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American Automobile Association

Contact Information
American Automobile Association
1000 AAA Dr.
Heathrow, FL 32746
FL Tel. 407-444-7000
Fax 407-444-7380

Type: Private - Not-for-Profit
On the web: http://www.aaa.com
Employees: 850

This isn't your great-grandfather's American Automobile Association (AAA). The not-for-profit organization still provides emergency roadside assistance to members, but it has expanded its offerings to include various financial and travel-arrangement services, as well. AAA offers credit cards, insurance, and vehicle financing, and it operates travel agencies and publishes maps and travel guides. The organization and its affiliated auto clubs maintain about 1,100 facilities to serve more than 50 million members in the US and Canada. AAA was founded in 1902.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2007:
Sales: $39.5M

Officers:
President and CEO: Robert L. Darbelnet
CFO: John Schaffer
VP and CIO: Satish D. Mahajan

Competitors:
Allstate
American Express
State Farm

 
 
Business Dictionary: American Automobile Association (AAA)

Association of motorists who can receive maps, tourist information, and emergency roadside service. Many hotels and motels strive for recommendation by the AAA. Also known as Triple A.

 
US History Encyclopedia: American Automobile Association

American Automobile Association (AAA), a federation of state and local automobile clubs, has been the principal advocate for American motorists since its formation in 1902. Until that time, the automobile club movement in the United States was dominated by the Automobile Club of America (ACA), an elite group of New York City automobilists who organized in 1899 with the intention of exerting national influence. Early clubs in other cities also followed the ACA pattern of restricted memberships, elaborate clubhouse and garage facilities, and an emphasis on social functions—along with making significant efforts to secure improved roads and national regulation of the motor vehicle. AAA, popularly known as Triple A, formed when nine local clubs recognized the need for a national federation to coordinate their efforts on the many matters of concern to motorists that transcended municipal and state boundaries. (Many states, for example, refused to recognize the licenses and registrations of out-of-state motorists, making interstate travel by automobile difficult.) By its 1909 annual meeting, AAA represented thirty state associations with 225 affiliated clubs and claimed 25,759 members.

With the burgeoning use of the automobile after 1910, the clubs constituting AAA increasingly became mass membership organizations, offering special services to members in addition to concerning themselves with the wide range of matters affecting all motorists. The Automobile Club of Missouri inaugurated emergency road service for its members in 1915, a service soon offered by all AAA clubs. Reflecting the increasing popularity of "motor touring" of the time, AAA issued its first domestic tour book in 1917 and in 1926 published its first series of tour books, issued the first modern-style AAA road maps, and began rating tourist accommodations.

The club has been active in lobbying for motorist-friendly road facilities from its inception. From the 1916 Federal Aid Highway Act through the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, to the present, AAA has pushed hard for toll-free improved highways and for highway beautification programs. It has also been a vocal critic of national highway policy at times, arguing against the diversion of motor-vehicle-use taxes into nonhighway expenditures.

Over the years, AAA has been one of the nation's leading advocates of highway safety. In the 1930s it published Sportsmanlike Driving, a forerunner of modern driver-safety textbooks, and helped pioneer traffic safety education classes in elementary and junior high schools. In 1955, AAA discontinued its long-standing sanction and supervision of all automobile racing as being inconsistent with the organization's many highway safety activities. During the late twentieth century, it devoted significant resources to a campaign against drunk driving.

In 1972, AAA had 875 clubs and branches throughout the United States and Canada, and membership passed the 15 million mark. By 2002 the organization had some 35 million members, and its emergency road service program required contracts with nearly 13,000 local providers.

—James J. Flink/C. W.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: American Automobile Association
(AAA), federation of American automobile clubs, est. 1902. AAA provides a number of benefits to its members, including emergency road service; national and international travel assistance, e.g., state maps, guidebooks, and trip routing; financial and credit services; and automobile, life, and other insurance. Headquartered in Heathrow, Fla., the organization also lobbies for improved highways and for sensible, uniform laws and taxation relating to motor vehicles. In the early 2000s AAA had a membership of more than four million.


 
Wikipedia: American Automobile Association
The AAA logo
The AAA logo

The AAA (usually read triple-A, or sometimes three As), formerly known as the American Automobile Association, is an American not-for-profit automobile lobby group and service organization. The organization changed its official name to simply the initials in 1997.

