Should You Hire a Chauffeur?
5 min
Jay Leno once spoke of flipping through the owner’s manual of a vintage luxury car he owns, and coming upon a somewhat dated reference. It said to have “your man” perform regular maintenance. The man was the chauffeur, and it was assumed this uniformed functionary was on hand both to drive the car and keep it in top condition.
These duties make sense, given the history. The word “chauffeur” is of French origins, dating to 1896 or so, and is derived from the term for the “stoker,” who shovelled the fuel and took the helm of early steamships and trains. The best cars early on came from France, and hence the word was imported along with the cars.
Obviously, cars in the early part of the 20th century required considerable maintenance, and it was the chauffeur who hopped out to fix the frequent punctures or crank the engine. This fellow worked for a single boss and was an essential part of the domestic staff. The drivers even had their own magazine in Britain, The Chauffeur, which was published from 1907 to 1914.
In the hit BBC series Downton Abbey , the fiery Socialist chauffeur, Tom Branson (played by Allen Leach) marries Lady Sybil Crawley, joins the family circle, and becomes the esteemed estate manager. This would have shattered social conventions at the time, and is somewhat unlikely. The best that most chauffeurs could expect was to be gifted the car at retirement.
Classic chauffeur-driven limousines of the 1920s and 1930s, sometimes called “sedanca de ville” (town car), had enclosed compartments with cloth seats for the passengers and an open leather-clad driver’s area, possibly a vestige of the carriage trade, when the driver sat up top to control the horses.
The chauffeur had a renaissance during the go-go greed-is-good 1980s, when Wall Street’s instant millionaires were making deals in the back of limousines. But since that time, the limos from companies like Cadillac and Lincoln have gone out of production. According to Gregg Merksamer, editor of website Professional Car Society, “The recent action has moved to upfitting minibuses like the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and the Ford Transit with more luxurious interiors. One reason is that bus-based limos come with more headroom and ‘walk-around space’ than an SUV-based stretch.”
Gregg D. Merksamer, Professional Car Society
Gregg D. Merksamer, Professional Car Society
Hiring a Driver
Many executives are now driving themselves, but hiring a driver is still an attractive option. The role of chauffeur is evolving. The basic categories for hired drivers are:
Personal drivers, who typically drive regular cars and help out as needed. Indeed.com says a common salary for a personal driver is $15.44 per hour, though this ranges up to $31.70. The jobs are competitive, the site says—with 25 applicants for every job.
Executive drivers, whose passengers are business executives and CEOs, are often authorised to bring their vehicles into restricted areas. This is a higher-paid category, with salaries up to $93,000 a year, or $45 an hour.
Chauffeurs (with female professionals known formally as a “chauffeuse”). For VIP clients these full-time drivers pilot long-wheelbase luxury vehicles, sometimes with divider windows and communications systems. Chauffeurs might make $50,000 a year in relatively affluent areas.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics combines salaries for shuttle drivers and chauffeurs, giving a median annual salary in 2023 of $35,240. In the larger category that includes taxi drivers, there are 55,400 job openings annually in the U.S. The average chauffeur is male (84%) and white (52%), though 23.8% are Hispanic and 8.7% African-American. Female chauffeurs make approximately $5,000 less annually, according to Zippia.com.
So, does hiring a full-time chauffeur make sense? It does if you lead a busy work life, stress over getting the kids to school on time, worry about possible accidents, or want to make more productive use of your travel time.
To make such a hire, start by deciding whether you want to use an agency or recruit someone yourself from online sites. Then list all the tasks you will want the chauffeur to undertake. That will help determine your driver’s hours, leading possibly to the conclusion that part-time help will be sufficient. Even if you’re using an agency, you’ll want to check the potential hire’s references—remember, they’re likely to be driving children.
Assuming the references check out, the next step is an interview to get to know the candidate. The basics are a full resume, a valid driver’s license, appropriate insurance coverage, and sometimes mechanical skills and a knowledge of defensive-driving tactics.
Personality and temperament are important factors, not just paper credentials. And a probationary period to evaluate the chauffeur where the rubber meets the road is an excellent idea. Salary should be determined based on years of experience.
Which Car?
