
[00:01:26] Ian Kusinitz: Empire Rent A Car, van and truck based out of New York, New York. Long Island specific. We’ve been established since 1970. Through reiterations I’ve been in charge, if you want to say, since 2001. We serve Metropolitan, New York and beyond. We rent a wide variety of equipment. We started as a traditional renter car company and that has metamorphosed and grown. And today actually we don’t rent cars specifically on a short term basis. Mainly passenger vans seating 12 and 15 by Ford, Mercedes on the cargo side Ram as well. We rent box trucks from 16 to 26 and small guys 12 foot. We are sizably invested in the last mile logistics atmosphere. We serve FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and the postal service.
[00:02:32] Sharky Laguana: Business started in 1970. Who started it?
[00:02:34] Ian Kusinitz: It was started by my dad.
[00:02:37] Sharky Laguana: So it’s a family business.
[00:02:38] Ian Kusinitz: It’s a family business.
[00:02:40] Sharky Laguana: So 1970, that’s before you were born, right? Like good 15 years before?
[00:02:46] Ian Kusinitz: 11 to be specific.
[00:02:48] Sharky Laguana: Were you around all the time when he was running it as a kid?
[00:02:52] Ian Kusinitz: I was. Weekends, holidays, summers, spring breaks, so on and so forth.
[00:02:58] Sharky Laguana: You washed the cars?
[00:02:59] Ian Kusinitz: Drove the cars too.
[00:03:00] Sharky Laguana: How old were you when you first drove a car?
[00:03:02] Ian Kusinitz: I have a brother that’s 11 years older than me, so he would be 18 at the time. I remember by seven I was driving at least gas brake, sitting on lap.
[00:03:12] Carlos Bazan: Statute of limitations is over, so you’re good. Oh yeah,
[00:03:14] Ian Kusinitz: Exactly. You’ll be in
[00:03:15] Carlos Bazan: Trouble.
[00:03:16] Ian Kusinitz: Yes.
[00:03:17] Sharky Laguana: Do you plan to start your kids at age seven?
[00:03:19] Ian Kusinitz: They’ve already passed that, but they do very well on the power wheels.
[00:03:24] Sharky Laguana: But you haven’t graduated them to a real car yet?
[00:03:27] Ian Kusinitz: Well, we souped up the power wheels, so we have a nice battery in there and it does give out more output than the traditional powerwheels battery. Yes. Super trash. Power wheels
[00:03:35] Sharky Laguana: Like the kind of little cars that
[00:03:37] Ian Kusinitz: Kids can drive around. Yeah.
[00:03:39] Sharky Laguana: Oh, and of course you souped it up to make it even more.
[00:03:44] Ian Kusinitz: We did. The guys in the shop needed something to do for birthday.
[00:03:48] Carlos Bazan: You’re in the tuning business at least for your kiddos as well.
[00:03:51] Ian Kusinitz: Yes. I like the Mashbox collection behind you.
[00:03:55] Carlos Bazan: Oh, thank you. It’s one of my hobbies. I have roughly 1,200 cars in my collection. Some of them from when I was your age when you started driving cars
[00:04:06] Ian Kusinitz: For your dad. Yes.
[00:04:07] Carlos Bazan: You mentioned that you started at age seven. What made you get that love for the industry? I know you love it now. I’ve talked to you many times, but when did you start loving it? Why?
[00:04:18] Sharky Laguana: Well, hold on a second. And do you love the industry?
[00:04:22] Ian Kusinitz: I do. Yes. This is a business that you have to learn to love to hate, but to love again. It’s a fun business. There’s new experiences, new customers, and new opportunities every day.
[00:04:37] Carlos Bazan: So new people, new experiences. Before you joined, Sharky was telling us about a fantastic experience that he had when one of his trucks got into an incident. I actually want to know if something actually spooked Ian at some point in which he would say, no, I don’t want to get into this business, or if actually everything was so fun that he’s like, “Yes, that’s what I’m going to do.
