My Bus Story
I liked buses long before I knew anything about engines, commercial driving, or what it cost to keep one on the road. I just thought the bus itself was fascinating.
The Bus Parked Outside
My preschool program was held at a high school with a childhood-education program. One day there was a school bus parked outside with its entrance door open and the driver sitting inside. I climbed aboard and sat in one of the front seats. Nothing dramatic happened, but I still remember it.
By kindergarten I was excited to ride the school bus. I watched the door mechanism and the warning lights, listened to the air and electrical systems, and noticed how different the world looked from a bus seat. The driver had an entire wall of switches and controlled something much larger than any car I knew.
The details were the interesting part
I paid attention to the things most passengers ignored: the shape of the body, the window line, the entrance door, the dashboard, the heaters, the transmission selector, and all the indicator lights. School buses, transit buses, and motorcoaches all move people, but the driver’s area makes it obvious that they were built for very different jobs.
The system around the bus interested me too. I watched routes, destination signs, stop announcements, loading areas, driver changes, fueling, cleaning, and dispatching. A bus was interesting by itself; a fleet that managed to appear in the right places all day was even more interesting.
From Interest to Employment
As an adult, I finally had the opportunity to become a bus driver. The interesting object became my workplace, and passengers now depended on what I did with it. Training put names and procedures behind things I had watched for years: mirror checks, controlled speed, stopping position, clearance, passenger awareness, and inspections.
I enjoyed learning transit-style equipment, especially Gillig and Nova buses. Small details that had always caught my attention finally made sense. A multi-position entrance-door control was no longer just a strange handle; it was part of a sequence that controlled the doors, interlocks, and passenger movement.
From Driver to Owner
The next major change was buying a bus and helping start a passenger transportation business. An employer’s bus appears for the driver already fueled, maintained, insured, inspected, and scheduled. When it is your bus, every one of those jobs comes home with it.
Owning commercial buses taught me to look beyond appearance. A good-looking bus can have expensive tires, weak batteries, neglected air conditioning, leaking emergency exits, undocumented wiring, worn seats, obsolete parts, or maintenance history that exists only in someone’s memory. A less attractive bus with strong records and a solid mechanical baseline may be the better vehicle.
Returning to School Buses
Training in school-bus operations brought the story back to where it started, but with a very different perspective. The vehicle I once experienced as a child now had to be understood as a professional driver: the danger zones around the bus, the loading sequence, student accountability, crossing procedures, specialized mirrors, emergency equipment, and the added responsibility of transporting children.
Why I am putting this online
Some of this section is practical information, but I also want it to be a record. Vehicles disappear, companies change, dashboards get redesigned, and small operational details are easily forgotten. These are the parts I want to keep:
- First-person memories of vehicles and operations that may otherwise disappear.
- Practical lessons from driving, purchasing, maintaining, and improving buses.
- Training concepts explained in plain language rather than memorized phrases.
- Vehicle profiles that record specifications, work performed, and lessons learned.
- A safety-first view that treats professional driving as a skilled occupation.