Licensing, permitting and insurance

Every permit below is issued per vehicle rather than per company, which is the part people find surprising. A permit does not cover a fleet. It covers the vehicle named on it, and it has to be displayed or carried in that vehicle.

Limousine Permit

City of Milwaukee, Office of the City Clerk. Issued per vehicle rather than per company. It names the vehicle it belongs to, including the VIN, the plate, where the vehicle is stored and the rates of fare on file with the city, and it has to be displayed or carried in that vehicle.

Public Passenger Vehicle inspection emblem

City of Milwaukee. Issued after the city inspects the vehicle, displayed on the windshield, and carrying the year it passed.

Ground Transportation Service Permit

Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. Required of limousines before providing any commercial ground transportation at the airport. Each vehicle carries an RFID tag and every pick-up is ticketed through the airport's dispatch system.

Ground transportation registration emblem

City of Chicago, Department of Finance. Issued per vehicle under the Municipal Code of Chicago. This is the registration that allows pick-up at O'Hare, Midway and McCormick Place rather than drop-off only.

The local contractors we work with hold the same City of Milwaukee permit.

Dropping someone at a terminal and picking someone up from one are not the same act to an airport, and they are not covered by the same paperwork. Both fields we work most treat pick-up as the controlled side.

Milwaukee Mitchell. A city limousine permit is not enough on its own. Mitchell requires a Ground Transportation Service Permit from airport management before a commercial vehicle provides any ground transportation there. Ours carry one, each carries an RFID tag, and every pick-up is ticketed through the airport's dispatch system.

O’Hare, Midway and McCormick Place. Each of our vehicles is separately registered with the City of Chicago Department of Finance. That registration is what allows us to pick you up rather than only drop you off, in the city's own words:

Only City of Chicago authorized public passenger vehicles and transportation network providers may pick up passengers at O'Hare International Airport, Midway International Airport, and McCormick Place Convention Center.

City of Chicago Department of Finance, ground transportation registration emblem

We pay the Chicago ground transportation tax and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority airport departure tax on every pick-up at O’Hare and Midway.

Wisconsin does not issue a statewide limousine permit. For-hire vehicles are permitted by the municipality, which is why ours are permitted by the City of Milwaukee rather than by the state.

The permit is issued by the City of Milwaukee, under a chapter the city adopted under state law, and it authorizes for-hire contracted transportation anywhere in Wisconsin. No municipality issues one that replaces it and the state issues none at all. That is the whole answer to a question we are asked often: a run up to Kohler, out to Lake Geneva or two hours north to Green Bay needs nothing further.

One consequence of holding the permit reaches the whole state, and it is the reason the permit was obtained in the first place. Wisconsin's open container law does not apply to passengers in a limousine where the chauffeur is properly licensed and the vehicle complies with a local regulation adopted under that same statute. The Milwaukee permit is that compliance. A drink in the back is lawful, and it is as lawful in Superior as it is in Milwaukee.

The state does collect a limousine fee, five percent of the sales price of limousine service, filed with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. We register for it and we file it. It is a fee on the work rather than a permit to do the work, and the two are confused often enough to be worth separating.

Wisconsin defines a limousine for that fee by capacity and seating rather than by length: a passenger automobile carrying 10 or fewer people excluding the driver, with five or more seats behind the driver, operated for hire. An Escalade ESV meets that definition, which is part of why the city still issues the permit as a limo permit.

Illinois works differently, and the comparison is the clearest way to explain ours. A livery vehicle in Chicago is licensed by the city's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, so the operating license is municipal there too. What Illinois adds is a plate. The Secretary of State issues livery plates to go with that city license, so a livery vehicle is identifiable as one on the road. Wisconsin issues no equivalent, which is why our permit is a document carried in the vehicle rather than something you can read off the back of it.

Our Illinois partner operators hold the livery licenses and the plates their side of the state line requires.

Every vehicle that carries our clients meets or exceeds the commercial insurance required of it, above the minimum Wisconsin requires of livery operators.

We will provide a certificate of insurance naming your company as certificate holder. Ask, and our agent sends it.

We publish no policy figures on this page, deliberately. A number on a web page tells you nothing about the vehicle that arrives for your trip. A current certificate issued for your account does.

Larger groups, and Illinois work that starts down there rather than up here, are covered by vetted partner operators. Partner operators in Illinois are licensed under their own state's requirements. We do not hand a client to an operator we have not met.

These are worth listing and worth keeping separate. A permit is issued by a government after an inspection and can be taken away. A membership is applied for and paid for. Both mean something. They do not mean the same thing.

NLA Member

National Limousine Association

BBB A+ Rated

Accredited, A+ with the Better Business Bureau This is the one here that rests on an outside review rather than on a membership fee.

Visit Milwaukee Partner

Tourism partner

Each of these links to the body behind it, so anything on this page can be checked at its source rather than taken on ours.