[00:05:00] Ian Kusinitz: “ There was no one aha moment. I think this business is a chapter by chapter and opening every door and seeing every opportunity or every situation evolve as it’s happening is what makes this unique.
[00:05:16] Sharky Laguana: Ian, I always think of you as being, you’re like a purebred organic car rental guy and the background sort of underscores that. I think you and I have talked about this before. There’s a lot of folks out there that are operating based on a spreadsheet or something they learned in an MBA program or something. And then there’s a kind of operator that is just all instinct all the time.
[00:05:41] Ian Kusinitz: I am very gut driven, instinct driven with verification. So yes, a lot of the decisions in this business is driven by real world scenario of what’s actually happening in marketplace, what competition is not seeing and that’s how we have to execute. I always tell people what makes us different. Well, what makes a small, independent operator different is we are driving a speedboat when the major companies are driving a cruise ship. So we have to be able to pull in and out of port faster, better, smarter, and quicker.
[00:06:27] Sharky Laguana: When you took over the fleet in 2001, what did you take over?
[00:06:31] Ian Kusinitz: A bunch of old cars with bald tires and no brakes and everybody was sleeping on Mama’s couch.
[00:06:37] Sharky Laguana: All cars? No vans?
[00:06:39] Ian Kusinitz: No, we had a hybrid mix of equipment. Everything was fully operational at the time. I established myself in a great place with great family, saw some shortcomings inside internally with operations, with web. It was very, at that point, 2001 was driven with yellow pages. We were really just on the cusp of internet connectivity, that was obviously a big driver in customer reach when we were possibly able to hit the world at the same budget we were hitting local marketplace. So big driver was internet connectivity.
[00:07:14] Sharky Laguana: How many cars was it in 2001?
[00:07:16] Ian Kusinitz: We say cars. It was a vehicle count, roughly maybe 150 mixed fleet of both new used, just a hybrid of equipment.
[00:07:27] Sharky Laguana: And when did you decide to start focusing more on the vans?
[00:07:31] Ian Kusinitz: As Uber sort of ramped up car rental tailed off, especially inside New York City and the surrounding suburbs, which we serve, it was an exponential threat, both a hindrance and that’s something that we’ve discussed before where it could help as the additional driver to do deliveries and such, but as more and more of our mainstay customers turn to that as a primary choice of transportation model, cars and price point of sets cars made it difficult and unconducive to operate inside city limits.
[00:08:07] Don Lefeve: What’s the toughest thing that you’ve learned in your career? Meaning what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made?
[00:08:14] Ian Kusinitz: I don’t think there’s any mistakes. I think every day is a learning battle in business working for ourselves and working for a small company or a big company. Missed opportunities perhaps, but really it’s driven by exponential factors. A big thing for me is what I’ve seen in renting itself historically is chaotic times create opportunity for us. So we just have to be prepared for those chaotic scenarios and be able to capitalize on them or predict them before they even happen. Looking
[00:08:49] Carlos Bazan: At what you know right now, if you were to go back to 2001, what would you change? What would you do different from what you did at that point? I
[00:08:57] Ian Kusinitz: Honestly, I’m very happy where we are. I don’t think anything changing. I’m very much abreast of all market trends. I keep my finger on the pulse in different categories and sectors inside of my geographical reach. We try not to fully commit ourselves to one sector. We are more of a supermarket and have different customers and different industries. I found success by diversification, not only in the fleet, but in the customer base as well.
