As difficult as it may be to believe, the 2004-05 school year saw another record year, up 12 percent overall from data reported one year ago! All major segments of the school bus manufacturing industry reported growth, with the multi-function school activity buses topping the list.

Some readers may be saying to themselves right now, "Hold it, did the STN editors loose their marbles?" The answer is no, we did not. As they say, the devil is in the detail. First, some background on how we gathered the data.

This is the 12th annual School Bus 2004-05 Production Survey by School Transportation News. The data is gathered for previous school year. The data presented here represents 12 months of production for October 1, 2004 through Sept. 31, 2005 . Readers are cautioned not to confuse these data with other annual data they may see that covers a calendar year.

The School Bus Production survey is conducted among all school bus body and chassis builders in the U.S. and Canada . Blue Bird, Corbeil, Collins, Girardin Minibus, IC Corp., International Truck and Engine, Mid Bus, Thomas Built Buses, U.S. Bus Corp., and Vancon reported their bus body production data. Meanwhile, Blue Bird, Ford, GM, IC Corp, and Freightliner/Thomas reported school bus chassis production, though only two of them, Ford and General Motors, manufactured small cutaway chassis for the Type A market.

The STN survey does not tabulate bus sales due to the fact that the final sale to states, school districts and contractors is typically handled by school bus distributors, and with more nearly 300 distributors the data is to difficult to gather. Now back to the details.

All three of these type school buses are manufactured in conformance with the major school bus-only federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS 220, 221 and 222).

Type A small bus production (including both Type A-1 and Type A-2) jumped to 9,422 units, a 25 percent gain over a year ago.

Type C conventional-style and production saw the greatest numerical growth, jumping to 27,723, an increase of 3,138 units or 12.7 percent gain over a year ago.

Type D transit-style production saw 8,505 buses built, an increase of 789 units or 10.2 percent over a year ago.

All three of these type school buses are manufactured in conformance with the major school bus-only federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS 220, 221 and 222). Meanwhile, school bus chassis manufacturing tracked bus body manufacturing.

• The Type A cutaway chassis builders - Ford and General Motors - reported manufacturing a total of 9,376 cutaway chassis. The small disparity between the number of cutaway chassis manufactured and greater number of small bus bodies assembled can be accounted for by stocking and flooring factors.
  
• Bus body manufacturers reported installing 31,803 heavy duty transmissions in chassis they built for Type C and Type D large school buses, tracking within about 10 percent the number reported by the major transmission builders.

The greatest growth occurred in the category of multifunction school activity bus. Altogether bus builders reported manufacturing 2,868 MFSAB. Since MFSAB must conform with school bus rollover and crashworthiness standards just not the conspicuity and hazardous warning standards, these vehicles are, effectively types A, C or D school buses. So all of them are included in the aggregate manufacturing data reported for the year. What's significant about the MFSAB vehicles is this category alone saw a massive 64 percent jump over a year ago! Whether this is the beginning of a trend remains to be seen.

To grasp the total size of the school bus market two other categories of buses need to be accounted for. These include 600 buses manufactured under the General Services Administration BARB program for military use and military-based schools domestic and overseas, and 2,913 so-called white-buses typically built on cutaway chassis for commercial use by hotels, motels and shuttle bus operations, though this year about six percent of these were large Type C or D buses. Because they are manufactured on the same assembly lines, with materials and components from the same vendors, as types A, C and D school buses, white buses are reported in STN's annual Production Survey.

By including types A, C and D and the two alternate school bus-style vehicles noted above, but not the MFSAB as they are already tabulated, school bus manufacturers report they produced 49,138 vehicles of these several school bus styles during the 12-month period reported. Clearly, they are nudging the 50,000 mark! And 2006 looks pretty good so far as several bus builders reported 3 to 4 months backlog going into the new year!

11 year summary of school bus manufacturing in U.S. and Canada.

Source: Reprinted from School Transportation News Buyer's Guide, January 2006.
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