From Fortune 500 to Purdue's Front Door: How Jim Branham Built Reindeer Shuttle Into a Decade-Long Boilermaker Institution

Quick answer

Reindeer Shuttle is a charter bus and airport shuttle company connecting Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, with Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Indianapolis. Jim Branham and his family acquired the business in August 2016 from the three Purdue international graduate students who founded it. Ten years later, Reindeer Shuttle has grown from two 11-passenger vans to a fleet of sixteen vehicles, moves hundreds of Purdue students during peak travel weekends, and runs its bookings and check-in process through Zaui. This customer story looks at how Jim built the business, why his connection to Purdue made the opportunity unique, how the company navigated COVID and changing market conditions, and what other transportation operators can learn from his approach.

If you run a shuttle service, a charter operation, or any transportation business tied to a specific community, you already know the tension at the center of this industry. You need to grow enough to stay financially healthy, but you cannot lose the relationship with the people who ride with you every day.

Jim Branham, owner of Reindeer Shuttle, has spent the last decade proving that both are possible at once. His story is a strong example of what can happen when an operator combines genuine commitment to a community with the willingness to adapt as the business grows.

Jim sat down with Niall McKeever, Zaui's Head of Customer and Business Development, for an episode of the Zaui Dispatch podcast to talk through how he went from a 30-year career at Merck to running a transportation business connected to his alma mater.

What follows is the story of Reindeer Shuttle, told largely in Jim's own words, along with lessons that other transportation operators can apply to their own businesses.

From a Fortune 500 Career to First-Time Business Owner

Jim Branham spent 30 years as an executive business manager at Merck. It was, by his own description, a comfortable and secure career.

"I was very comfortable working for a Fortune 500 company," Jim says. "It took care of all my needs. I didn't have to worry about anything, my insurance and all those things were taken care of by my big brother, my company. And so I didn't have any of the experience of what it's like to own a business."

He retired, moved to Texas, and settled into life with his wife. Owning a small business was, in his words, "furthest from my mind."

At the same time, his son Paul was working toward a PhD at Purdue University. Paul crossed paths with the founders of Reindeer Shuttle, three international students at Purdue who had started the company to address a practical problem: affordable airport transportation for students traveling between Purdue and Chicago O'Hare.

The founders needed to sell the business and asked around campus whether anyone might be interested. Paul knew exactly who to call.

"He calls me up," Jim remembers, "and my son, our son, Paul, calls and says, Dad, I think we should buy Reindeer Shuttle. Well, we all know who 'we' is."

Three weeks after that phone call, Jim found himself a small business owner for the first time in his life.

"I knew absolutely nothing about transportation," he says. "It wasn't something that I was personally interested in. It was just an opportunity that fell in my lap."

Why Purdue Was the Only Business Jim Would Have Bought

Ask Jim why he came out of retirement to run a charter bus company and the answer has little to do with transportation economics.

"Your question is my favorite question," he told Niall. "Why on earth would you come out of retirement and do this? And the answer is very much displayed on my wall behind me, which is the Purdue flag."

Purdue had been part of Jim's life for years. He was a big sports fan, attended basketball and football games, and remained deeply connected to the university.

"For me, Purdue is Mecca. It is the ultimate place on earth that I want to be."

That connection made Reindeer Shuttle different from any other business opportunity he might have considered.

When an opportunity to own a business that brought him back to his alma mater presented itself, the decision became much easier.

"I would not have done this anywhere else on earth," Jim says. "You could not have paid me any amount of money to take on this challenge in any other capacity, in any other environment other than at Purdue."

That loyalty is not just sentimental. It is reflected in how Reindeer Shuttle operates and grows.

Jim was a basketball manager as a Purdue undergraduate, giving him connections within the athletic department. He is also a pharmacy graduate and serves on the alumni board for the College of Pharmacy.

Those connections have created business opportunities for Reindeer Shuttle. The company has provided transportation for Purdue athletics, the John Purdue Club, and College of Pharmacy students traveling between Purdue's West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses.

Reindeer's charter coordinator is also a Purdue graduate, adding another connection to the community the company serves.

Jim describes the philosophy simply: Reindeer was founded by Boilermakers, for Boilermakers.

If you operate in a niche or a specific geographic community, there is an important lesson here. Reindeer Shuttle's growth has been strongly supported by Jim's connections within the Purdue community and the relationships he has built over the years.

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When the Founder Steps Back: Running Reindeer Shuttle Through COVID and Beyond

Reindeer Shuttle did not start as a one-person operation.

Paul, Jim's son, was the company's first president and was the driving force behind getting the acquisition off the ground. Then COVID disrupted travel and campus life, and Paul stepped away from the business.