[00:09:36] Carlos Bazan: When you talk diversification, you do, I assume, a lot of corporate business. You also work with churches, you work with vans also like Sharky. What else? What other specialty markets do
[00:09:48] Ian Kusinitz: You- Yeah. Movie and entertainment customers, vans and road trips, traveling groups. We deal with youth and organizations and camps. We just look for quality people and try and avoid trouble. Trouble starts on the telephones. Trouble starts on websites. Trouble starts in really walkups. Walkups and telephones are a big indicator of trouble. How
[00:10:22] Carlos Bazan: Do you deal with that? Let’s say you get a local and you have some kind of thought that this might be a problem renter. What do you do? How do you consider
[00:10:30] Ian Kusinitz: Not only a problem renter, it could be a problem customer. Historically, if they’re renting at one company and then they rush over to promise you great big things, you sometimes wonder why they’re leaving such competitive marketplace with quality people providing that service. So sometimes you have to question the customer more than the story that they’re telling. Sharky, you got tired of their stories. Somebody gets tired of the customer, the customer owes money. The customer’s not as dandy as they promise themselves to be. So you just have to screen account, screen customer, not only just a walk up, but last minute and late. And sometimes it’s too good to be true. Other times it’s not.
[00:11:21] Sharky Laguana: Do you have a lot of problem with vehicle theft?
[00:11:23] Ian Kusinitz: Through GPS connectivity, we’ve been able to mitigate that, but from time to time, it is an occurrence.
[00:11:29] Sharky Laguana: We had a situation where somebody’s rented a bunch of vehicles with fake IDs and then you can see on the GPS, they all went to the same location and then the GPS signal died.
[00:11:39] Ian Kusinitz: Fortunately enough, I work with a good set of people. My brother, one of them, and if you guys are familiar with the town, Mark Wahlberg says to his colleague, “We’re going to mess things up and we’re not going to ask no questions.” And his reply was, “Who’s driving? Whose car are we taking?” Just kidding. We have a protocol in place for proper authorization of GPS, SkipTrace and so on and so forth. Fortunately enough, that has not occurred where there’s multiple units to one set of group that does do crime in the instance of the vehicle disappearing. We do have insurance fraud that is rampant, so we always have to be cognizant and receptive of who we’re handing the keys to in New York with multi-passenger units as that could be susceptible to no fault fraud, so on and so forth where the accident might be staged and planned and that is a very big risk with liability that might fall on the vehicle rental company.
[00:12:48] Don Lefeve: Are you seeing a lot of cargo theft?
[00:12:50] Ian Kusinitz: It has happened before and that’s a great story.
[00:12:55] Don Lefeve: Do tell.
[00:12:57] Ian Kusinitz: Well, it’s just an ongoing … Unfortunately, customers do rent and maybe either we’ve had it that the vehicle or box truck or van has then become stolen, taken with ill intent. Perhaps they have been taken out by other criminals or a deal gone bad where the criminal then steals the van from the actual customer who paid them the money for the merchandise and the criminal does steal it back. So that’s happened. People do rent trucks to unfortunately do burglaries of self-storage. We’ve had it where they rent a box truck or van to do burglaries of self-storage. Not many years ago, but over the course of my career, we’ve had cargo vans used specifically to steal motorcycles out of Manhattan and the Bronx. They were very quick into Ducati. These guys, they came in, they were telling us they were a construction company seemed legit and real.
[00:13:57] Ian Kusinitz: Come to find out in maybe a month or two span with three vans, they stole every bike possible. So that is stuff that happens as far as theft of our vehicles. We have recovered some Ford E-Series vans in the past stripped and abandoned at the places of stripped and abandonment and recovered them with all our parts. Fortunately enough, that was predecessing 2014 or the Ford Transit.
[00:14:26] Sharky Laguana: Are you still doing repairs in-house?
[00:14:30] Ian Kusinitz: We do have a shared service center that does handle our maintenance and auto body for vehicles that we can bring back here. It’s our own. So we don’t do any outside work and that’s housed inside of our main hub where new cars come in, old vehicles leave, license plates happen, registration happens, keys happen, branding, so on and so forth.
[00:14:55] Sharky Laguana: I see. So the car rental and the repair happens in the same place.
[00:14:58] Ian Kusinitz: The vehicle pickup and drop off is an accessory building attached to the facility, so that’s outside of what the customer might see.
[00:15:06] Sharky Laguana: I’m so jealous.
[00:15:08] Ian Kusinitz: It’s a nice place.
