Aristotle once said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” but school bus folks might disagree. According to many leading school bus dealers, sales of replacement parts are especially robust precisely because school buses are only as strong and reliable as their components. Reliability begins to wane after a route bus has been on the road a dozen years, and bus dealers said aging fleets require continual repairs and upgrades to ensure safety.
They told STN that current, top-selling replacement parts include safety equipment like LED lights, mirrors and stop arms, as well as preventive maintenance items such as brake components and engine parts (i.e., alternators, valves). Rounding out the list are heaters, special needs equipment, seat covers and seat repair products.
Some dealers reported seeing an uptick in new school bus sales, while others noted that declining sales are driving the booming market for replacement parts. Yet the bus dealers all agreed this arena has grown more crowded and competitive as new players emerge.
Not surprisingly, they also cited similar buying trends such as customers ordering smaller quantities more often to reduce in-house stock.
“Our customers are expecting us to inventory more for them. So our order quantities are definitely dropping, but the frequency is increasing,” said Branden Smeltzer, general manager of Heavy Duty Bus Parts.
At Bus Parts Warehouse, Sales Manager Shelle Johnson agreed that customers are no longer keeping much product on their shelves but instead relying on dealers and distributors to warehouse parts (hence her company’s name).
“We’ve made a concerted effort this year to pull in a lot more stock on items that turn quickly in our inventory, so we have it on our shelf,” she said. “I definitely see this as a result of tight budgets. A lot of school districts were told you don’t need a full stockroom.”
Matt Essex, director of sales for A-Z Bus Sales, said school bus operators have dealt with budget constraints since 2008.
“People haven’t been buying buses like they used to, so they do need more parts, which has helped our parts sales,” he said. “The challenge everyone faces is trying to determine whether to keep aging buses going: There’s a big difference between 15 and 20 years.”
For example, after a Type A bus accrues 250,000 miles, he said parts might start “falling off,” and it can actually be cheaper to lease purchase a new bus. The challenge is getting approval from the school board.
“I have customers with Type A buses that have 400,000 miles on them, and replacing an engine is at least $8,000 — more than the value of the bus. They feel they don’t have money for new buses, but there’s money for refurbishing,” added Essex.
A-Z Bus Sales customer Andrew DeBolt, the lead mechanic at the San Jose (Calif.) Unified School District, told STN that sometimes even large, urban districts don’t have room in the budget for new buses.
“Frankly, many of our older buses are still in too good of shape to get rid of — even ones that are 25 years old. We do a pretty good job of keeping them in shape,” said DeBolt, who manages a mix of diesel and CNG buses.
To extend CNG bus life beyond 15 years, he has focused on replacing in-vehicle fuel tanks — or, more accurately, depending on A-Z Bus Sales in Sacramento to do so.
“The new tanks are 20-year tanks. It remains to be seen if the buses will last that long. We’re in our third year of doing tank replacements, which cost $20,000 a unit,” he continued.
TAKING STOCK
Steve Phillips, bus operations director at Busworx, concurred that more customers are steered toward refurbishing older buses since they’re under the watchful eye of school boards. Yet he stressed that this doesn’t always make sense from a budgetary standpoint.
“Some of the school systems can’t get their boards to commit to spending money on new buses so they have to do whatever they can to keep their older ones rolling. The problem is that can really blow through their parts budget and cause financial constraints there. They actually end up spending more in parts than they would have spent on new bus payments for a new bus under warranty,” said Phillips.
Andres Montes, senior fleet manager at Houston ISD, said he is grateful for school board support to purchase between 30 and 60 new school buses every year, which helps keep the age of his fleet down. He told STN that approximately 300 buses out of his fleet of 1,000 (including 87 propane buses) are 10 to 14 years old.
“We do replace transmissions regularly because they are cheaper to replace than engines: $2,000 vs. $15,000,” he said. “A number of repairs can extend the life of the bus, but the engine and transmission are the primary source — also, maintaining the bus accordingly. On-time repairs like the water pump, belts and hoses, can really affect or kill the life of bus. Those small items have a big impact.”
Essex of A-Z Bus pointed to the challenge of tracking down certain parts for buses after their second decade of service.
“There are a lot of compliance issues out there. For older buses built from the 1970s to the ’90s, there are emissions standards in effect (in) January 2018 that will take them off the road. It’s very difficult to find parts for buses that have been running 20 or more years,” he said.
Beth Benson provides customer service at Unity School Bus Parts. She said the majority of customers report keeping school buses longer than anticipated, and this trend has caused a greater need for replacement parts.
