Hamilton Township, Mercer County NJ Limo Service: Party Buses, Vintage Wedding Limos and Airport Runs from New Jersey’s Oldest Limousine Company

By GEOFF CAPLAN

Courtesy: Google

New Jersey has three townships named Hamilton, and this one is the heavyweight. Mercer County’s Hamilton Township counts more than 92,000 residents, which makes it the ninth-largest municipality in the state and the biggest suburb of Trenton by a wide margin. It sprawls across 39 square miles east of the capital, from the Delaware River flats at Bordentown’s doorstep up through Mercerville, Hamilton Square and Yardville. It is a big place. Big enough to have its own Amtrak-served train station, its own hospital, and a sculpture park that draws visitors from both New York and Philadelphia.

John Garrabrant, owner and founder of Action Limos, has run vehicles into Hamilton for decades. The company opened in 1979, which makes it New Jersey’s oldest limousine service and puts it at nearly 50 years in business. Hamilton Township now joins the Towns We Serve roster, and the full fleet comes with it: party buses, stretch limousines, vintage wedding cars and executive sedans for the airport.

Hamilton Township Was Nottingham First

Before it was Hamilton, it was Nottingham. English settlers laid out the Town of Nottingham in the 1680s, and the name stuck for well over a century. It was the War of 1812, and the anti-British mood that came with it, that pushed locals to rename the village Hamilton Square after Alexander Hamilton. The township itself was incorporated by the Legislature on April 11, 1842, carved from what was left of Nottingham. Trenton nibbled at its western edge for the next 50 years, annexing Chambersburg in 1888 and Wilbur in 1898, and the boundary has held ever since.

Postwar growth turned farmland into subdivisions, but Hamilton never fully lost its rural fringe. Working farms still operate on the eastern side near Robbinsville and Allentown. Kuser Farm Park, Sayen House and Gardens, and the 350-acre Veterans Park give the township more green space than most places its size. Municipal news and park schedules are posted at hamiltonnj.com.

The headline attraction is Grounds For Sculpture. Sculptor J. Seward Johnson opened it in 1992 on the old New Jersey State Fairgrounds, and the 42-acre campus now holds hundreds of contemporary works set among ponds, groves and peacocks. Rat’s Restaurant on the grounds is a wedding and anniversary destination in its own right. Details, hours and ticketing are at groundsforsculpture.org.

The roads explain why Hamilton is an easy run for a limo company. Interstate 295, Route 130, Route 33 and the Trenton end of Route 1 all thread through the township, and the New Jersey Turnpike’s Exit 7A sits at the eastern border. Hamilton Station on the Northeast Corridor puts New York roughly an hour away by rail and Philadelphia about 40 minutes. From the Action Limos showroom in Kenilworth, a chauffeur can reach Hamilton Square in under an hour on the Turnpike.

What Action Limos Brings to Hamilton Township

Party Buses for Nights Out and Group Trips

Ninety-two thousand people generate a lot of birthdays, bachelorette weekends and retirement parties. Action Limos party buses handle the group side of all of it. Wraparound seating, sound systems, LED lighting and coolers are standard, and the bus stays with the group all night. Popular runs from Hamilton include Atlantic City, which is barely an hour down Route 206 and the Parkway, the Philadelphia bar scene across the river, and concert nights at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden or the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel.

Vintage and Classic Wedding Limousines

Hamilton hosts an unusual number of weddings for a township, thanks to Grounds For Sculpture, the Stone Terrace by John Henry’s, and the Sayen Gardens gazebo, which the township rents for ceremonies. A vintage limousine pulling through the sculpture park gates makes a photo that lasts. Action Limos keeps classic wedding cars alongside modern stretch limos and SUV limousines, and its coordinators have been running New Jersey wedding timelines since the late 1970s. Ceremony, photos, reception, hotel drop: one vehicle plan, one point of contact.

Airport and Business Transfers

Hamilton sits between two major airports and near a third. EWR Newark Liberty is about an hour north, Philadelphia International is 45 minutes south, and TTN Trenton-Mercer in neighboring Ewing handles Frontier flights 15 minutes away. Action Limos sedans and SUVs serve all three with flight tracking and meet-and-greet service. Corporate clients in the Quakerbridge Road office corridor and at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton use the same vehicles for visiting executives and multi-stop days between Trenton, Princeton and the Route 1 pharmaceutical campuses.

Proms, Sweet Sixteens and Graduations

Three public high schools, Hamilton West, Steinert and Nottingham, plus Notre Dame and a handful of private academies, keep the spring prom calendar crowded. Parents appreciate a licensed, insured limo with a vetted chauffeur. Teenagers appreciate the stretch. Rider College and The College of New Jersey graduations in May add another wave of family bookings.

Why the Oldest Limo Service in New Jersey Still Matters

Mercer County has no shortage of limo operators. Many of them are one or two vehicles and a cell phone. Action Limos has been in business since 1979 because it does everything consistently: vehicles get inspected, chauffeurs get screened, and contracts spell out the price. Fuel surcharges, gratuity and overtime rates are quoted before the night begins, not conjured at 1 a.m. outside a casino.

Scale helps too. A company with a full fleet and an indoor showroom does not cancel a Saturday wedding because its one stretch limo has a check-engine light. There is always a backup vehicle, and there is always a dispatcher answering the phone.

Popular Destinations from Hamilton Township

A few of the trips Action Limos runs most often for Mercer County clients:

Atlantic City. About an hour door to door. Casino shows, birthday dinners and overnight stays on a party bus with the group intact.

Philadelphia. Eagles and Phillies games, Wells Fargo Center concerts, dinners in Rittenhouse or Fishtown. The bus handles the Ben Franklin Bridge traffic.

New York City. Broadway, holiday shopping, a milestone dinner in Manhattan. The Turnpike does most of the work.

The Jersey Shore. Point Pleasant, Belmar, Asbury Park and Long Branch are all reachable in about an hour for beach days and bar crawls.

Wineries. Working Dog Winery in Robbinsville, Old York Cellars in Ringoes and the Cape May trail farther south all suit a party bus tasting day.

Cruise ports. Cape Liberty in Bayonne and the Manhattan and Brooklyn terminals get regular Action Limos traffic from families with more luggage than a sedan can hold.

Frequently Asked Questions