[00:15:09] Carlos Bazan: That’s a perfect setup.
[00:15:10] Ian Kusinitz: Yeah.
[00:15:10] Sharky Laguana: A beautiful
[00:15:11] Carlos Bazan: Setup.
[00:15:11] Ian Kusinitz: We’re very lucky. It encompasses about an acre in land, three buildings and maybe 20,000 square feet of building.
[00:15:19] Sharky Laguana: And did your dad buy the land?
[00:15:21] Ian Kusinitz: No, this has been acquired or leased and acquired over the costs of the last decade. It was different pieces and we’re still trying to get neighbors and stuff to put together even more assemblage.
[00:15:34] Carlos Bazan: You want to buy more and lease more? Because you mentioned still working with the neighbors, right? And if so, what are you going to put in those new buildings or areas that you have be buying?
[00:15:42] Ian Kusinitz: Just an expansion of growth that just bought out expansion and growth.
[00:15:46] Carlos Bazan: In terms of vehicles, I mean, in your market, you can grow exponentially still with the amount of cars you have or units you have in your fleet. Do you still have a goal to grow in terms of fleet size or what are your growth strategies?
[00:15:59] Ian Kusinitz: I think we’re in a really good place right now. I think the industry itself is in a fleet correction from all of our competitors, adversaries and colleagues to right size the fleet, to right size the customer, and then right size the price point today because the fleet and expenses have grown exponentially and unfortunately we are on tighter margins today and a price point with pressure downward, which my adversaries and colleagues had promised me we would never happen.
[00:16:37] Sharky Laguana: I think it’s funny, when I started my business, we were running vans for $129 a day and they cost, I think, $27,000 or $28,000. Now they rent for sometimes as low as $80 a day and they cost $60,000
[00:16:55] Ian Kusinitz: Disproportional and the labor expense, insurance, maintenance, mechanical, but that haul has increased at least for me, Sharky will attest to this. As the years go on, the fleet does maintain longer lifecycle, better quality of vehicle, a safer product for our customers and that’s really pivotal for long-term. So yes, the vehicles have increased in cost. Unfortunately, the marketplace is constrained price point, but opposite of that, a vehicle lifecycle and maintenance cost associated coupled with safety has really been a beneficial fact of progress.
[00:17:46] Carlos Bazan: Warranty on the vehicles is now longer. So you can keep the car safely in your fleet for longer periods of time. Your fleet cycle has changed as well. When I’ve rented, it’s been on actual daily driver vehicles, but I’m assuming that with your kind of trucks and vans, you need to keep them for longer periods of time, right?
[00:18:06] Ian Kusinitz: I would say on average lifecycle today is probably 10 years.
[00:18:10] Sharky Laguana: You’re keeping them in your fleet 10 years or the vehicle is lasting 10 years?
[00:18:14] Ian Kusinitz: Both if not longer.
[00:18:16] Sharky Laguana: Okay. You’re sitting at the far end of the depreciation long tail then, which is nice because by the time you get to that part in the vehicle lifecycle, you don’t owe any more debt on it, at least I would hope not. Maybe you do.
[00:18:31] Ian Kusinitz: No, we definitely don’t owe debt on it at that point. In this business, you have this fine balance where we can pay the bank, we can pay the mechanic, we could pay the bank and the mechanic. You don’t want to be in any of them. You want to be in this really sweet spot of minimal bank, minimal mechanic, and you get this nice little window fully depreciated yet still in service.
[00:18:57] Carlos Bazan: Avoid what Sharky calls the debt zone.
[00:18:59] Ian Kusinitz: The debt zone or the debt zone? They’re kind of both the same thing, aren’t they? That is true. It is true. Luckily enough and different than perhaps maybe Sharky, but similar to other companies that are regional, we get to see the vehicles more often and based on our mechanical team or maintenance protocols, we try and do everything possible to be a great steward of the vehicle.