“One of the main issues that customers with older fleets run into is discontinued parts. Either the manufacturer is no longer offering the specific part required, or they offer a replacement part that is slightly different from the original model,” said Benson. “This type of problem, without the proper support and guidance, can make what was once a quick and easy fix into an expensive, time-consuming project.”
Dave Howard, transportation director at Elma School District #68 in Washington State, has first-hand experience with this.
“The biggest challenge to keeping the fleet up to date is aftermarket and OEM parts availability. The worst problem we faced recently was an exterior mirror on a new Thomas bus. The mirror took almost six weeks (to get) with repeated calls to the dealer,” he said. “It turns out that the manufacturer had to make a new one because none are available in stock.”
WEIGHING ONLINE OPTIONS
This is why it is essential to have a strong customer service team trained to handle such situations, Benson added. In this close-knit business, customer satisfaction reigns supreme.
While many dealers consider online parts ordering a logical next step, they are also realistic about the costs and challenges. One major challenge is providing the human touch to customers who opt to submit their parts orders via email or company websites.
Jerry Pederson, parts manager at A-Z Bus Sales, said some customers might know what part they need but lack key information, which requires research on the VIN number.
“Many of the parts are bus specific, so it’s hard to go online because you have to look it up by a particular bus model that you have, and many times there is research required. We have representatives who help customers identify what they need, and that would be difficult to do online,” he said. “But, having a presence online is important … so we’re in the process of building a new site that our customers can use as a resource for research before they place orders by email or phone.”
Johnson agrees customers need help navigating websites to find a specific part and recommends using fewer search terms and adding the OEM name.
“Less is more when it comes to searching,” she said. “On our website, we give customers access to information that pertains directly to them. We assign them a password, and once they log in, they see pricing that is specifically for them even if they’re using a bid or contract … We also allow them to see product availability so they know if we have it on our shelf or not. That part is a huge risk for us.”
Smeltzer said Heavy Duty Bus Parts receives approximately 18 percent of orders via the Internet, but the company is currently redesigning its website so that it integrates with customers’ financial information.
“2016 is our current target date for (the launch),” he added. Benson said the majority of our orders five years ago came via phone calls, but technology is steadily changing things.
“Currently I would say we have about a 50-50 split between phone orders and online/email orders,” she said.
Wolfington Bus Body does not currently offer online “shopping cart–style” ordering, said Jim Titus, director of parts and service, but the company does fill many orders via email requests.
“Having an online presence is important to us … The primary challenges for us are the upfront investment of time and money as well as the staff and resources necessary to maintain the site,” Titus continued. “Another challenge we face is that many of our customers are not yet comfortable with Internet shopping and still prefer a paper catalog. And many of the repair facilities do not have an Internet connection.”
Prevost is a manufacturer of touring coaches but also began supplying parts for the school bus market in 2011. Gary Hodgson, regional sales manager, said more than 20 percent of customers use an online ordering system.
“Customers receive a discount for ordering online. Our system off ers a look at stock in any of our service centers in North America, and customers can look at current and previous orders for shipment tracking information,” he said. “More and more customers are taking advantage of this ordering method.”
PACCAR Parts also entered the school bus market in 2011 by formally launching the TRP Bus Parts program, said Dale L. Puhrmann, national sales manager of the bus segment.
“We have not observed changes or significant purchasing trends outside of competitive pressures that have altered our approach to selling TRP Parts,” Puhrmann said. “Top sellers continue to be bus chassis parts, which is not unexpected since these components experience higher wear rates than body components with few exceptions.”
Parts Manager Steven Sly of Leeds Transit echoed that the main industry trend impacting sales is the increasing number of competitors. Leeds has been in the school bus business since 1971, serving the Ontario, Quebec and Maritime provinces of Canada.
“From a parts perspective, it is much more competitive now, especially on the chassis side. We focus on having parts at the right location and getting it to people for the right price. But we are geographically challenged because some customers are located 12 to 24 hours away,” said Sly. “A few customers do online ordering. We’re anticipating it is going to grow.”
Because of the harsh winter climate in those provinces, he said school buses have a 10- to 14-year life cycle, so there is not as much bus refurbishment. “School boards or consortiums say it is best for operators to replace 10 percent of their fleet yearly,” he added.
Rather than investing in new buses, many fleet managers are adding new technology such as stop-arm and onboard video systems.
“Some of the biggest challenges for our customers are keeping up with the advancing technologies on the vehicles and the associated tooling, as well as the ever-present challenge of finding the right people to maintain the equipment or training the established mechanics to embrace the new technologies,” said Titus.
