When, a few years back, Mercedes-Benz announced the end of the Vario manufacturers of midicoaches were thrown into a bit of a turmoil as to how to replace it. Most coachbuilders opted for various versions of the Mercedes-Benz Atego front-engined light truck chassis. This was the route chosen by manufacturers like Ferqui (Connaught); Indcar (Moseley […]
Moseley Distributors does more than just supply vehicles, it can also modify them to meet customer requirements, and it has done this recently with a pair of 12.2m VDL Futura FHD, which it converted to meet DDI 1 and 3 standards. The first coach has gone to Bay Travel of Cowdenbeath and it was so […]
When EVM launched its Sprinter-based Low Floor in 2013, it causes a ripple of interest in the bus market, but only a ripple. The thinking was clear; if you’re going to engineer a vehicle for bus work, make sure it’s durable, and with EVM’s long experience of Sprinter, that was a given. The engineering work, […]
A growing number of operators whose businesses are built on full-sized coaches are buying minicoaches for their fleet, evidenced by new sales in this sector growing while coach sales are shrinking. The king of the road for minicoaches has, for some time, been Mercedes-Benz’ nimble Sprinter, mostly as van conversions, to create upwards of 16 […]
Optare hosted the latest meeting of CILT’s (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport’s) Busmark group. The tour of the manufacturer’s Sherburn-in-Elmet factory was the highlight of the gathering of members from the organisation’s benchmarking club for the coach and bus industry. Whisking attendees to the plant from the venue of the meeting was an Optare […]
I first went to Marshalls Coaches of Leighton Buzzard some 20 years ago or more, when Fred Marshall was master of all he surveyed. The occasion was the delivery of an entire fleet of new Beulas Eurorider coaches which, at the time, were the coaches with the ‘wow factor’ and, if I remember correctly, leather […]
Fenn Holidays of Cambridgeshire has been among early adopters of Arriva Bus & Coach’s fixed-price maintenance packages. A renowned Van Hool customer, Fenn Holidays has a small fleet of four 14-metre TX17 Astrons which are exclusively run on tour work, with destinations throughout the UK and Europe. With experience of coach touring going back to […]
Two highly popular events staged in Morecambe last weekend delivered a fitting commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the formation of Ribble Motor Company. Stuart Jones attended both. At its peak, Ribble Motor Conmpany ran 1,300 buses and coaches, employed 5,500 staff and carried 216m passengers annually (1956). The first, held on the Saturday, was […]