[00:19:30] Sharky Laguana: Yeah. I think with you on all ends of it, owning the maintenance and the body damage puts you in a position to extend the lifespan a lot longer because your maintenance costs aren’t as high relative. That’s probably really helping out a lot. No, what I always think of as the death zone is when you have to sell a vehicle and the amount you owe to the bank is more than what you sold it for. So now you got to cut a check on top of selling the vehicle.
[00:19:59] Ian Kusinitz: We never want to be in this business to all the listeners. You never want to be in that position. How do I circumvent that position? It works for me. I typically try and not do a full 100% debt finance when purchasing. I’ve learned from insurance brokers and banks. The terminology they use is you must have skin in the game. I found that I’d rather be cash poor today than having to pay off the vehicle and not have the vehicle. This business could be very unique and challenging at times. The last thing we want to do is have to close our doors and pay the bank after the revenue has stopped.
[00:20:47] Sharky Laguana: Nobody wants to be in that position. And as we’ve seen, sometimes some of our colleagues have been in that position. It’s easy to get in there because you see the cashflow from the rental operations, but you don’t necessarily see where your equity position is relative to your debt. And if you have a whole bunch of vehicles and a lot of debt, you can find yourself upside down without even realizing it. And then it can be very difficult to get yourself out of that position.
[00:21:14] Ian Kusinitz: Especially or specifically when there’s factors outside or forces outside of your general control. The International Car Rental Show just a couple of years ago, I believe his name was Scott Poynter, was talking about owning some Teslas and doing this big deal with Tesla and being on subscription and then come home from the show not only a month later there’s some tax incentive law changes and Elon Musk says, $5,000 less a car and somebody might own 500 of those cars that they just signed a PO for or the car hasn’t come in or the car is arriving or just arrived and you can buy the same car for $5,000 less and you exit by 500. Well, that’s a lot of money that just evaporated from nothing that you did.
[00:22:05] Sharky Laguana: That was really damaging to one of the majors. They had a lot of exposure to Tesla and when Elon knocked 30% off the price, it had the impact of knocking. I think it was like the number I remember is like 150 million off their balance sheet.
[00:22:24] Ian Kusinitz: And the best part about it is the next day their phone drang and people lined up to rent their cars. Money’s not real, George.
[00:22:33] Don Lefeve: Talk to listeners about this can be a challenging business at times. People who are not in this industry tend to think, “Oh, it’s just roses and puppies every day.”
[00:22:44] Ian Kusinitz: Lolli, pops and unicorns.
[00:22:46] Don Lefeve: That’s right. Lollipops and unicorns, right? What most people don’t realize is this a very tough business. It’s a high capital intensive business, but given competitiveness of the industry, it can be very, very, very hard at times. What would your advice be to somebody who has just started an operation maybe within the past few months or even within a year?
[00:23:13] Ian Kusinitz: One of the takeaways that a different car rental show I learned was have wide shoulders and a strong back, be able to take your licks, carry a lot of weight on your back. So there is promise, there is longevity for me a little different because being that we started in 1970, being that I was born in 81 and I remember as far back as seven years old or about, brings us to 1988. Being in New York, there’s been so many laws, regulations, rules that starting with vicarious liability, so you weren’t able to procure insurance or minimal insurance. The issuance of insurance ID cards used to be on a typewriter that had to be overnighted from the carrier. If there was a mistake by a digit, you were paying by day. The lists are endless of the hurdles and obstacles that we have overcome here. Hurdles and obstacles of the vicarious liability to being able to sell insurance or CDW at $9 a day fast, that was, I believe, 396Z, forward ending rolling into fortunately enough in the early 2000s, beautiful passage of the Graves Amendment.
[00:24:29] Ian Kusinitz: We were able to overcome those channels and obstacles all the way through different insurance, 2008 financial crisis, 2020 COVID crisis, ongoing New York State regulation. Today inside New York City limits, we have congestion pricing. So external factors from all areas we’ve been able to overcome and override ourselves through this.
[00:24:57] Sharky Laguana: It’s a daily battle, isn’t it?
