Launching a new commercial service in competition with an established operator is no easy task, to do so with new vehicles at high frequency in a city with previous negative experience of competition is the challenge that Cardiff based NAT Group has set itself with its X1 service. Commencing on Monday 11 May, the X1 […]
Profound changes have taken place in the UK oil industry in the past five years, according to Optimum Oils MD, Cliff Thrussell. A veteran of the lubricants industry, he said that, ‘all of the major oil suppliers once had numerous engineers on the road throughout the nation, but now their numbers have been dramatically decreased. […]
Described by the barman in my hotel as ‘a posh version of Blackpool’ Llandudno in North Wales simultaneously hosts both a Victorian Extravaganza and the Llandudno Transport Festival over the MayDay Bank Holiday Weekend. Both attract huge followings and include a significant bus element amidst a broader commercial vehicle following. Much of the main street […]
In 2010 following the Coach and Bus Show in Dublin I made my way to County Offaly to Tullamore to visit a then new vehicle convertor producing quality minibuses and coaches called Paramount Conversions. I’ve now returned to see the progress the company has made in recent years to become one of Ireland’s major vehicle […]
From the outside, you’d be hard pressed to spot the differences between a Euro5 Irizar i6 and the latest Euro6 examples now starting to enter service with UK operators, but they are there, as Stuart Jones and Andrew Fowler found when they tried Irizar UK’s latest demonstrator, a 12.92m long two axle model equipped with […]
Training in the safe driving of buses and coaches is already something almost all operations are doing, however Golden Boy Coaches has taken it a step further. The Hertfordshire based operator has been giving its team training in cycle awareness. No, it is not expanding into operating bicycles; rather it is allowing its drivers to […]
This February saw Martin and Liz Sherratt, proprietors of the Stafford Bus Centre, open for business at new premises of their own. The £500,000 investment realises an ambition they have held since they initially started trading. When they first moved to the rented Cotes Heath site that was their base for the previous 15 years, […]
‘There’s just me and just one bus and that’s the way it’s going to stay. I’m happy at this size,’ said Mike Woodhouse, owner and Transport Manager of M&J Minibus. We usually cover considerably larger operations in B&CB, but there are plenty of our readers up and down the country that are, like Mike, running […]