North America’s largest school-bus contractor
reinvents itself by turning to its own employees to improve business model, customer service
A NEW
FIRST P
WRITTEN BY RYAN GRAY
ick any large corporation, especially one that owes much of its growth to acqui- sitions and mergers, and you’ll likely encounter the dreaded “culture clash.”
Google (or Bing) the phrase and a host of articles
will return in the search results on the causes and effects, dos and don’ts, and case studies. Tis can prove challenging for school-bus contrac-
tors, as a popular business model is to grow by acquisi- tion of smaller companies that hold desirable contracts. But employee satisfaction is at least as important to a company’s bottom line as are total revenue and year-over-year growth. Without content employees, it becomes harder for a bus company to turn out a quality product or service. And customers can easily sense when something is not right. Just ask Linda Burtwistle, president of First Student.
Te leader of the largest school-bus operator in North America knows all too well the trials and tribulations of the culture clash that arose about five years ago, even as the company was increasing its status as an industry giant.
“If you turn the time clock back, First Student has
been created over the years out of many acquisitions, culminating at the end of 2007 with the acquisition of Laidlaw. So we obviously have lots of different cultures in the business, lots of different backgrounds and, of course, people who had been competing against each other for very long periods of time,” acknowledged Burtwistle during an interview in April. Growing pains are common for most companies,
especially for one that has been around for 100 years and operates just over 50,000 school buses out of 600 locations nationwide. First Student, in one name or another, can trace its ori-
gins back to 1913, when a contract was won in Newman, Calif., in the state’s Central Valley located southwest of the San Francisco Bay. While winning its fair share of new contracts ever since, the company now known as First Student has also expanded throughout the U.S. and Canada by acquiring operations it deemed attractive. Such was the case in Newman, which had been serviced by Patchett Bus and Transportation Company.
www.stnonline.com 35
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60