Coachbult.com - Blue Bird



Blue Bird Corp. - Blue Bird Body Co. - 1927-present - Fort Valley, Georgia

see ad in 1953 Silver Book pp60-61

ad 1963 GMC Truck Equipment Catalog pp60-61

From the first school bus built by Blue Bird in 1927, the success of the company has been based on innovation and customer service. In fact, responding to the customer is how it all began. A friend of Albert L. Luce, Sr., the founder of Blue Bird, asked for a bus to transport his workers. This request gave Luce the opportunity to create the first Blue Bird school bus and spearheaded the beginning of a highly successful corporation.

A lot has changed since then. Blue Bird's pioneering spirit and advances in technology have helped create top-of-the-line school buses that are flagships for the school bus industry. All Blue Bird school buses are manufactured with the highest safety standards.

Building on the success of its school bus line, Blue Bird expanded its vision. More than thirty years ago, the company set its sights on the motor coach market and created a product that continues to deliver luxury travel at its best. The Blue Bird Wanderlodge motor coach provides an exquisite means of transportation.

Blue Bird's knowledge and experience in the school bus and motor coach markets made for a smooth transition into the commercial bus segment. In the early 1990s, Blue Bird developed a plan to provide customized, innovative and economical buses to all sectors of the commercial market - transit, shuttle, and tour/charter.

Blue Bird Corporation continues to set industry standards with its innovative design and manufacturing of school buses, commercial buses and motor coaches. More than seventy-five years later, Blue Bird has grown to nearly 3,000 employees and three facilities in two countries.

www.blue-bird.com - Henlys Group plc owns Blue-Bird, Prevost Car, Nova Bus in North America and Transbus International in England

xxxxxx

A.L. Luce was a Ford dealer in Fort Valley and Perry, Georgia. In 1927 he designed and built a bus body with angle iron roof bows in order to improve on the wooden-framed bodies generally available at that time for truck chassis. The first body was sold for school transportation and in spite of being all-metal except for a canvas roof, it had no window sashes. The trend toward consolidation of schools, and the economic depression, which was hard on auto dealers, caused Luce to sell his Ford dealerships and concentrate on bus body production in 1932, when the Blue Bird name was adopted from the color of a demonstrator.

Window sashes and all-steel construction including the roof came in 1937, though wartime buses had wooden cross sills. During a trip in 1948 Luce saw a forward control GMC chassis at the Paris Salon and imported a complete bus from a Belgian body plant because GMC would not sell him a chassis of that type. A forward control Blue Bird named the" All American" was soon offered, and starting in 1952 Blue Bird assembled its own chassis for these buses instead of modifying conventional chassis. Like other builders, Blue Bird supplies various engines and transmissions for both conventional and forward control buses.

A motor home version of the All American called the "Wanderlodge" was introduced in 1962. About 50 tandem-axle bottler's trucks were built in the early 1970's with GMC V-6 gas engines. A pusher chassis was first produced in 1976. Efforts to gain export business began in 1949 with ventures in Latin America, and today Blue Bird has foreign assembly plants in Guatemala and Canada as well as branch assembly plants in Mount Pleasant, Iowa and Buena Vista, Virginia. The three sons of A.L. Luce are owners of the company at the present time.

xxxxxx

Blue Bird Corporation is one of the world's leading bus manufacturers, delivering thousands of school buses, commercial buses and recreational vehicles to the market each year.

Founded in 1927, Blue Bird has nearly 3,000 employees and three facilities in two countries. Blue Bird has an extensive network of distributors and service parts facilities throughout North America.

For more information please read:

www.blue-bird.com

Ed Strauss & Karen Strauss - The Bus World Encyclopedia of Buses

G.N. Georgano & G. Marshall Naul - The Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles

Albert Mroz - Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Trucks & Commercial Vehicles

Donald F. Wood - American Buses

Denis Miller - The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trucks and Buses

Susan Meikle Mandell - A Historical Survey of Transit Buses in the United States

David Jacobs - American Buses, Greyhound, Trailways and Urban Transportation

William A. Luke & Linda L. Metler - Highway Buses of the 20th Century: A Photo Gallery

William A. Luke & Brian Grams - Buses of Motorcoach Industries 1932-2000 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Greyhound Buses 1914-2000 Photo Archive