About the Bus Industry

Bus Acquisition Plans Continue to Hit Snags – Recapping the 2006 and 2007 Summer Festival Seasons

Dale Roethlisberger — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:00:08 +0000

We have a group of intrepid music festival attendee’s that regularly participate in the long, late summer weekend of the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Our goal as a group has been to attend the event in ’style’ by leasing a ‘crew/band’ or ‘entertainer’ bus. Unfortunately, our group has been stymied in reaching for an actual bus as the tranportation and accomodation medium we desire. Call it an ego thing, but our group can be as large as 12 people. The standard layout for a ‘crew/band’ or ’sleeper’ bus with 12 bunks would be ideal. However, we have found that the tour bus leasing companies have some other criteria that has precluded our group from attaining this goal.

Primarily, the tour bus leasing companies are interested in leases/rentals that run for longer than 1 week. This makes sense considering the scheduling problems and best return on their investment for the buses. We have mentioned before the ‘prestige’ factor as well. Tour bus leasing companies are interested in ‘bragging’ rights when it comes to the actual entertainers that employ their services as part of their overall marketing plan. As a result, for both the 2006 and 2007 festivals, our group ended up with renting class “C” motorhomes.

In 2006, our group’s vehicle was a 31 foot Class C Winnebago from “happytravelersrvrentals.com”. We were required to rent it for a whole week as part of the standard ’summer season’ rental agreement and the total cost including fuel was around $1700.00. Our group was 7 people and with the cab over bed (2 people), fold out couch (2 people), dinette table converted to bed (1 person) and queen bed in back (2 people), we managed to fit the group. This vehicle did have one slide-out, so it did feel roomy enough. Camping at the Philadelphia Folk Festival is a ‘no services’ situation. We did almost reach full capacity on both the ‘grey’ and ‘black” water storage tanks.

For 2007, we rented from “endlesssummerrv.com”. The vehicle was a 28 foot Class C motorhome from Dutchman. This vehicle did not have a slide-out, but did have a four bunk configuration in the back bedroom. As our group had a last minute cancellation of one couple, the group size was only 5. Sleeping arrangements were no problem, but without even one slide-out it did feel cramped a bit. Once again, without any camping services we came close to capacity on the grey and black water storage tanks. Fees including gas totaled about $1800.00 for the week.

By Popular Demand, About the Bus Industry

Dale Roethlisberger — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:24:33 +0000

[Reprinted from May 2006] The partners of R & D Enterprises registered the domain name “BUS.com” very early in days of the commercial Internet (circa 1994). We chose that name because we were a metro Washington, DC based Bulletin-Board-Service (BBS) from the mid 1980’s through till 1994 and our BBS was known as the “Branch Universal System”. We were amazed, as well as the only domain registrar at the time, Network Solutions, Inc. that “BUS.com” was not purchased when we made our request. We have operated “BUS.com” since ‘94 primarily as an anchor web-site in support of the many other Internet services we sell or operate. Nowadays, we get a lot of requests to purchase the “BUS.com” domain name by companies in the bus industry and we receive many visits on “BUS.com” by individuals and companies who expect to see information and resources that somehow relates to buses, transportation, commercial bus lines, tours, coach conversions, bus enthusiasts and too many other linkages to the simple three letter term “bus” to enumerate here. Coincidentally with all this activity, we have decided to attempt to satisfy some of this audience.

Leasing An “Entertainer” Coach, Part II – Getting Quotes

Dale Roethlisberger — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:20:34 +0000

[Reprinted from May 2006] It’s more than three months before the Philadelphia Folk Festival and the event tickets and camping passes still aren’t available to purchase online. One would assume that, if we are willing to pay the fees and meet the contractual requirements, our group should be able attend the weekend event in the style and luxury of an “Entertainer” or “Crew/Band” motor coach. First, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to find on the Internet some links to the companies that lease these types of motor coaches. By using a large number of “search word” combinations, I was finally able to find a half-dozen or so companies that might be able to accomodate our group’s plans. Of course, we had to eliminate a few of the selections due to geographical constraints. It makes no sense to have to pay for cross-country or cross-region pre and post event positioning logistics, and the potential for stretching a four or five day leasing window to potentially a week or more. Unfortunately, we did not consider that the leasing companies for these types of motor coaches, for the most part, aren’t really in the business of leasing to private groups for a “luxury” one-time event.

