Q&A
In a Celebratory Mood Thomas Built Buses’ Caley Edgerly shares updates, plans for company’s milestone 100th anniversary
W
e catch up with Tomas’ president and CEO to talk about the evolu-
tion of the school bus manufacturer over the past 100 years and the direction it is headed.
School Transportation News:
Tere have been many changes to this over the past 100 years, but are there a few that especially stand out to you in terms of how Tomas Built Buses has led innovations? Caley Edgerly: Tomas Built
Buses has been at the forefront of a number of innovations in the industry, starting when the company was under the leadership of founder Perley A. Tomas. Perley had a hand in designing the new look and feel of school buses when they converted from wood to steel. Later on, he also had a hand in increasing driver visibility, and in introducing the industry’s first outward opening entrance doors. Most notably for the industry, under his leadership, two of Perley’s sons helped set the national minimum standards for school bus construction. Tey not only helped standardize safety, but also helped emphasize safety in the industry.
Over the years, Tomas
Built Buses continued to rock the industry. We were the first to debut a number of products, including a child restraint system, track flooring, fuel tanks mounted between the frame rails, factory-installed AC, a multiplex electrical system that’s digital rather than analog and structural adhesives. In the past few months, we’ve
riveted the industry with the new Saf-T-Anchor Removable Seat Mounting System, which allows flexibility in seating configurations, and introduced the BusWise Tech- nologies platform. Tis platform, for the first time, enables a suite
of technologies to work together to enhance the pupil transportation ex- perience, while increasing safety for the driver and for school bus passengers and decreasing costs for fleet managers.
And we can’t forget one of our most significant innovations: Te introduction of the revolutionary Saf-T-Liner C2 school bus, the first fully-integrated conventional school bus, where the chassis and the body were designed exclusively for each other.
STN: Speaking of the C2, last fall at NAPT Tomas handed over the keys to its 75,000th Saf-T-Liner C2 to a
Perley A. Thomas purchased equipment from the
Southern Car Company at its bankruptcy auction and began to operate his new streetcar conversion business as Perley A. Thomas Car Works in 1916.
30 School Transportation News • MAY 2016
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