{"id":168733,"date":"2026-04-17T17:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/168733\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T17:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:56:10","slug":"pittsburgh-golf-cart-business-prepares-to-transport-fans-and-vips-during-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/168733\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh golf cart business prepares to transport fans and VIPs during NFL draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A company that specializes in transportation with golf carts is making a big push to be ready for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/pittsburgh\/live-updates\/2026-nfl-draft-pittsburgh-events-traffic-updates\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NFL draft<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Shawn Gray, who owns Gray Hare Express, says he has only slept for three out of 84 hours going into Friday morning. And it might not get any better for a while as his company prepares to cart around fans and VIPs coming into town for the draft next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our week starts on Monday,&#8221; Gray said. &#8220;We start running 18 hours a day.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But the good news is that Gray Hare Express is going to get a lot of business for the NFL Draft. Gray says his company was selected through the NFL Draft Source Program.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Gray says his business only has around five or six employees right now. For the draft, that number will get boosted to a range between 150 and 160 employees as part of a hiring process that&#8217;s been going on for six months.<\/p>\n<p>The six golf carts the company currently has will rise to a total anywhere between 100 and 125. It will end up keeping about nine of the new ones for a total of 15 after the draft, Gray said.<\/p>\n<p>Gray says there will be a lot of normal visitors wanting to catch a ride, but also a lot of VIPs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We got a lot of them coming, and a lot of them are flying in by helicopter,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Gray Hare will have a book filled with local business ads for those people to see in an effort to help push his customers to spend at other local businesses, Gray said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s face it, we&#8217;re all in this together,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Gray Hare has done other events like the U.S. Open golf tournament in Oakmont last year, in addition to other things on the North Shore and Downtown Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<p>The business has only been at it for about 13 or 14 months, and this is its biggest job to date.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s going to mean that we&#8217;re going to be able to grow,&#8221; Gray said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A company that specializes in transportation with golf carts is making a big push to be ready for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3537,73,75,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-168733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-nfl-draft","9":"tag-pittsburgh","10":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","11":"tag-pittsburgh-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}