After doing a little random web surfing, I thought about the idea of sharing school buses manufacturers in our area would be a good one. So, what kinds of school buses run around your area transporting students to and from school?
The Livonia Public Schools currently has a mixture of Thomas Built Buses and Blue Bird. A majority of our existing buses are manufactured by Thomas, and they consist of Saf-T-Liner MPV-EF and ER models, in addition to those Minotaur buses on Chevorlet, GMC(?), and Ford chassis bodies (late 1990s to the early 2000s). After that time frame, the district switched over to Blue Bird, and some of our buses were replaced by Blue Bird All-American FE, Vision, and Micro Bird (Ford, Chevorlet(?)) models.
I remember being on a school bus last year when I was going to my school district’s MSBOA Band Festival at Churchill High School; we went on a bus identical to what you drove. It was licensed to a transportation company under the name “Trinity Transportation”.
The buses that my brothers’ school uses are Thomas. I’m not sure what my school used (I didn’t take the bus). In college, the buses everybody uses are Port Authority. The fare is built into our tuition; it’s a pretty good deal.
Most of those buses are IC CE 300’s or something like those. There are also a few Bluebirds (what’s funny is the bus that’s labeled “Substitute Bus” is regularly a Bluebird), and a handful of Ward and Thomas buses too.
The only time I ever remember charter buses being used for our district was back when I attended Holmes; as part of this fundraiser contest, you would be chartered to the Karahari resort in Ohio early in the morning. I never did get to see what these buses looked like, though, as I didn’t go on the trip…