Posted on 06/17/2003 8:00:12 AM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
MOUNT PLEASANT (GTNS) -- The Blue Bird Midwest bus factory in Mount Pleasant is empty.
The last bus pulled out last weekend, and as of Thursday, the remaining chassis are gone.
Blue Bird's closing has had a damaging ripple effect on other area businesses.
Todd Boldt, owner of Boldt Welding and Automotive, had a contract with Blue Bird to do automotive work. He used to employ 14 people and now is down to four.
Boldt said at least 50 percent of his cutbacks and business loss is directly related to the closure of Blue Bird.
"Things are a little better now, but in February and March, I was almost ready to close down shop," he said.
Two other businesses that Boldt knows of, Centre State International Trucks and TRANS Air Manufacturing, closed down completely because of Blue Bird leaving town.
"There's at least 150 jobs that have been lost in addition to the 350 from Blue Bird," Boldt said.
Northside axes propane buses
By Sharon K. Hughes
San Antonio Express-News
06/17/2003
Northside School District is phasing out its nationally recognized clean-burning propane bus program, a defection that does not bode well for efforts to get school districts across the state and country to abandon their dirtier diesel engines.
"Northside ... has been our poster child for propane," said John Quebe, a local representative for the national Clean Cities program. "I frankly can't go talk to another school district and encourage them to look at propane while Northside, the poster child, is getting out."
Propane produces less smog, greenhouse gas and particulate matter than gas or diesel, industry and government officials said. Northside officials said the fuel and the buses required less maintenance.
Both Clean Cities and the Texas Railroad Commission have given Northside awards for its propane bus program.
But the large bus the district needed wasn't available this year, said Al Rath, Northside's director of transportation.
General Motors made the chassis — a school bus without the body — with a gasoline engine. Blue Bird put that in a school bus body. The district converted the gas engine to propane. GM has stopped making the chassis for the largest school buses.
GM officials weren't available for comment.
Alvin School District, outside Houston, which had used propane buses for more than 20 years, switched to diesel this year.
A third big Texas user, Dallas County Schools, will continue to convert smaller buses to use propane. The organization, which transports students for eight Dallas County districts, uses propane mainly in small buses — about half its fleet.
Propane, a byproduct of natural gas and oil production, is the most widely used alternative fuel in the world, according to the Propane Vehicle Council.
In Texas, 35 of the 1,000-plus school districts use propane to power about 1,600 buses, according to the Texas Railroad Commission.
That number is significant, as alternative fuels garner less than 1 percent of the national market, said Brian Feehan of the Propane Vehicle Council.
"In Texas, when we talk about alternative fuel, we talk about propane," said Railroad Commission Chairman Michael Williams. The commission has paid out $285,000 in rebates to districts since 2001 to help school districts convert buses to propane engines, Williams said.
Factory-ready propane buses are in development, said Bill Platz, president of ProCon, a consortium developing propane vehicles.
A midsize bus should be ready for 2004, he said. The larger bus won't be ready until 2005, but it may never get on the market if the first bus doesn't sell, he said.
Meanwhile, Rath said, Northside won't buy propane buses unless it sees a stable market.
"How do we know they'll still have it in 2006?" he said. "We're tired of being held prisoner."
About 95 percent of Northside's 523 buses ran on propane. None were diesel, putting the district in a vulnerable position in a market that runs primarily on diesel.
Northside now must convert fuel storage tanks to hold diesel, train technicians to maintain the engines, and stock diesel parts, Rath explained.
After putting new infrastructure in place, the district won't be eager to return to propane, he said.
Alvin officials take a similar position. Of the district's 120 buses, 116 run on propane, said John Ralph, director of transportation.
Ralph said propane is the best fuel for school districts, but that they had been "held hostage" in the past. Now the district is being forced to end the program.
"It makes me real cranky thinking about it," Ralph said. "Here is the only viable clean- air system that works. ... Propane was almost better than sliced bread."
And yet they're phasing out their propane buses? Something doesn't compute here.
Since the school districts were doing their own conversion to propane, it doesn't make much sense to me, either. It just sounds like nobody in the U.S. is still making the BIG school buses that they want to convert. Other than that, the only thing that they're being held "captive" to is the economics of their own coversion and fuel usage.
I tried to look up that information, but what I came across just got me confused. They come in too may different sizes/options/configurations, etc, etc. New school buses that are "conventional" seem to be somewhere in the $50~75K range, but I'm not even really certain of that. There doesn't seem to be any "list" price. I guess that makes sense when you consider that hardly anybody buys just one bus at a time. The different bus companies must submit bids whenever a school district replaces all or a portion of its fleet, and the price would depend on how many buses were being purchased. Leasing companies also buy large quantities of buses and lease them to school districts.
Used ones seem fairly reasonable. I came across quite a few used school buses of late '80s early '90s vintage priced around +/- $2K. Of course there's no telling how badly beat up they are. But you occasionally see somebody who's converted one into a camper rather than shelling out bigger bucks for a motor home.
I don't think you'll get too many people agreeing to using school buses for regular transit. You not only run into scheduling problems, but also into all the different safety regulations. Nobody'd be able to tell whether the yellow bus was actually a school bus or a regular bus. And the school bus seats are generally arranged different too.
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