The owner of a small limousine firm had to turn down $3,000 a week in business because he lost all his drivers in the labor shortage, a report says

• A limo business owner had to turn down a $3,000-a-week job driving pilots to the airport, The Washington Post reported.
• Farhat Othmani couldn't find drivers for the job during the labor shortage, he told The Post.
• Othmani has lost all of his drivers and six limos since the pandemic struck, he said.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

The owner of a small limousine business in Memphis had to turn down $3,000 in business a week because he couldn't find drivers for the job amid the labor shortage, The Washington Post reported.

Farhat Othmani, owner of a limousine service and a coffee shop, told The Post that he had 14 limos and six drivers before the pandemic. A year and a half later, he has eight limos and no drivers, he told The Post. The only people who currently drive the limos are himself and his wife, he said.

Othmani told The Post he was forced to turn down a job driving pilots to and from the airport for a FedEx contractor because he couldn't find two more drivers and a dispatcher. It would have earned him more than $3,000 a week, he said.

Othmani's regular customers have called on him when they can't get an Uber or Lyft from the airport, but he's had to turn their offers down, he told The Post.

"That's the beauty of this country; the harder you work, the more successful you get," Othmani told The Post. "But now I feel like it's a dead end."

Read more: More than half of Uber and Lyft drivers stopped driving during the pandemic, and that number is far from recovered, new data shows

In his coffee shop, Othmani's only two employees told him at the start of the pandemic that they wanted to stay at home, he told The Post. He ran the coffee shop on his own and sometimes earned less than $40 a day, he said.

Othmani told The Post that he's still struggling to hire people to work in his coffee shop, called Qahwa.

Othmani's story comes as restaurants and businesses go through a labor crisis.

The Federal Reserve said in June that the labor shortage, which has affected all industries, including ride-hailing apps, healthcare, and hospitality, could last for months.

The shortage has triggered restaurants to cut their opening hours and increase their prices. Other hospitality services have had no choice but to temporarily close their doors because they can't find enough staff.