BusTalk

[Dieseljim]

Since the MCI MC5 had the same powertrain (8V71 diesel engine, spicer 4 speed tranny) as the 4106, would that bus be in the same league as the 4106, perfiormancewise?

[HwyHaulier]

Dieseljim -

Consider empty weights of the two examples. All other things being equal, the lighter coach would have been a bit hotter on the street...

And, as long as you bring the MC-5 to the discussion, why not also consider the Trailways Eagle designs? Recall, some of the group had
"trailer pulling" duties with the small, tag along package "pups", too. It would have influenced design...

......................Vern.................

[timecruncher]

The MC-5, in my opinion, was slightly better than the 4106 because of its steering and handling characteristics. MCI was slow to catch on back then, but they built a very sturdy bus when GM was offering the structurally-flawed PD4107 model.

Indeed, Greyhound never bought another GM coach after the 4107 debacle as testament to their dissatisfaction with that builder.

timecruncher

[Dieseljim]

The MC5 came in three variants, the A model, the nearly identical B model, and the C model, which was like a scaled down MC8. The MC5C came in two variants, the two door transit model that first went to Greyhound in Saudi Arabia and when Greyhound pulled out of Saudi Arabia, WNY's Blue Bird Coach Lines bought a bunch of them. I rode on one from Perry to Rochester and the bus featured bucket seats, a rear exit door as well as some of the usual features of a highway coach. The MC5C was the last of that model to be built.

[timecruncher]

I don't believe there ever was a Greyhound presence in Saudi Arabia. That was an ATE operation for the Saudi Government. Anyone who 'volunteered' for that duty came home two years later to become GMs and other high staff people with ATE properties (now First Transit).

The buses ran for several years over there before being re-imported to the US to be re-sold to numerous private bus operators from coast to coast.

Ahh -- here are pix of the two Croswell MC5Cs. Nice buses to drive, with 8V71 and 4-speed manual trannies. 48 was the first new bus purchased by Croswell damn near in the history of the company (Ohio PSCI 22 -- they had been around for a long, long time). Old man Croswell was unaware that his son had ordered the bus until a day or two before it showed up. Bob Croswell couldn't believe that a new bus could cost $122k!

This photo was taken at Barnesville College in Barnesville, Georgia (y'all). I had a five-day trip down there with a group of church women from near Dayton, Ohio. Took them to Warm Springs, where Roosevelt used to have his polio treatments, and over to Callaway Gardens on two of the days. The other three days I rode Trailways into Atlanta and played around on MARTA all day!



Griffin's bus depot was a classic small-town bus agency, the kind that is all but gone from the intercity bus industry nowadays. I drove the MCI over, bought my ticket for the next day -- the agent told the driver to watch for me on US 41 north of town at the Holiday Inn, and the rest is history. He wouldn't take my ticket when he found out I was a bus driver, though.



Anyway... back to topic:

When business exploded with the new bus, he picked up this repo MC5C that only had around 50,000 miles on it. It was as good as new and had a wee bit different color scheme:

For you New Yorkers in the group, the pic of 49 is at Pier 19 on the west side of Manhattan. We had two busloads of anti-nuke protesters (among thousands) who were in New York for a big rally in Central Park or somewhere.

There were two of our buses, but four drivers who relayed the runs. I was expected to drive to dinner in the city because I was accustomed to driving in city traffic (this was during my Metro years in Cincinnati). Whopee! Nothing like driving around a congested city, not knowing exactly where the heck I was going, just to find a freakin' McDonald's!

timecruncher
Schedulers give you the runs!

[Dieseljim]

Nice pictures, Timecruncher, very nice pictures. Those MC5Cs Blue Bird got all had automatic trannies in them. I am not sure what became of those buses after Coach USA came in bought and looted Blue Bird, Niagara Scenic and whatever other WNY companies they bought up, but they were used on the University of Buffalo's intercampus shuttles along with some of Blue Bird's own transit busea and school buses. One found its way onto the Olean-Rochester line run partly as a result of Blue Bird's constantly overbooking its highway coaches on charters and tours, including a pair of GM SDH4502s that were bought by NY State SPECIFICALLY for line work and yet ended up working primarily charters instead. As to the disappearance of the small town agencies, I take it that means I buy my ticket from the driver when I board the bus at such a location.

[timecruncher]

Blue Bird was a basket case long before Coach USA got to town. It was more like a large version of Croswell. Overbooking, undermaintaining, hiring pretty much anyone who walked in the door standing up and breathing (but not necessarily at the same time). It was because of the potential of all of that business - and probably a low price - that Coach USA was interested in the property.

I'm pretty sure Blue Bird got all of the TDH4517, 4519 and 4521 units from Blue Motor Coach, the suburban outfit here in Louisville. They were already painted blue and white and were well-kept. TARC didn't use them because they had no a/c (of course, in those years, most TARC buses with a/c didn't have working a/c), and sold them off cheap.

Croswell was the same back then. We would show up only to be shuttled down to another bus line to pick up their bus, or to find that our work had been farmed out to another carrier because every bus was on the road and one or two had died enroute and was being rescued.

Lots of charter outfits used to do that routinely until recent attention by NHTSB and insurance companies began giving it more attention.

