BY SUSAN ROSE
Schwartz and Sons (L to R): Client Relations Manager Gregory, President & CEO Doug, and COO & Vice President Andrew in one of the their party buses If the chauffeured transportation industry had a mayor, it would probably be Douglas “Doug” Schwartz. Diplomatic, community focused, affable, curious, and collaborative, Schwartz is always ready to roll up his sleeves—whether it’s behind the scenes at his company, Executive Limousine, or advocating for the industry locally and nationally. He remains a steadfast presence at industry events, visible on social media, and highly engaged with peers across the country. And you can be sure that if he says he’ll do it, you can consider it done. Three decades after founding Executive Limousine, Schwartz still approaches the chauffeured transportation business with the mindset of a neighborhood shop owner. The son of a television repairman—at a time when families gathered in the living room around a single set rather than disappearing behind personal screens—Schwartz grew up with the belief that customer trust and satisfaction reigned above all else.
“The television repairman was god because you only had one TV and that was your whole life. I would go with him on Saturdays and that’s where I learned that what we were doing for people was valuable,” he says.
In an industry increasingly shaped by automation and scale, Schwartz built his Long Island company like his father before him: one relationship at a time, one client at a time, and usually with a healthy dose of personality along the way. Long Island may be in the shadow of Manhattan, but it’s where reputation and community still carry weight. If Manhattan businesses are built on speed, Long Island businesses are built on trust.
That mentality has made Schwartz not only a recognizable figure on Long Island, but throughout the wider chauffeured transportation industry as well. Active with both the National Limousine Association and the Long Island Limousine Association, Schwartz serves on the board of both associations (as well as the CD/NLA Show Education Committee) and has acquired a reputation as an operator always willing to mentor others entering the business—but always ready to learn himself. It’s not lip service.
L to R: Fleet Manager & Mechanic Don Flug, Dispatcher Phil Beck, Andrew, Doug, Dispatcher Donna Domlin, and Gregory Schwartz never set out to be the biggest operation, something he’ll tell you directly. His goal was always to build the most profitable, one that provided a good life for his beloved late wife, Karen, and his now-grown children, Natalie, Andrew, and Gregory.
Before transitioning to transportation entirely, Schwartz spent more than two decades in the restaurant business, where he was intimately familiar with the realities of customer service, cash flow, and managing expectations. Restaurants taught him that service starts long before the customer walks through the door—or steps into the vehicle.
Today, Executive Limousine has become deeply embedded within the Long Island community, operating about 30 vehicles with a staff of more than 60 chauffeurs and seven office employees. The fleet ranges from shuttles and limo-style buses to a trio of white Lincoln MKT stretches—something of a unicorn in today’s Sprinter- and SUV-dominated wedding market.
Of course, when he first purchased that six-passenger stretch in 1996, he envisioned a very different clientele in the back of his limousine. Schwartz initially chased high-end VIP and corporate accounts, convinced they would become the company’s bread and butter. Eventually, he realized the numbers—and the relationships—weren’t always there.
At the Executive Limousine office in West Babylon, N.Y. “I thought I would be driving celebrities and rock stars,” he says. After pursuing the fiercely competitive corporate market for years, he’s come to embrace a new trajectory. Ironically, Schwartz once believed retail business was secondary. Now, weddings, proms, nights out, and highly customized retail bookings have become one of the company’s greatest strengths. In fact, he credits a chiropractic office in New York City with helping keep the fleet moving during the industry shutdown by providing steady transportation work for patients traveling to appointments. He still has corporate clients, but it’s no longer the primary driver.
That wedding business expanded significantly after Schwartz acquired Legends Limousine, owned by friend and friendly competitor Bobby Xavier, opening the door to an even larger retail presence. Executive Limousine is now among the largest wedding transportation providers on Long Island, if not the largest.
“Three decades after founding Executive Limousine, Schwartz still approaches the chauffeured transportation business with the mindset of a neighborhood shop owner.”Once an oversaturated transportation market on Long Island, the past five to 10 years have accelerated a shakeup. Owners have retired, businesses have closed, and Schwartz has worked hard to restore that collaborative spirit with his closest competitors. After all, doing more with less and running lean has been something of a company motto.
“It used to be, ‘just book it and we’ll farm out,’ but there are fewer operators to work with,” he says. “We’re trying to develop close-knit relationships again with the attitude of ‘book everything.’ It’s a ‘let’s try to keep each other’s fleets moving so we can create as much revenue as we can for both of us’ mentality.”
Executive is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, but the story of the company is really about staying grounded while the industry changed around it—and preparing the next generation to take that foundation somewhere new.
The company Schwartz has built feels less like a corporate operation and more like an extended family business—because in many ways, it is.
Dispatcher Donna Domlin has known Schwartz since they were seven years old. The two reconnected years later on Facebook, and Schwartz offered her a position with the company. She’s now been part of the operation for a decade. Dispatcher Phil Beck is a bit newer to the organization—he joined four years ago—but he too has become a part of the family.
Even with a company of its size, Schwartz remains heavily involved in the day-to-day operation. A self-described “grease monkey,” he still oftentimes works alongside Fleet Manager and Mechanic Don Flug in the garage, which even includes a lift. You’ll see him frequently in a suit outside the office, but most days he’s under the hood getting his hands dirty.
“My father was very dependable at teaching me to fix things, whatever it was—TV, radio, changing the oil in the car, doing brake jobs in the driveway. If it was mechanical, we were working on it. That’s where my love of cars started.”
But perhaps the biggest evolution happening at Executive Limousine is not in the garage—it’s in the front office. Schwartz’s sons, Andrew and Gregory, are now helping shape the company’s future.
Both attended the University at Buffalo before joining the family business, a move Schwartz says happened organically. Andrew, now COO and vice president, gravitates toward logistics, systems, and operational strategy. Gregory, meanwhile, thrives on client interaction and highly customized bookings—the details and relationship management that “you can’t hand off.”
Together, they represent a blend of old-school service philosophy and modern operational thinking—a balance that may ultimately define Executive’s next chapter.
Schwartz openly acknowledges that the industry his sons inherit will look dramatically different from the one he entered in the mid-1990s. Customer expectations have changed. Technology has changed. Competition has changed. The next generation will face challenges that simply did not exist when Schwartz was running airport trips in a single stretch limousine.
But he also believes some things do not change. Relationships and reliability are still important. And showing up when you say you will still matters, because your word is your bond. As the broader hospitality industry embraces new technology while trying to preserve hands-on service, Schwartz knows that nothing matches a good old-fashioned client relationship.
These days, Schwartz has started splitting some of his time between New York and Florida, slowly considering what the next stage of life may look like. But fully stepping away still seems unlikely, at least for now.
After all, Executive Limousine was never just a business. It was something built carefully over decades, sustained through relationships, and now being carried forward by the next generation—with a few new ideas, a modern perspective, and probably a slightly different definition of what “keeping it lean” means. If the chauffeured transportation industry has a mayor, Schwartz has spent 30 years governing by a simple rule: show up, keep your word, and take care of your neighbors. And that may be his secret. [CD0526]