Jim stepped into the president role and has continued to lead the operation.

That does not mean Jim runs the business entirely alone. He credits Brandy, his vice president, with handling the bulk of day-to-day operations, while an administrative assistant named Beth took over many tasks Jim had previously handled himself, including vehicle licensing and bill payment.

"I used to take care of all the licensing of the vehicles, pay all the bills, all the mundane day-to-day things that had to be done," Jim says. "I was doing them all. And I look back now and wonder how I did that."

Reindeer's charter coordinator, also a Purdue graduate, rounds out the small team helping keep a 16-vehicle operation running for thousands of students each academic year.

What a Typical Day Actually Looks Like Running a Shuttle Business

Ask Jim to describe a typical day and he will tell you there isn't one.

"There really isn't a typical day," he says. "There are typical things that we do."

Payroll runs weekly, in coordination with Brandy. Beyond that, Jim's time is filled with phone calls, emails, and text messages, along with route planning for peak travel periods such as Thanksgiving and December break.

There are also the operational details that come with running a transportation company: adding routes during busy periods, coordinating with his team, and responding to issues as they arise.

That lack of a fixed routine is a familiar reality for transportation operators. Niall, who previously ran his own transportation business, described the demands of the job as "the relentless reliability of delivering public service."

A transportation company can make a promise as simple as "we will get you there on time," but delivering on that promise requires constant attention behind the scenes.

Ten Years of Growth: From Two Vans to Sixteen Vehicles

When Jim and his family took over Reindeer Shuttle on August 24, 2016, the company operated three routes to Chicago with two 11-passenger vans.

Indianapolis was added a year later.

From there, the fleet continued to grow. Today, Reindeer Shuttle has sixteen vehicles, allowing the company to support scheduled airport shuttle service as well as larger charter groups.

The first weekend Jim operated the business as its owner happened around Labor Day. Reindeer moved roughly 85 passengers that weekend, and the volume felt overwhelming at the time.

"We thought, how are we ever going to be able to sustain this?" Jim says. "And now that's become pretty much a routine day."

Today, Reindeer Shuttle moves hundreds of students on peak departure and return days several times each academic year.

One operational lesson Jim has learned along the way is that capacity planning for a college shuttle service is not just about seats.

"You cannot in a fifty-six-passenger bus put fifty-six people in there because you will run out of luggage space," he explains. "So luggage space becomes the determination of how many people you can put on the bus."

Students traveling home for a semester break, he points out, tend to bring "everything but the kitchen sink."

For transportation operators serving students, families, or event travelers with significant amounts of baggage, that is an important planning consideration. Vehicle capacity is not simply a matter of passenger seats. Luggage space can become the limiting factor.

Leading With Transparency: How Reindeer Shuttle Handled Its First Price Increase in a Decade

For nearly ten years, Reindeer Shuttle kept its pricing essentially flat, with only small increases along the way.

That was a deliberate choice.

Jim and Brandy were reluctant to raise prices for two reasons. They compete directly with another shuttle operator on cost, and many of their riders are Purdue students without a lot of expendable cash.

Eventually, the economics became unsustainable.

"We just got to the point where we realized it wasn't sustainable anymore," Jim says. "We could not continue at the price point we were at. It was not profitable."

Rather than adjust pricing quietly, Jim and Brandy chose transparency.

They gave riders roughly a month of advance notice before the change took effect and released a video explaining the reasoning behind the increase while thanking customers for their loyalty.

"We decided that the important thing to do was, number one, be transparent," Jim says. "Make sure that everyone knew why we were doing it and also the timing of it."

Niall, who watched the video before the interview, called it one of the more authentic pieces of customer communication he had seen from an operator.

"Most people tend to hide the fact that we're going to raise prices," he told Jim, "but you explain every aspect of it."

The decision to put Jim's own face and voice behind the price change was intentional. Brandy felt strongly that the message needed to come directly from the owner, and Jim agreed.

For operators facing a similar pricing decision, particularly those serving a loyal or price-sensitive community, Reindeer Shuttle's approach offers a useful model: give customers advance notice, explain the reasoning in plain language, and communicate the change through a real person rather than a generic notice.

From Clipboards to Cloud Booking: Reindeer Shuttle's Technology Shift

Reindeer Shuttle's booking process in its earliest days will sound familiar to almost any transportation operator.

Jim remembers standing in Chicago with a printed passenger list that could become outdated almost immediately because new bookings continued to come in.

"I would have to physically write down the additional names that are on there," he says. "And so as people were coming up, I was checking them in, literally doing check marks, checking off their names."

Looking back, Jim says, "how did I even think that was going to work?"

