Q&A
Thomas’ Reed Outlines Focus on Fuel, Power Options Based on Customer Duty Cycle
With Ryan Gray |
ryan@stnonline.com S
chool bus manufacturing leadership has seen a flurry of activity over the past six months. True to form, Thomas Built Buses looked within the Daimler Truck North America family for its next
president and CEO to succeed Kevin Bangston, who now leads Daimler Truck Financial Services. T.J. Reed got his start at Daimler Truck in September 1998 and has spent 19 years total with the company, and nearly another six years spent at Meritor heading its global electrification as well as front drive train business- es. He was tapped in October to lead Thomas. “It feels like five, six years already, and that’s been a
good thing,” he told School Transportation News last month. “Early on, I had my first trade shows. I was blown away [by] how the entire industry was really on the same page, not only the camaraderie and the spirit of working together [but] on a common mission. But it was OE’s, suppliers, districts, contractors really just loving what they do and being passionate about school buses. That’s rubbed off. And you can’t help but feel that when you’re in High Point at Thomas.” Thomas would not comment on potential tariff im- pact, but the American Trucking Associations’ outlook is a potential price increases of up to $35,000 for a heavy-duty truck, granted those are made in Mexico whereas Thomas is not. Meanwhile, Reed said employees are “pumping out”
high-quality school buses every single day and benefit- ting from increased investment to accomplish the job. In July, the manufacturer announced its new Saf-T-Liner HDX2 school bus and moving production to the C2 Saf- T-Liner plant in Archdale, North Carolina, for increased efficiency and quality. He also discussed the HDX2 as well as efficiency
improvements to the second-generation Jouley electric school bus, the continued role of diesel, and more. The following transcript was edited for clarity and space.
28 School Transportation News • MARCH 2025
STN: Talk about why Thomas chose the Accelera e-axle to power the latest Jouley. TJ Reed: I think the biggest thing, Ryan, and when
you look at it, I would say the technical concept or the promise of an e-axle is you’re not only increasing performance from an efficiency perspective, you’re lowering the weight, you’re improving packaging. It’s ideally suited for school bus, even a last mile item. If you think about it, you’re taking a lot of components that are inside the frame rails that add a lot of weight, and you’re basically collapsing it down inside the housing of a car- rier. And you got your traditional axle, you’ve got your motor and your transmission all in a compact space, and that frees up a lot of room for batteries to be placed in between the rails, and you can shorten the wheelbase. That had been some of the challenges with the early generations. You were pretty restricted on the variation of the product. And as we know, school buses are pretty custom. So, this just opens up a lot of flexibility. And the other great thing is this continued maturity of compo- nents. The product’s been out in the market for a while, been operating in a heavy-truck configuration. We know it’ll live in the life cycle and certainly Cummins/Accel- era is a great partner. They have a lot of resources and know-how. All those things come together. It could be just a much better experience for the districts and the bus operators. Just another step in the progression. This is great to see it come to market now.
STN: We have seen some electric school bus market
consolidation recently. What is Thomas’ perspective on ramping up production to meet demand? How is Thom- as positioning itself to meet that demand? Reed: It’s a long-term play. As we like to say, we’re leading with the long view. At the end of day, school bus is the ideal duty cycle when you got majority of ranges under 100 miles a day. You’ve got overnight charging
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