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Blue Bird Corporation

Company type	Privately held company
Industry	Transportation
Founded	1927
Founder	Albert L Luce
Headquarters	Fort Valley, Georgia
Products	Bus
Owner	Cerberus Capital Management
Website	http://www.blue-bird.com/

The Blue Bird Corporation is a large manufacturer of school and activity buses. Blue Bird's corporate headquarters are in Ft Valley, Georgia, US. It operates factories in Georgia.

Blue Bird Corporation is not affiliated with another company with a similar name, Blue Bird Group, a taxi operator in Indonesia.

History

Albert Luce, Sr.: all-steel school bus bodies in 1927

Blue Bird was founded in 1927 by Albert L Luce, Sr. His company became a leading producer of school buses in the Americas. That same year, both Blue Bird Body Company and Wayne Works of Richmond, Indiana reportedly began building all-steel bus bodies, an innovation which soon replaced the wooden bodies which were then in common use around the United States.

Dr. Frank W. Cyr: father of the yellow school bus

Most school buses turned the now familiar yellow in 1939. In April of that year, Dr. Frank W. Cyr, a professor at Teachers College in New York who became known as the "Father of the Yellow School Bus," organized a conference that established national school bus construction standards, including the standard color of yellow for the school bus.

Engineers from Blue Bird Body Co., Chevrolet, International Harvester, Dodge, and Ford Motor Company, as well as paint experts from DuPont and Pittsburgh Paint showed up. Together with the transportation administrators, they met for 7 days and agreed on 44 standards, including the color and some mechanical specifications such as body length, ceiling height, and aisle width.

It became known officially as "National School Bus Chrome". The color was selected because black lettering on that hue was easiest to see in the semi-darkness of early morning and late afternoon. The distinctive color later became officially known as "National Glossy School Bus Yellow".

Cyr's conference, funded by a $5,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, was also a landmark event inasmuch as it included transportation officials from each of the then 48 states, as well as specialists from school bus manufacturing and paint companies. The conference approach to school bus safety, as well as the yellow color, has endured into the 21st century.

Growth in school bus use after World War II

Following World War II, continuing a transition from one-room schools, there was a nationwide movement in the US to consolidate schools into fewer and larger ones. This meant that fewer students were attending school in their immediate neighborhood, particularly as they progressed into high school. This led in turn to a large increase in the demand for school buses.

With its early adoption of steel body construction, Blue Bird had been a leading name in church bus and school bus safety efforts. The company became a major school bus body builder in the post-World War II period.

In 1948, Blue Bird founder Albert Luce Sr. saw a design for a flat front bus at an auto show in Paris, France. Two years later, in 1950, Blue Bird Body Company developed a transit style design which evolved into the Blue Bird All-American, generally considered one of the first successful transit designs to gain widespread use for school buses throughout in the US. Wayne Corporation, Crown Coach Corporation, Gillig Corporation, and others had experimented and developed some early transit-style school buses.

However, the "conventional" design, with a truck type hood and front-end (known as type C on modern school buses) was to continue to dominate US school bus manufacturing through the end of the 20th century.

Blue Bird became an international manufacturer of school buses with the opening of Blue Bird Canada in Brantford, Ontario in 1958. In the 1960s, Blue Bird Body Company also started making luxury motor coaches based on the All-American. Its first Wanderlodge was built in 1963. Blue Bird entered the commercial public transit bus market in the 1970s.

During the second half of the 20th century, many of the Blue Bird buses originally designed and used for North American school bus use became the common intercity bus in much of Latin America.

By the late 1970s, Blue Bird operated 6 major plants in 3 US states, Canada, and Ecuador.

• Blue Bird Body Company (main plant) in Fort Valley, Georgia; produced All-American line and many parts for other lines
• Blue Bird Canada in Brantford, Ontario
• Blue Bird Central America in Ecuador
• Blue Bird East in Buena Vista, Virginia; produced Conventional and Mini Bird lines
• Blue Bird Midwest in Mount Pleasant, Iowa; produced Conventional line
• Blue Bird Wanderlodge in Fort Valley, Georgia; produced Wanderlodge luxury motor homes

Parts and Service were also located in Fort Valley, as was Wanderlodge Wayside Park, a tree-shaded motor home park for visiting Wanderlodges adjacent to the Wanderlodge plant.

In 1980, Blue Bird was one of the big six school bus body companies in the United States, competing with Carpenter Body Company, Superior Coach Company, Thomas Built Buses, Inc., Ward Body Company, and Wayne Corporation. During the next 20 years, that number would be reduced to three.

Blue Bird would open a new plant, Blue Bird North Georgia in LaFayette, Georgia during the 1980s as well as close the Ecuador plant.

Post-Luce Family ownership

Until 1992 Blue Bird was a private family-owned company. From 1992 to 1999, Blue Bird was owned by a management led buyout team in association with Merrill Lynch Capital Partners.

The Q-Bus commercial bus for transit and charter applications was introduced in 1992. Sagging demand, financial difficulties and changing world markets in the 1990s and early 2000s lead to Blue Bird closing two plants and opening another. Blue Bird East was shut down in 1992; Blue Bird de Mexico in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, was opened in 1995.

