TRENTON, N.J. (Aug. 6, 2007) — Jerry Ford has done it all in pupil transportation.

Ford, 54, begins his second full month as the director of the Office of Student Transportation at the New Jersey Department of Education. He started on June 25, 2007.

His qualifications read like a school bus "Who’s Who" list. Over the past three decades, he has served as a school bus driver, a safety coordinator and most recently as the transportation coordinator for New Jersey’s 13th largest fleet. Ford even founded a private bus company in 1980, during which time he also started a paratransit service for the Hunterdon County Consolidated Transportation System. He was a member of the state’s contractors association until he sold Tri J Coach in early 1997 to Travelways, a year after selling Amwell Valley Bus, Inc., to Laidlaw.

In addition to serving as a delegate to the 14th National Congress on School Transportation, Ford was president of the School Transportation Supervisors of New Jersey from 2001 to 2005. He was also the treasurer of the New Jersey School Bus Safety Committee, a National Safety Council defensive driving instructor, a transportation management associates passenger assistance technique trainer, and past executive secretary of the Hunterdon County TMA (HART).

For the past 11 years he was at Bridgewater-Raritan Regional Board of Education, which transports more than 9,500 students daily on 114 vehicles. Within two years he brought the system to near 100 percent on-time service, improved efficiency where budget increased only slightly for several years, introduced graphical routing and scheduling software, reorganized special education transportation saving the district over $150,000 annually.

Ford succeeds interim director Dot Shelmot, who remains in New Jersey’s Office of Transportation as a planning associate. Previous state director Linda Wells retired in 2005.