The American Bus Association released its Motorcoach Census 2011 this summer and found that the commercial buses logged 694 million passenger trips and 76.1 billion passenger miles in 2010. Students accounted for a quarter of all passenger trips.
The benchmarking study covered operations at 4,478 bus companies in North America that operated a total of 42,895 motorcoaches and employed 149,000 workers. The average age of the motorcoaches was 9 years old. Seventy-two percent of companies said they purchased their motorcoaches, compared to 23 percent that reported that they operated a mix of purchased and leased vehicles. Not quite 5 percent said they only leased, and ABA said smaller carriers were more likely to have only purchased motorcoaches in their fleet.
The census did not provide safety data.
Ninety-one percent of the companies and the buses studied were located in the United States. ABA found that 38 percent of the 694 million total passenger trips were provided by mid-size companies that operated more than 25 to 99 motorcoaches. Meanwhile, 34 percent of the companies were small and operated fewer than 25 motorcoaches, and 28 percent were classified as large companies operating more than 100 motorcoaches.
More than 27 percent of the reporting carriers operated school buses. Nearly 62 percent of the companies operated mini-buses, followed by 34 percent operating vans, 30 percent “other types of revenue-generating passenger vehicles” and 11 percent operating transit buses.
All told, the companies reported 2.358 billion miles traveled, or 1.8 million passenger miles per motorcoach. The average miles traveled per motorcoach was 54,900, and the average motorcoach got 6 mpg, which is in line with the average mpg of diesel-powered school buses. More than half of the North American motorcoach carriers said they only purchased fuel at retail stations, 42 percent purchased fuel both wholesale and retail and just more than 4 percent said they only purchased wholesale.
Meanwhile, ABA said there was a “healthy mix” of old and new companies as more than 34 percent were founded after 1995 and 10 percent were founded after 2005. In comparison, 9 percent were founded prior to 1939, nearly 11 percent from 1940-1959, almost 17 percent in the 1960s and 1970s and 18 percent in the 1980s. The 1990s and 2000s each saw about 25 percent new companies.
“The small business network that makes up the motorcoach industry continues to provide a remarkable level of cost-effective transportation for our nation,” said Peter J. Pantuso, president of the ABA Foundation. “We are proud of the fact that, even in difficult times, our industry continues to change and grow to meet the demands of the traveling public.”
According to industry estimates, school buses provide 10 billion individual, one-way student passenger rides each year on routes plus extracurricular trips, Head Start, summer school and child care transportation. School buses also travel approximately 4.4 billion miles each school year across the United States, and the U.S. Department of Transportation says school buses are safer than any other mode of surface transportation for students to get to and from school.
