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WE Transport, acquired by Beacon Mobility last summer, offers 65 years of yellow bus experience in New York City and Long Island as well as Connecticut.
tudents endure many obstacles when getting to and from school via the bus that are not of their making, whether it be a vehicle blowing through the stop-arm or a bus driver shortage
caused by everything from low pay to fear of COVID–19 to higher pay driving other commercial vehicles. The situation has gone from acute to prolonged with
parents, educators and student transporters wring- ing their hands to find solutions that satisfy everyone. Family routines are as disrupted as the supply chain, and it seems that all the student transporters in the world couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. And as they are wont to do when opportunities arise,
lawmakers from several states are looking to reduce the magnification power on the microscopic lens, under which potential school bus drivers must pass to make more drivers available sooner to school districts and private contractors. Other states, such as Arizona, are even looking at widening the pool of vehicle types used to transport students to include vans and sedans. This has given rise to new and innovative applica-
tions of an old business model made to breathe life into an industry that new companies describe as stagnat- ed, outdated and broken. To give it a facelift, they used cosmetic terms such as “reshaping,” “reimagining” and “modernizing” the industry. The newer operational mod- els were built on three pillars: partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and on nontraditional diversification. And according to the language on their websites, these com- panies use a combination of the three. Other common threads include technology, people and service. These business models have enabled this new breed to become some of the fastest-growing student transporters in the country during the past half-decade.
Bringing the Band Back Together: Partnerships American Student Transportation Partners (ASTP) was formed in 2019, when several former coworkers who
24 School Transportation News • JUNE 2022
thought they were through with student transportation were reunited at the behest of an investment firm that saw a need and identified the people who could fill that need by doing what they did best—transporting kids to and from school. At the center of this was Tim Krise. The Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania native was so enam-
ored with school buses that he got his commercial driver’s license at age 18 while still in high school. By 1990, Krise, not only owned Krise Bus Service, Inc., but he also won his first big contract. His company grew to 500 buses over the next 14 years while developing an impeccable repu- tation for service and a solid brand across Pennsylvania. In 2004, Krise’s strong sense of community led him to sell his company to Student Transportation of America. “It was for stability,” Krise recalled. “If something
should happen to me, there was no one left to take over my leadership role. My employees and the school dis- tricts would suffer. We didn’t want them to be crippled. It was important to me to get a partner with teeth that could continue the company.” Krise stayed on, running the company until 2014. During
that decade, he made the acquaintances of Pete Pearson, Jeff Ellis, Jim O’Brien and then STA President David White. The quintet clicked, forming the nucleus of what would be an effective partnership, which is at the core of ASTP. Krise then left to buy a grocery store in Punxsutawney, he said to save the jobs of its employees. “That grocery store was the heart of the town, so I arranged to take over the store and keep those 100 people employed,” he added. After Krise’s contractual noncompete period ended, he
was presented with an opportunity to provide transpor- tation to a local school district that was in such a crisis, no one responded to its request for proposal. Mean- while, Pearson was out of the transportation industry until contacted by White, who had been recruited by the investment firm Access Holdings. Pearson approached Krise, who already had approached the firm for funding, about reuniting with the group.
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