The manufacture of buses in North America is a complex activity by reason of the wide variety of bus types, each with different underlying manufacturers, channels and competitive considerations. As a result, most manufacturing plants, and in turn the industry players, have tended to specialize vertically in a few compatible product lines, as opposed to building the entire gamut of passenger transport vehicles.
The recent rise in fuel prices has spurred demand for public transportation. The equally spectacular and sudden fall in the price of oil has not yet changed the metrics of the increased demand for transportation on the grounds that travelers have learned to save money by shifting away from driving. At the same time, the additional demand for public transit has not been easily met by transit agencies due to funding constraints for vehicle purchases. On the whole, the shifting trends have been of net benefit to bus suppliers, particularly for cutaway, van chassis and rail chassis configurations.
Hybrid systems are starting to be offered for cutaways and motor coaches, but it may be a while before commercial fleets adopt these, due to their significant cost premium. Foreign manufacturers such as DesignLine of New Zealand and Foton of China are specifically targeting the “green market” for their buses, and are not using traditional diesel-powered systems to enter the North American market. Whether hybrid developments continue to progress under the new oil price scenario remains to be seen, in the light of governmental programs for energy self-sufficiency. However, the likelihood is that it will be very difficult to economically justify the cost of hybrid systems versus regular diesel or gasoline power at this prevailing level of low oil prices.
There has been significant consolidation in the past five years, though lately it has appeared to subside. Gillig was recently sold to CC Industries, the parent company of Great Dane, a leading manufacturer of heavy trailers. Corbeil, the leading Canadian school bus manufacturer, was acquired by Collins Bus. Foreign players are also entering the North American bus market. CAIO Induscar, a leading Brazilian transit and motor coach bus manufacturer, Stallion Bus Industries, with Chinese-built buses, and Bus & Coach International (BCI), also with Chinese-built buses, have all entered the body-on-chassis market with products that target the motor coach segment at a lower price point than completely integrated motor coaches. At the same time these new acquisitions are occurring, the acquisition of NABI and Blue Bird by private equity group Cerberus is likely to unwind due to the deep prevailing problems in private equity funded transactions of recent times.
Parts of this overall mature industry have been growing, but companies with single product offerings such as MCI, with heavy dependence on motor coaches, recently went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Large players in the industry are reaching agreements with smaller suppliers to produce bus bodies under licensing agreements; for example, IC Corporation and ABC are supplied by General Coach for transit and body-on-chassis motor coaches respectively. These licensing agreements will increase in the future to allow for new product designs in competitive commercial markets.
These and other key factors impacting the industry are analyzed in detail in this study. This is the only report of its kind that seeks to quantify and analyze the entire business of bus manufacturing in North America, by each type of bus. The study goes beyond APTA or CTTA statistics to provide an independent appraisal generated from a wide-ranging investigation and analysis from the ground up.
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