Al Rubin was Door Dash before there was Door Dash. He was Uber before there was Uber. Since 1991, Rubin’s message to his customers has been “The World is Yours.”
Rubin came to SUNY Oneonta in 1989 as a political science major (“I love people and I enjoy a good argument,” he told me). As a student, he worked at Kitty Gordon’s bar (where the Yellow Deli is now situated). When he got hungry, he would call his friend, Frank, and give him 20 bucks to bring him a fettuccini alfredo from Iannelli’s with enough left over for a couple of slices for Frank. (Iannelli’s was Rubin’s favorite restaurant and he eventually married Michelle Iannelli, the owners’ daughter.)
The idea came to Rubin that he might be able to make some money doing what Frank was doing for him. He talked his roommate into partnering with him in starting a delivery business called, “The World is Yours.” They would deliver “food, videos, liquor and anything anybody wanted” in their cars, he said. After graduating, they would work 24 hours a day, “basically as a food taxi service.” By 1996, they had 10 drivers delivering restaurant meals to local lawyers, groceries to trailer parks and everything in between. “Anything that anybody wanted, we did,” Rubin explained. Students started asking their drivers for cab rides and the next thing they knew, “We were operating a booming unlicensed underground taxi service — and I mean booming. Holy Cow, I thought, we better license this! We put every penny we had into the business and bought 15 rough, old, beat-up vehicles and A&D Taxi (Al & Dave) was born.”
In 1998, when Medicaid was approved to provide transportation services, Rubin jumped on the opportunity. While the big bus companies were controlling the market with the local health care networks, Rubin “got friendly with the folks at Bassett and told them that he could provide better service for less money.” Today, A&D Transport provides medical transport in 16 New York state counties. In addition to transporting patients, “we pick-up lab specimens, surgical supplies, and even go to the airport at midnight to pick up skin grafts for a burn victim.”
A&D now has 60 employees, plus 140 drivers on contract. When I asked about managing people, Rubin said he thinks back to his job in a bowling alley while growing up in Levittown, Long Island. “I always credit the bowling alley for the person I am today,” he said. “In a bowling alley everybody is there to bowl — for the same purpose.” While there were many different types of people from different backgrounds, Rubin says, “We respected everyone for their different talents and skills.” He said he tries to apply that same philosophy to his workers and his customers.
Why, I wanted to know, did Rubin stay in Oneonta after graduation and what can we do to encourage more graduates to do the same? “I like the knowledge-based jobs concept of bringing more people here because our area is beautiful. There are so many things to see and do in this area so if I was a knowledge-based worker, I would want to be here,” Rubin told me. “With the two colleges we have here, we have innovators and creators among us. My vision is that local leaders really engage with the colleges. Where are their strongest people?
“How can we connect with them and help them to do something right here — whether it’s funding, support, grants, shared space — how can we support the innovators and creators that are right under our nose to stay here? I don’t consider myself to be special. I saw an opportunity and I could not be more thankful for the support I received from this community. Raising a family here is the best thing I could have chosen to do. We need to get the message out that you don’t need to be sitting in the rat race to be successful,” he said.
Rubin’s focus now is in trying to give back to the community that supported him. Today, he helps his wife, when needed, with her new enterprise at Social Eats restaurant and tries to use what he has learned to build new businesses and the economy in Oneonta and Otsego County. He agreed to serve as the Otsego County Chamber chair and then the interim CEO as the community worked to recover from COVID, with the understanding that he would “do it my way” and that he might step on some people’s toes and be a disrupter in doing so.
“It’s all about bringing people together and out of their silos,” for Rubin. He is open to all ideas, but makes it clear that he is not interested in hearing, “We can’t do this or no that’s not going to work.”