School bus dealer LBS South is now using mobile service units in the Florida Panhandle area to bring technicians directly to customers for added convenience.
The service covers both warranty and non-warranty service on bus engines, brakes, drivetrain, steering, suspension, emissions, controls and electronics among other repairs. So far, school districts in Bay, Calhoun, Escambia, Jackson, Leon, and Wakulla counties have used this service.
According to Keith Daniels, shop foreman for the Calhoun County School District’s department of transportation, before this service was available, a great amount of time and resources had to be spent on taking buses to major cities for work.
“Calhoun County is a small, rural county and we are limited on personnel. The mobile service helps me out a tremendous amount because we don’t have to take a bus over to Tallahassee or Panama City. Both are 50 miles away,”
“It helps us out because that saves me having to bring another driver in to go take the bus and leave it for two or three days, and then we had to turn around and go back and get it after the work was done. It saves us time and money,” Daniels added.
Robert Wells, assistant director of transportation at the Wakulla County School District, agrees that having access to this service has proved to be not only convenient, but also a money-saver.
“For us, in the small, rural counties, having this service available made it so that we didn’t have to have people drive our buses all over the state to get warranty work. We’re talking long trips. Believe me, that’s expensive and its hard to do in the summer when people have waited all year to be off. But actually having the work come to us is a huge turnaround,” he said.
LBS South technician Roy Williams leads the Panhandle area mobile service. Daniels says that William’s is very savvy when it comes to school buses and that he knows them “from bumper to bumper.”
Wells also weighed in on Williams, saying, “Roy is extremely knowledgeable, extremely skilled, and very savvy as far as his computer skills and diagnostic skills.”
LBS South is a distributor for IC Bus and Trans Tech Bus.