Certainly, from the leasing company’s point of view, there is a bit of the prestige factor involved. These types of motor coach conversions are an expensive proposition and it does make sense to try to squeeze as much promotional value (i.e. top name Stars and Entertainers as endorsements), as well as, per day leasing dollars, and preserve these resources for the longest lease period potential customers. Our research indicates there may be as few as 400 of this style of motor coach conversion and, at best, maybe 1000 for lease in the entire USA.

Another factor of our “luxury” event plan is the ‘camping’ environment of the Philadelphia Folk Festival. We felt that before we even started to obtain quotes for this leasing endeavor, it would be somewhat problematic to convince the chosen custom motor coach leasing companies to consider parking their resources for the weekend in a very crowded, heavy vehicle RV/Camper, and ‘unimproved/no-services’ campground that is essentially a farmer’s field. We are well-aware that a heavy rainstorm at the time, or just before, departure back to the motor coach depot could spell disaster. Nonetheless, we decided to attempt our “luxury” event plan.

So far, we have made a ‘request for quotation’ to three custom motor coach leasing companies. First, we decided to try Concert Coach primarily because they list their locations as Philadelphia and Baltimore and one would think they would be ideally positioned geographically for our “luxury” event. Second, we submitted a quote request to The Bus Bank, apparently a leasing consolidator that advertizes service nation-wide. Our third choice for quotation was USA Bus Charter, another leasing consolidator that indicates nation-wide leasing.

It has been almost a week since we e-mailed, faxed, and/or telephoned our requests for quotation. The results so far are disappointing. Nothing from Concert Coach, a polite ‘we can’t help’ email from The Bus Bank, and an actual phone call back from USA Bus Charter. However, the USA Bus Charter representative indicated our lease request would probably be at the upper end of the daily lease rate (i.e. approx. $3000/Day) and that the companies for which they lease consolidate would likely be holding out for a lease request for a longer term than our request during August, which is in peak season. We did indicate that the daily rate was not out of the question, but right about our limit. We said go ahead and see if we could secure an actual quotation, but alas, that has not happened yet. Next installment soon…..

Leasing An “Entertainer” Coach for the Philadelphia Folk Festival

Dale Roethlisberger — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:08:19 +0000

[Reprinted from May 2006] There comes a time in life when you want to do something “First-Class” as a perk for all those years you worked hard and were careful about your budget in every way. Last year, my wife and I decided to return to the Philadelphia Folk Festival after a hiatus of 20 years. The Philadelphia Folk Festival is a three-day weekend event with live music on multiple stages all day long, and a big evening concert each day. There are workshops, crafts, food and an opportunity to meet and even play music with some of the performers over this weekend event. However, the folk festival is held on a farm in the country-side outside of Philadelphia and the small towns in the area have limited motel/hotel space and it has been a tradition that the best way to attend is to camp at the festival site. Camping was fine twenty years ago, but we must be honest and tell you that the prospect of camping in late August on a farm outside of Philadelphia was one of the reasons we had not attended in many years aside from our normally heavy travel schedule.

For the 2005 Philadelphia Folk Festival, we rented a Recreational Vehicle (RV) and spent the weekend in semi-luxury. We chose CruiseAmerica and our experience was perfect for the two of us. For 2006, our plans for the folk festival will exceed the types of RV’s regularly available for lease. We have four couples and a single for a total of 9 people. The only option we felt was appropriate for this size group is an “entertainer” or “crew/band” style motorcoach conversion. We will be reporting regularly here to journal what it takes to accomplish this plan.