[00:24:59] Ian Kusinitz: It’s a daily battle. They say, Sharky, that we shouldn’t expect war to come to our door, but if it was to arrive, we should be prepared. And I set my day preparing for war as this business has learned. I don’t know where the bullets are coming from and I don’t know how we got here.
[00:25:20] Sharky Laguana: And yet 56 years later, Empire’s still here.
[00:25:23] Ian Kusinitz: Actually, it might be June 1st, 1970. Today might be the 56 year anniversary. I can actually pull up a little humble beginnings. This picture’s dated February of 72, but nevertheless, we have some humble beginnings.
[00:25:41] Sharky Laguana: Oh yeah, that’s pretty
[00:25:42] Ian Kusinitz: Humble. All right. When I see this picture, there’s a meme on the internet that has a bunch of different companies Apple, Oracle, Ellison, so on and so forth of all Zuckerberg, of all these little shanties and Shaq’s. And I feel like that picture belongs in one of those little shanties or Shaq pictures.
[00:26:03] Sharky Laguana: So speaking of war and war stories, we have a segment. It’s called what’s your … Well, let’s decide now. Is it what’s your favorite holy shit moment or what is your biggest holy shit moment? Which one do we like better?
[00:26:16] Don Lefeve: We’ll let Ian decide.
[00:26:17] Ian Kusinitz: You’re sort of catching me off guard because again, so many different stories. I would have to think about what was the holy shit or the, oh my God, or did that really just happen? The story’s countless. Just when you think you’re in the clear, something pops up.
[00:26:36] Sharky Laguana: Well, we’re going to start counting. So let’s start with story number one. Give us something.
[00:26:41] Ian Kusinitz: Just recently we got a call from Newport Vermont or the police up in about the Newport Vermont region that a vehicle was impounded. I unfortunately have heard of this city before. I was quick to pull up my phone and pull up a map. It’s right on the Canadian border. Unfortunately, the vehicle was impounded for human trafficking. Just recently it rented on an internet reservation the night before the people showed up. The ID turned out to be false. The credit card was stolen. The vehicle was impounded. We’re out five grand. In summary, we were out five grand with no one to turn to and two weeks out of service and plus a eight-hour road trip north. I feel really bad for these people. Well, unfortunately they shouldn’t be entering. The laws are real. The lines they cross are illegal, but it was so promising because they had left the McDonald’s drive-through with freedom and they didn’t make it out of the parking lot.
[00:27:46] Ian Kusinitz: There was food that showed that they had driven to the drive-through. The fries were full, the sodas were full. The burgers were in the bag. They didn’t even
[00:27:54] Sharky Laguana: Finish their meal.
[00:27:56] Ian Kusinitz: They didn’t even get the meal. They shouldn’t have stopped or the McDonald’s maybe.
[00:28:01] Sharky Laguana: The one thing we could say about McDonald’s is it was probably still good, probably still edible.You’ve seen those videos, right? Where …
[00:28:08] Ian Kusinitz: The soda had a sip out of it. They had tasted the sweetness of Coca-Cola.
[00:28:16] Sharky Laguana: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found left behind in a van?
[00:28:19] Ian Kusinitz: Oh God. I mean, we rent to so many different people. I mean, odd things are of adult nature. Unfortunately, everything that you can imagine that goes on when the lights go out in the greatest city in the world, unfortunately, turns up in a rental car. Whether it’s contraband, firearms, bullets, handcuffs, novelties for adults, that’s a common occurrence. I’m
[00:28:49] Sharky Laguana: Trying to think who would leave behind their handcuffs.
[00:28:52] Ian Kusinitz: That was maybe a drug deal gone bad or kidnapping. We’ve had shootings. We unfortunately have execution. I was a little kid. I remember that. That was a drug deal gone bad. Sex toys are a common occurrence from time to time. When we were renting cars, personally on repossession or such, I’ve stumbled upon things I never want to see again. And that’s really just a New York minute here. Just welcome to New York.
[00:29:18] Don Lefeve: Any wildlife?