Excellent candidates for chauffeured cars, ensuring the most passenger comfort, include:
2024 Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 SUV ($174,350). The chauffeur of 40 years ago would have been amazed at the choice of an SUV for chauffeur duty, but these cars maximise passenger access and space.
2024 Audi A8L (starting at $90,900). Check the boxes on this roomy company flagship for Comfort Plus (dual-pane acoustic glass, heated rear seats) and Black Optic Plus (for incognito travel). For a European customer circa 2016, Audi created the 20.9-foot-long Audi A8L Extended, with a 166-inch wheelbase and six doors. All six passengers got seating equivalent to first-class airplane travel.
2024 Rolls-Royce Phantom Extended ($573,000). This car’s interior, the company says, is “a sumptuous sanctuary, where escapism is the main objective.” A high degree of customisation is possible. Gerry Spahn, who heads Rolls-Royce communications in the U.S., said that the Phantom is “the ultimate palette for Rolls-Royce Bespoke, allowing clients to incorporate their personal lifestyle into the interior design through materials, finishes, and new technology.”
2024 Cadillac Celestiq ($340,000). Cadillac was once the standard for the chauffeured limousine. This one is a luxurious way of going green, and an out-of-the-box choice for a chauffeured vehicle. It doesn’t look like any other vehicle on the road; AutoExtremist dubbed the Celestiq “a singular design triumph.” These hand-built electric sedans are being produced in very small numbers. All four passengers sit on 20-way adjustable heated, vented, and cooled seats with massage, and enjoy personal screens.
Gregg D. Merksamer, Professional Car Society
Cabot Coach
And you can go custom. Companies such as Cabot Coach in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and Executive Coach Builders in Springfield, Missouri, will craft a bespoke limousine to your specifications. Steve Edelmann, director of sales at Cabot Coach, said that for $200,000 to $300,000 his company will outfit an SUV or Sprinter van as a fully equipped mobile office for executive customers, sometimes—shades of the 1930s—with a partition for privacy from the driver.
This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 Issue of Mansion Global Experience Luxury.
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David Beckham was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday with Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan to promote their new partnership. But all anyone wanted to talk about was his son.
After the obligatory questions about business and the World Cup, a host on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” lobbed Beckham an out-of-left-field query about how young people can preserve their mental health in the age of social media.
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Just a day earlier, his 26-year-old son Brooklyn Beckham had posted a series of accusations about his soccer-famous father and pop-star-turned-fashion-designer mother, Victoria Beckham.
He said that his parents had controlled him for years, lied about him to the press and sought to damage his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham. Their goal, he said, was to affect the image of a “perfect family.”
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Representatives for David Beckham, Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Nicola Peltz Beckham declined to comment.
In the U.K., the Beckhams are as close as you can get to royalty without sharing Windsor DNA. David is perhaps the most famous English player in soccer history, while Victoria parlayed her Spice Girls fame into a career as a respected fashion designer.
Their partnership was forged in the cauldron of 1990s celebrity gossip, with their every move—in their careers, their bumpy personal lives and their adventurous senses of personal style—subject to tabloid scrutiny.
“They were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce,” said Elaine Lui, founder of the website Lainey Gossip.
Over time, the couple became savvy managers of their own brand, a sprawling modern empire including a professional soccer team, fashion and beauty lines, investment deals and commercial partnerships.
In recent years they each released a Netflix docuseries—“Beckham” in 2023, “Victoria Beckham” in 2025—featuring scenes from their private family life. (Brooklyn and Nicola appeared in David’s series, but not Victoria’s.)
“The way they’ve performed their celebrity has been togetherness,” Lui said: Appearing and engaging with the world as a happily married couple, in both relative calm and amid scandal. And as their family grew, their four children became smiling ambassadors for Brand Beckham, too.
Until Monday night. In a series of Instagram Story posts, Brooklyn accused his parents of “trying endlessly to ruin” his marriage to Nicola, an actress and model, and the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz . Brooklyn declared, “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”
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Brooklyn, the eldest of the Beckhams’ four children, has built a following in his parents’ image, though without the benefit (or burden) of a steady career.
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Rumors of a family feud flared almost immediately after the wedding, including whispers about the fact that Nicola didn’t wear a dress made by her fashion-designer mother-in-law.
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