At the end of 1997, Blue Bird operated the following facilities:

• Blue Bird Body Company in Fort Valley, Georgia; produced TC/2000, Q-Bus, CS, All-American, and parts
• Blue Bird Canada in Brantford, Ontario; produced TC/2000, Conventional, Micro-Bird, parts
• Blue Bird de Mexico in Monterrey, Nuevo León; produced Conventional
• Blue Bird Midwest in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa; produced Conventional, Mini-Bird, TC/2000, Micro-Bird
• Blue Bird North Georgia in LaFayette, Georgia; produced Conventional and TC/2000
• Blue Bird Wanderlodge in Fort Valley, Georgia; produced Wanderlodge and parts

Blue Bird was owned by the British Henlys Group PLC with a substantial financial stake held by Volvo Group from 1999 to 2004. Henlys had financial difficulties during this time, including some not related to its investment in Blue Bird.

Blue Bird de Mexico in Monterrey, Mexico was closed in 2001. Blue Bird Midwest was closed in 2002.

According to news release from the company in the fall of 2004, Blue Bird became the "sole operating subsidiary" of a newly created holding company, Peach County Holdings Inc. As part of the deal, a banking syndicate made up of Henlys creditors owned 42.5 percent of the Peach stock, according to Blue Bird. The Volvo Group (the world's largest bus manufacturer) owned another 42.5 percent, with the balance owned by Henlys' "pension scheme" and Blue Bird's management. However, after a bankruptcy filing, Blue Bird was acquired by Cerberus Capital Management, resulting, in connection with the acquisition by Cerberus of North American Bus Industries and Optima Bus Corporation, in Cerberus having a complete line of school and transit buses.

Through 2007, Blue Bird executed a series of plant closing and product line divestitures intended to re-focus the company on the school bus market in an effort to improve profitability and market position. The commercial bus product lines were spun off to parent corporation subsidiary North American Bus Industries, Inc. for assembly at NABI's Anniston, Alabama facilities. Blue Bird’s original and last remaining international plant, Blue Bird Canada, was closed August 10, 2007. Later in 2007, the Wanderlodge line was sold to Complete Coach Works, ending Blue Bird's 44 year participation in the recreational vehicle market .

Blue Bird No. 1, the first steel-body Blue Bird school bus, was donated to The Henry Ford in 2008.

Products

Current line

• All-American - Type D large school bus (1948-) (known in Canada as the All-Canadian but now marketed there as the TC/3000)
  • Produced in Fort Valley, Georgia
• Micro Bird - Type A small school and activity bus
  • Produced in Fort Valley, Georgia
• Vision - Type C conventional school bus (2003-)
  • Produced in Fort Valley, Georgia and LaFayette, Georgia

Former product lines

• School Bus
  • Type A (cutaway van)
    • MB-II and MB-IV (1992-1999) - Type A cutaway bodies; once produced by Canada's Girardin Minibus, but branded as Blue Bird products; now marketed under Girardin's own name
  • Type B (step-van with full-size body)
    • Mini Bird - (197?-1998)
      • similar to Carpenter Cadet, smaller versions of Ward Patriot
  • Type C (conventional)
    • CV-200 (1960s-2003) - Type C conventional school bus (replaced by Vision in 2004)
      • General Motors, Dodge, Ford, International Harvester (Navistar after 1986), Freightliner chassis
  • Type D (transit-style)
    • TC/1000 (1997-2001) - Short body, front-engine only with flat floor
    • TC/2000 (1988-2003) - Short and long bodies, front (1988-2003) and rear engine (1991-2003)
      • less expensive than All American line.
• Commercial
  • Ultra LF, Ultra LMB, and Xcel 102 - commercial buses; product line still produced by parent corporation subsidiary North American Bus Industries, Inc. at their Anniston, Alabama facilities
• RV/Motorhome
  • Wanderlodge - luxury motor coach; product line still produced by Complete Coach Works

In addition to school, activity, and transit applications, Blue Bird busses have been specially modified for unique applications such as bloodmobiles, mobile libraries, and public safety command centers.

Images

• 
  United Indians Head Start Blue Bird Microbird school bus at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Seattle, Washington.
• 
  Chevy/Blue Bird bus used by Gloria Dei Lutheran School in Hampton, Virginia.
• 
  Back end of a Blue Bird bus owned by Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Hampton, Virginia.
• 
  1999 Blue Bird CV200 conventional school bus operated by the Shelby County, Alabama Board of Education in Helena, Alabama.
• 
  ‎1997 Blue Bird CV200 conventional school bus on Ford chassis operated in handicapped service by the Shelby County, Alabama Board of Education in Helena, Alabama.
• 
  Front 3/4 view of a 2008 Blue Bird VISION conventional school bus operated by the Shelby County, Alabama Board of Education in Helena, Alabama.
• 
  2006 Blue Bird All American school bus operated by the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada.
• 
  Four Blue Bird All American Rear Engine school buses operated by First in Wrexham, Wales, United Kingdom.
• 
  Blue Bird All-American bus in transit service in Bronx, NY.
• 
  NYPD Blue Bird All American RE mobile command post #4077 in Brooklyn, New York.
• 
  NJ Transit Blue Bird CSFE3000 #608 in Jersey City, New Jersey at Journal Square.
• 
  UNC Traveling Science Laboratory in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

See also

• North American Bus Industries
• School bus

External links

• Blue-Bird.com Blue Bird Corporation official website
• The Atlantic School Bus Yard - Blue Bird Gallery
• STN Online: Archives of 100 years of School Bus History
• School Bus Fleet magazine official website
• Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) for school buses
• U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics
• School Bus explorer website with numerous pictures of various school bus from different manufacturers and eras.