[00:29:20] Ian Kusinitz: At one point or another, we did have an office in the Bronx and my brother would say, I was standing outside one day a van did pull up and said, “Hey man, do you want to buy my cat?” And they opened up the door and they had a Bengali tiger in the back.
[00:29:37] Sharky Laguana: Tell me about it. Dali Tiger?
[00:29:41] Ian Kusinitz: We’re in the Bronx. Different time we had an alligator. Did they say it fell off the back of a truck? All different stories here.
[00:29:53] Sharky Laguana: You remember that though? I mean, when I was a kid, that was a thing, these speakers that fell off the back of a truck. Of
[00:29:59] Ian Kusinitz: Course. TVs. I mean, we’re in rent a truck. Things are always falling off the back here. People are always doing, say, some business that doesn’t require a real credit card or something. Had a memory recently something came up. We had a red Taurus that would use for ATM skimming. Razvan as Postal was the customer. The car was impounded for two years. That was a holy shit moment. Here, there you go. This is what came up. The tow bill was exorbitant. I personally, after so long of waiting, was actively involved in the recovery. I finally was able to get it ADA release or DA release. This was in Westchester or Yonker. It was a whole story. When I got to the tow yard, the bill was for storage that was, I don’t remember at the time, maybe it was $5,000 or something similar to that. I had maybe had called the place once or twice or maybe been a nuisance to the guy to try and push the paperwork along.
[00:31:02] Ian Kusinitz: When I got there in conversation of him writing the bill and me trying to negotiate, I might’ve used the words, “Sir, you’re robbing me without a gun.” And next thing I know the gentleman pulls the gun and says, “Give me your money, get out. “ And now you could say, “Not am I all robbing you without a gun, I’m actually robbing you with a gun.” So I kindly proceeded to hand over the money, take the keys and exit the building.
[00:31:34] Sharky Laguana: That’s the kind of juicy shit that we’re looking for. Yeah. You didn’t report the guy?
[00:31:41] Ian Kusinitz: I wasn’t going to report the guy with the gun. No. He was the tow guy. He clearly knew the police. He wasn’t going to get in trouble. It was going to be me said, he said. I said, “Let me just get my keys. Here’s the money. Have a great day, sir. Hopefully we never see each other again.” I am a local guy on Google. So my reviews do have weight. I didn’t even write him a negative review. I think I wrote a five star.
[00:32:06] Don Lefeve: He’ll point you in the right direction.
[00:32:09] Ian Kusinitz: He definitely pointed me right out the door.
[00:32:11] Sharky Laguana: That’s about as good a story as I’ve ever heard. So I think we’ll end it on that one. Ian, thanks for coming and spending some time with us. You’ve been an ACRA member for about as long as there’s been an ACRA, I think.
[00:32:23] Ian Kusinitz: As long as there’s been an ACRA. I hope the dues are up to date, Don. If not, I’m sorry.
[00:32:27] Don Lefeve: Well, I’ll hold you down.
[00:32:28] Ian Kusinitz: How many
[00:32:29] Sharky Laguana: Don. Well, since we got him here, can you look up his current invoice?
[00:32:33] Don Lefeve: He’s current, I think. Might have to get the name of this tow truck driver though.
[00:32:42] Ian Kusinitz: It’s funny because it just came up the other day. Something popped up and I don’t even know how we started getting there.
[00:32:47] Sharky Laguana: I imagine a few people in the industry might want to hire a guy like that.
[00:32:50] Carlos Bazan: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Ian Kusinitz: He could be a repossession agent.
[00:32:53] Carlos Bazan: The main vendor for the industry. I agree with you, Sharky.
[00:32:56] Sharky Laguana: All right, man. Well, listen, thanks for spending some time with us.
[00:32:59] Ian Kusinitz: Anytime.
[00:33:01] Carlos Bazan: Thank you for listening to The Mobility Perspective. For more information on the present and future of mobility, follow us on your favorite podcast listening platform. We’ll see you next time.