Today, that process has been replaced by Zaui.

Students book their reservations through Zaui, and Jim, who still works check-in himself during busy weekends, manages the process from an iPhone or iPad instead of a paper list and clipboard.

"Now everything is done through Zaui, of course, and they book their reservations through Zaui," he says. "So now when they come up, I either have my iPhone or my iPad, and I just click on it electronically and check them in electronically. It's so much better and it's so much easier to do."

Niall, who ran his own transportation business before joining Zaui, described experiencing the same transition.

"We had a clipboard, and we had these carbon-copy tickets," he said. "It was crazy, you know, but it was really interesting that when we moved across into a digital environment, it just transformed the business."

For transportation operators, the lesson is straightforward. Manual booking and check-in processes can work when a business is small, but they become increasingly difficult to manage as passenger volume and fleet size grow.

Moving reservations and passenger check-in into a digital system can reduce manual work and give operators more time to focus on customers, operations, and revenue-generating opportunities.

Why Charters Are the Next Growth Engine for Reindeer Shuttle

Looking ahead, Jim and Brandy have settled on a clear growth target: charters.

Scheduled airport shuttle service will remain an important part of Reindeer Shuttle's business, but charters offer stronger profit margins, making them an important opportunity for future growth.

The company already has a charter coordinator focused on developing that side of the business.

"Our big focus is going to be charters," Jim says. "We're able to charge more for a charter, and we're able to have a better profit margin on those. Our goal is to get to the point where charters are about 25 percent of our business. That is our long-term goal."

Niall, drawing on his own operating background, pointed out that this type of revenue diversification can make a transportation business more viable.

His former company ran roughly 80% scheduled service and 20% charter and private hire, with the charter side contributing to overall profitability.

"You have to branch out and increase your revenue streams," Niall said, "to make the business more viable, more profitable, to make it more successful."

For Reindeer Shuttle, the goal is to continue building on the scheduled service that established its customer base while developing charters as another source of growth.

The Story Behind the Name: Reindeer Shuttle's Fleet Personality

The name Reindeer Shuttle came from the company's original student founders, who wanted a name that students could easily remember.

It stuck, and eventually became the foundation for a naming theme across the fleet.

Santa's sleigh famously has nine reindeer. Reindeer Shuttle now has sixteen vehicles.

When the company added its tenth vehicle, Jim's son Paul suggested naming it ‘All Of’- a play on "all of the other reindeer," the lyric from the classic song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.""

From there, the company turned to the classic film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for additional names, including Bumble, Hermie, and Yukon.

It is a small piece of branding, but it reflects something real about the company's personality. Each vehicle becomes part of the Reindeer Shuttle identity, reinforcing the playful connection to the brand and the Purdue community it serves.

The Loyalty Loop: How "Take Reindeer" Became a Decade of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Purdue students typically spend about four years on campus. Reindeer Shuttle has now been operating for ten years, long enough for the company to see multiple generations of students pass through the university.

That has created a powerful form of word-of-mouth.

"We've had situations where a brother or a sister said, yeah, my sibling took Reindeer, and so when I came here I asked, how should I get to the airport, and they all said, take Reindeer," Jim says. "That just perpetuates itself."

Niall connected that dynamic to a broader point about how service businesses build loyalty over time.

"You buy a story," he told Jim. "You don't buy a product. You buy into a relationship. That involves people and characters."

For operators trying to build loyalty within a defined community, whether that community is a university, a region, or a specific industry, Reindeer Shuttle's experience offers an important lesson. The branding matters, but it works because the underlying service has been reliable and consistent for long enough that customers have something positive to pass on to the next person.

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The Human Side: Why Jim Still Checks Students In Himself

For all the operational and financial challenges behind Reindeer Shuttle's growth, Jim keeps returning to one part of the job as the most rewarding: being physically present at check-in during peak travel weekends.

He helps students with their luggage, talks with them about where they are going, and gets to hear the stories behind their journeys.

"I get to interact with them," Jim says. "I get to have that one-on-one. I'm part of the team that checks them in and helps them with their luggage. I honestly find that to be the most enjoyable part of the job."

He recalls one student trying to get home in time for Mother's Day who was nearly in tears because he was going to be able to make it home to see his mom.

Those moments, Jim says, are what make the daily work worthwhile.

"They're heartwarming, and they make you feel like you're doing something that really matters."

Niall, who spent years working directly at airports as a driver in his own business, said the same thing holds true across the transportation industry.

"If you're working on any sort of airport business at all, all you hear is real-life stories," he said. "People are traveling for so many reasons."

