Marketing

Starting Your Own Bus Company

by Larry Plachno

In the early 1980s, Editor Larry Plachno posed with a rented Eagle used on his Wisconsin Illinois Stages bus operation which was based in southern Wisconsin. The photo was taken at the Cumberland rapid transit terminal on Chicago’s north side. In spite of deregulation, it has become increasingly more difficult to run a bus company today. NBT COLLECTION.

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very week or two we get inquiries from readers and others who are looking for information on starting their own bus company. I will admit that the idea can be appealing. In this era of deregulation, obtaining operating authority and a good coach is neither very expensive nor very difficult. Because of this, new bus companies are started all the time. I will also admit that the work can be enjoyable. I worked for bus companies and owned a bus company myself that operated scheduled routes, charters and tours. To this day I still have an urge to plan schedules and drive line-haul coaches. I miss meeting different people, seeing different scenery each day, and taking people to where they have a good time.

However, making money in the bus business was difficult back then. It is worse today. I have substantial admiration for those individuals who remain in the business and turn a profit in spite of all of today’s problems and pitfalls. The situation has now gotten so bad that a joke at a recent bus convention was parents turning their bus company over to their kids was another form of child abuse. When people without experience ask me about starting a bus company, I try to dissuade them by providing some of the inescapable negative “facts of life” surrounding bus company ownership. What should be required reading for anyone thinking of starting a bus company is a book titled We Were Dreamers which was written by noted TV personality James Lehrer. It tells about the trials and tribulations his parents

suffered through in running a small bus operation in Kansas....