Consider that tour buses in use every day don't get adequate inspections or routine maintenance, and you can see how carriers like Croswell and Blue Bird eventually meet their demise in one way or another.

timecruncher
Schedulers give you the runs

[roymanning2000]

Greyhound was the successful bidder on a contract from the Arabian-American Oil Co. (ARAMCO) to furnish bus services for their facilities at Dhahran. They started there in early 1980. This was a different operation from the one First Transit was involved in.

Greyhound Taseco started with about 200 MC5C's. They were painted just like the US Greyhounds of the day except there was some Arabic lettering on the side and no running dog emblem. About 50 of those were set up with 41 transit seats and a rear exit door. The rest seated 44 in a conventional intercity layout. None had restrooms. I seem to recall that all of them had some sort of water cooler set up to quench the parched throats of their passengers.

The MC5C's built for Saudi Arabia had beefed-up air-conditioning and engine cooling systems. They were also built with a "second roof" to help deflect the desert heat. Eventually some MC9's, also with the roof modification, were sent to Saudi Arabia as well.

I don't how long Greyhound was in Saudi Arabia. In the mid-80's, the MC5C's began to brought back to the US where they were resold by Hausman. They got around. Las Vegas Transit had a few of the transit version and Williamsport, PA had one, too. Some other transit types ran for a shuttle operator at O'Hare some years ago.

Below is a link to what appears to be an ARAMCO employee magazine.

arabiancamelot.com/documents/AAAJ_F04.pdf

On page 20, there is a story about the formation of the system that Greyhound operated. If you're a railfan, you might also find interesting an article that begins on page 10 showing a 1954 trip by the Saudi King Sa'ud on a train of three Budd RDC cars.

Roy

[timecruncher]

Thanks for filling in the blank spots for me. I was unaware that Greyhound had any presence in Saudi Arabia at any time.

timecruncher

[Dieseljim]

Thanks for the eye opener on Blue Bird, Timecruncher, perhaps that explains why Louis Magnano was picked up on a drug bust coming back from Canada once. Nothing ever came of the drug charges, but from what you just told me about Blue Bird, that explains a lot of goings on with that company, particularly the deterioration of their fleet, which was a mix of school buses, highway coaches, and transit buses. plus their occasional propensity to use school buses on such a line haul run as Jamestown-Olean-Rochester. Not a very comfortable ride for those going the distance.

[Dieseljim]

Could Greyhound's dissatisfaction with GM have carried over to MCI in recent years, given the propensity for certain MCI models in their fleet to catch fire while going down the road, thus accounting for the gradual switch to Prevost coaches?

[timecruncher]

There is no doubt in my mind that the problems with the PD4501 Scenicruiser, and subsequently the PD4107 'buffalo' at the same time that MCI was rising to prominence as a coach builder, had something to do with the switch.

We can't rule out the fact that Greyhound in the mid-sixties, was acquired by Dial Corporation, parent of the soap people and also parent of Motor Coach Industries. Even if GM did build a good coach, I doubt that it would be able to compete, price-wise, with an "inside" purchase.

Since then, I the acquisition of strictly MCI coaches was more a necessity than choice. MCI was the only builder of highway coaches that could meet the demands of the largest intercity carrier in North America. Prevost was still a small player until the late '90s when it was acquired by Volvo.

That said, the G has proven to be a problem-plagued bus from the start. They were apparently less costly than the D model, and until First Transit acquired Greyhound (even if it was reluctantly), the "old guard" was still pretty much in control.

As an outside observer, I'd say it was the "We've always done it this way" crowd that kept the old dog doing what it had been doing all along.

Again, just an observation, but it looks to me that First Transit is trying to put a new face and a new direction on the old company.

Greyhound long ago forgot all about customer service and customer convenience, and while the intercity bus industry is in no way a significant player in today's intercity transportation market outside of the coasts and a few select corridors, the new team seems to be trying to turn it all around.

In that endeavor, I wish them the best!

timecruncher
Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to us!

[HwyHaulier]

timecrucher -

Agree! You got me scrambling to dig out the Jackson history of Greyhound. It didn't hurt MCI at all that it was included under the Greyhound - Dial umbrella...

But, yes, Greyhound had its head into a bad attitude about how GMC handled the (euphemistally) customer service requests with the Scenicruiser coaches...

Must have been a great blame game! Perhaps some Scenicruiser prototypes should have had better field tests? Much of the bickering traced to the
Dwight Austin, Patent drive layout, and use of the dual motors. It worked with the Pickwick coaches of two decades earlier...

..................Vern..............

[roymanning2000]

Vern,

MCI was in the Greyhound fold well before Dial entered the picture. Most of the stock in MCI was acquired by Greyhound around 1950. After 1957, it was a subsidiary of Greyhound Lines of Canada, Ltd.

MCI furnished most of the buses for the Greyhound's Canadian operations throughout the 1950's and into the early 60's. Around 1962, the decision was made to construct the Pembina ND facility and the first MC-5 was delivered to Western Greyhound in November, 1963.

What do you think the mood was at Pontiac the day Greyhound announced it was going to start building its own buses for the US divisions? They had to know it was coming but, losing an annual order of 400-500 buses worth more than twenty million dollars had to have generated some major heartburn.

Roy

[HwyHaulier]

Roy -

Many Thanks! One less chore! I don't have to go scrambling for the Jackson book! Something was nagging at me that MCI was a Greyhound asset...

And, surely the GMC - T&C guys at Pontiac went into a deep funk over the turn of events...

.................Vern.................