History

The American Automobile Association was founded on March 4, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio as a response to a lack of roads and highways suitable for autos. The organization originally had 1000 charter members, and these original members were generally of an auto enthusiast demographic. AAA’s membership base is and was formed from a number of local and regional motor clubs, and these auto clubs combined forces to create a more powerful organization. Today one in five Americans is a AAA member.

The association expanded its scope of services as years progressed. The first AAA road maps were published in 1905, and AAA began printing hotel guides in 1917. AAA began its School Safety Patrol Program in 1920, and many driver safety programs followed in the decades to come. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which conducts a large volume of studies regarding motorist safety, was established as separate entity in 1947.

AAA was a sanctioning organization for automobile racing in the United States until 1956. It sanctioned many races, including the Indianapolis 500. After the Le Mans 1955 disaster, AAA decided that auto racing distracted from its primary goals, and the United States Automobile Club was formed to take over the race sanctioning/officiating.

Current operations

A typical AAA office
Enlarge
A typical AAA office
A typical AAA Car Care Plus center
Enlarge
A typical AAA Car Care Plus center

The name "AAA" refers to a national consortium of numerous independent automobile clubs, each of which may not necessarily be a not-for-profit organization. The Texas club, for example, is organized as a limited liability company, an explicitly for-profit business structure, and is officially known as AAA Texas, LLC[1].

Members belong to an individual club (such as the Automobile Club of Southern California, AAA Texas or Auto Club South, for example) and the clubs in turn own AAA. The member clubs have arranged a reciprocal service system so that members of any participating club are able to receive member services from any other affiliate club. Member dues finance all club services as well as the operations of the national organization.

From the standpoint of the consumer, AAA clubs primarily provide emergency road services to members. Clubs also distribute road maps and travel publications, and rate restaurants and hotels according to a "diamond" scale (one to five). Many offices sell automobile liability insurance, provide travel agency, auto-registration and notary services. AAA also offers member discounts at over 100 partners including many hotels, Amtrak, Hertz rental cars, LensCrafters, Payless ShoeSource and FTD.com through its "Show Your Card & Save" program.

International affiliates

The AAA has reciprocal arrangements with a range of international affiliates. In general, members of affiliates are offered the same benefits as members of the AAA while traveling in the United States, whilst AAA members are offered equivalent benefits whilst traveling in the territory of the affiliate.

International affiliates include:

Criticism

AAA has been criticized for its lobbying arm's environmental positions. Specifically, the organization has a record of supporting more highway construction and opposing environmental restrictions on automobiles. The Environment News Service notes a 1999 AAA effort to persuade lawmakers to focus their efforts away from automobiles in reducing air pollution. AAA's interim vice president of public relations, Susan Pikrallidas, is quoted as saying, "Overall air quality in our cities is improving, and it's due in large part to the automobile,"[1] in reference to a report attributing cleaner air to cleaner cars.

Harper's Magazine notes, that AAA opposed "strengthening of the Clean Air Act - a measure supported by three fourths of Americans - on the grounds that it would limit the 'personal mobility' of motorists."[2] AAA, besides opposing environmental restrictions on automobiles, often supports widening highways and opposes smart growth.

Many AAA members are unaware of how the organization is representing them, according to many environmentalists. The Sierra Club writes that although AAA supports "more highway spending, fewer pollution controls and less money for mass transit ... This isn't exactly common knowledge".[2] In 2002, Mitch Rofsky and Todd Silberman founded the Better World Club to be an environmentally friendly alternative to the AAA. As of June 2006, this organization had just under 20,000 members nationwide.

In addition to criticism of the AAA's lobbying activities, Car Talk hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi have accused the AAA of misrepresenting data regarding the safety of using mobile phones while driving [3].

See also

References

  1. ^ "Don't Blame Cars for Smog, AAA Says", Environmental News Service, September 29, 1999. 
  2. ^ Silverstein, Ken. "AAA Paves the Road to Hell", Harper's Magazine, May 2002. 

External links


 
 

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Copyrights:

Hoover's Profile. ©2008 Hoover's, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Business Dictionary. Dictionary of Business Terms. Copyright © 2000 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "American Automobile Association" Read more

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