{"id":3810,"date":"2012-07-26T16:43:44","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T16:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/sites\/gsm_sum12\/?p=28"},"modified":"2014-06-02T14:59:05","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T18:59:05","slug":"taking-the-wheel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2012\/07\/26\/taking-the-wheel\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking the Wheel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Student Launches Unique Bus Service<\/h3>\n

With the help of his father in 2009, Georgia Southern University student Jon Lockin purchased a \"gooseSpread\"<\/a>28-seat, military-surplus bus and started a business called \u201cBlue Goose\u201d in Statesboro, taking groups to and from bars and parties.<\/p>\n

The Lockins have joined a growing group of civilians successfully launching small businesses after scooping up surplus items ranging from buses to jet engines from govliquidation.com<\/i>, an online auction site.<\/p>\n

Now, entering the 2012-13 academic year, this entrepreneurial student has a fleet of five buses, employs a small security staff and anywhere up to four professional drivers during the busiest parts of the year, and is about to implement a payment feature that uses key tags and pulls up the user\u2019s Facebook profile photo to help combat identity fraud.<\/p>\n

Not bad for a college student who has changed his major three times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what it is,\u201d laughed Lockin. \u201cI can\u2019t seem to decide what to stick with because it all seems interesting to me. I\u2019ve never taken a class with a good professor that I didn\u2019t enjoy. There\u2019s something about the classroom setting, even if I don\u2019t particularly enjoy the subject matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lockin\u2019s business caters primarily to customers who are not planning on doing any driving on \"goose1\"<\/a>Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and accepts reservations for groups of 10 or more for a flat rate. This fall, Blue Goose will plan to take customers as far as Burkhalter Plantation, 3.8 miles from the bars. They\u2019re more than willing to take customers greater distances if the need arises, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go farther if somebody needs us,\u201d said Lockin. \u201cIt\u2019s no skin off our back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue Goose begins picking up customers at 9 p.m. on business days and starts taking them home at 12:30 a.m., so late nights are common practice for Lockin and his staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important for me to try not to have a Friday class,\u201d Lockin said. \u201cMy weekend schedule is definitely off-kilter doing this as many years as I\u2019ve been doing it. I\u2019m the kind of business owner who likes to be out there. I have employees, but I like to be hands-on. I think that\u2019s vital for businesses of our nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of Statesboro\u2019s size and limited night-out destinations, Blue Goose is most profitable when the business follows the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the kind of business where you have to get out,\u201d he said. \u201cWhile there are some trends, for the most part if you\u2019re not out there seeing when people are going out, where they\u2019re going and when they\u2019re ready to go home, you can get behind the curve in a hurry. You always have to keep an ear to the market. It\u2019s a small market, but if you get in and get out at the right time, with the right piece of equipment, you can have a lot of success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Success for Lockin is all about keeping the roads safe late at night. Even with the cost of maintenance, insurance and paying professionally-certified drivers, along with the rest of the staff, there\u2019s still money to be made.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not at the top of Lockin\u2019 priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t necessarily measure my success in dollars and cents, I measure it in the number of lives we\u2019re hopefully having a positive effect on,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least, I hope we\u2019re out there making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Student Launches Unique Bus Service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-3810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-summer-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}