Managing a Business From Two Hours Away

One detail that surprises Reindeer Shuttle's customers is that Jim runs the company from Texas rather than Indiana.

It is, by his account, the question he gets asked most often by riders.

"The biggest question I get is, why are you in Texas?" Jim says. "They think, well, are you going to stay there? And I'm like, well, that is my home."

Fortunately, he says, the distance is manageable.

"There are airplanes that fly every day. It's a two-hour flight to get back to Indianapolis from Dallas. Not a problem."

Jim does not see the physical distance as an obstacle to owning or managing the business.

For operators concerned that remote ownership makes transportation operations impossible, Reindeer Shuttle offers a different example: a strong local team, reliable technology for bookings and check-in, and an owner who is still willing to physically show up during the moments that matter most.

What's Next for Reindeer Shuttle

Reindeer Shuttle marks its tenth anniversary on August 24, coinciding with the return of students to Purdue and one of the company's busiest periods of the year.

Jim's plans for the celebration are modest. He expects it may be something as simple as a cake at the airport check-in table, alongside the usual work of getting students and their luggage where they need to go.

Looking further out, Jim is focused on two priorities: growing the charter side of the business toward the 25% target and becoming more visible to customers through social media.

Brandy encouraged Jim to record the price-increase video himself rather than issuing it under the company name, believing customers needed to hear directly from the owner.

Jim wants to build on that approach.

"I think probably I'll try to get out there a little bit more," he says, "in terms of getting the face of the owner out there, so they can recognize that there is someone here who is very dedicated to the Purdue community and very interested in caring for the Purdue community, and is there for them."

For a company built around a strong community connection, that may be one of the most natural next steps: making the person behind the business as recognizable as the brand itself.

Lessons for Other Transportation and Shuttle Operators

If you are building or running a charter, shuttle, or transportation business of your own, a few things stand out from Reindeer Shuttle's first decade that are worth applying directly to your operation.

Community relationships compound over time. Jim's connections at Purdue have generated business opportunities with the athletic department, the College of Pharmacy, and the university's donor organization. If you serve a defined community, invest in the relationships inside it. Those relationships can become a meaningful source of business.

Transparency during difficult decisions builds trust. Reindeer Shuttle kept its pricing relatively stable for nearly a decade, but eventually needed to make a change. When the company raised prices, giving customers advance notice and explaining the reasoning directly helped maintain the relationship.

Manual booking and check-in processes do not scale. Reindeer Shuttle grew from two vans to sixteen vehicles while moving from paper-based passenger lists and manual check-in to online booking and digital check-in through Zaui. The technology change made it easier to manage a growing operation.

Revenue diversification can strengthen the business. Scheduled service established Reindeer Shuttle's customer base, while charters offer stronger margins and a new avenue for growth. The company's long-term goal is for charters to represent approximately 25% of the business.

Physical presence still matters. Jim manages the business from Texas, but he continues to show up at peak travel periods and interact directly with students. Technology can make operations easier, but relationships are still built person to person.

Frequently Asked Questions About Reindeer Shuttle

Who owns Reindeer Shuttle?
Jim Branham owns and operates Reindeer Shuttle. He and his family acquired the company in August 2016 from its original founders, three international students at Purdue University. Jim took over as president after his son Paul, the company's first president, stepped away during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Where does Reindeer Shuttle operate?
Reindeer Shuttle provides charter bus and airport shuttle service connecting Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, with Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Indianapolis, along with charter transportation for university groups and events.

How many vehicles does Reindeer Shuttle have?
Reindeer Shuttle started with two 11-passenger vans in 2016 and has grown to a fleet of sixteen vehicles as of its tenth anniversary in 2026.

How did Reindeer Shuttle get its name?
The company's original student founders chose the name Reindeer Shuttle because they wanted something students could easily remember. The company later extended the theme by naming individual vehicles after reindeer references, including All Of, a play on the "all of the other reindeer" lyric from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and Bumble, Hermie, and Yukon from the same song."

What booking technology does Reindeer Shuttle use?
Reindeer Shuttle runs its online reservations and passenger check-in through Zaui, having moved away from manual, paper-based check-in processes as the fleet and passenger volume grew.

What percentage of Reindeer Shuttle's business comes from charters?
Charters currently make up a smaller share of Reindeer Shuttle's business than scheduled airport shuttle service, but the company has set a long-term goal of growing charters to approximately 25% of its business because of their stronger profit margins.

Reindeer Shuttle has used Zaui to power its online booking and passenger check-in operations throughout its growth from two vehicles to a fleet of sixteen. This customer story is based on a conversation between Jim Branham and Niall McKeever, Zaui's Head of Customer and Business Development, recorded for the Zaui Dispatch podcast.

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