MEMORIAL
The word he chose to describe it? “Massive.” Massive in size. Massive in importance.
The process of building the shuttle fleet begins in January. When the tournament begins, it looks like this: 60 vans that each hold up to 12 passengers; seven large coach buses that hold up to 55 passengers; and six smaller buses that can hold 14 to 22 passengers.
Memorial shuttles run almost 20 hours per day across 14 different routes, for a combined 6,000 hours.
There are almost 300 drivers for the week who sign up on a firstcome, first-served basis to fill the 680 to 700 available shifts. Those shifts are typically eight hours, and the first one starts at 4:30 a.m. The last one ends at midnight.
The drivers are paid, but some choose to donate their compensation to charity, Stiffler said. Recruiting enough people to staff all of the shifts can be a challenge, but the starting point is a database of nearly 500 former shuttle drivers, and other jobposting sites such as Indeed.com are good resources.
Some drivers have been driving for years. Julie Sobas, of Gahanna, is in her 15th year as a driver.
Sobas said she takes This dry-erase board is used to keep track of the shuttles, drivers and 14 different routes used by the Memorial Tournament.
vacation from her full-time job as an operations manager for Alliance Data Retail Services in Columbus because she loves being able to interact with people. She also knows that the shuttle driver often is the first — and last — tournament employee visitors see. Besides getting riders to their destination efficiently, Sobas said greeting them with positivity and a bright smile is another way she helps the Memorial operate well.
Stiffler and his team — which includes operations intern Stephen Rusterholz and six shuttle supervisors who oversee day-to-day operations during the tournament — coordinate shuttle routes using magnets on a big dry-erase board.
Stiffler calls it their “ouija board.” He knows it’s old school, but he doesn’t mind. The end goal, Stiffler said, is guaranteeing the shuttles run properly, which also means guaranteeing “the tournament is running.”
He’s been overseeing the shuttles for more than two decades — overall, it’s his 38th year with the Memorial — so he knows detailed preparation doesn’t always mean perfect execution. “There’s no guarantee anything is 100 percent going to operate,” he said.
There might be drivers who forget to show up for their shifts, which is why they schedule a few extra people for each shift just in case, and there could well be a fender bender or two, which has happened every year Stiffler has been with the tournament.
Despite some hurdles, the shuttle service keeps on running.
“I don’t know what a tournament like this, being as well known as it is, would do without an efficient shuttle process,” Rusterholz said.
For starters, there would be a lot more walking.