Greyhound seats and fleet questions

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Didn't those G4500s also come with tray tables? I actually rode one of them in Texas, #7274. Of course it's just like all the other Blue G's now. If the TVs were stolen, I'm sure the tray tables were also stolen. Guess it's pretty easy to remove the TVs.

Do you happen to know how much floor space is available on the DL3? I was wondering how much seat pitch there would be if they reduced capacity down to 47 or 43 passengers.
 
What happened to the tray tables? Did Greyhound remove them? Wouldn't be surprised if they did.

D4505 #LA86406 seems to be running in the West now. Really weird. I heard that's one of the worst D4505s! How are loads over Christmas and New Year's? I saw that Schedule 1006 Miami-New York City had two extra sections yesterday and again today! Today the three units are DL3s #85787, #6378, and #6928.

#6541 running the Denver-Reno today! About time a DL3 came here again! Too bad it's probably too cold for me to visit the terminal to see it. At least Greyhound is running Denver-Reno again.
 
Greyhound has taken delivery of 5 new 2016 MCI D4505s, #86567 and #0136-0139. All are powered with Cummins ISX12 425hp SCR engines. This brings Greyhound's D4505 fleet up to 207 units. I still don't understand why these units have weird numbers and their serial numbers are also not consecutive.

I was on BusTracker today and found numerous delayed schedules. I checked a dozen schedules and probably ten or eleven of them were over 15 minutes late. Many were late from the beginning of the run and the Denver-Reno keeps piling up more delays down the route. It appears that drivers in the West are intentionally delaying all their schedules.
 
While I was on a Gillig BRT, I saw an Ex-Greyhound MC-12 all white on the local roads. Those things are still kicking around despite them leaving the hound years ago.
 
MC-12 2544 is still alive and well. Was set up as the "mobile command post" at the rented 29th street lot over the holiday period..... of course, it no longer is used to carry passengers. It has an office and tool room interior and a few bunk beds....still in its white paint scheme....
 
#2544 only has about 2 million miles on it which isn't that much considering there are DL3s with more miles operating revenue service.

I read that Iberia had a 747-200B with something like 120,000 flying hours on it which would equate to approximately 65 million miles! Of course it probably didn't have that many cycles because IB used them on flights from Spain to the Americas. I wonder how many hours N661US or N174UA has.

Greyhound has deployed more Detroit-powered X3-45s to Los Angeles. They should be reaching 900,000 miles soon. Meanwhile, all G4500s and 102DL3s appear to have moved east. D4505s still dominate the San Francisco-Reno and Reno-Denver routes.
 
It's too bad I didn't get a picture of the 12 I caught, but I'm glad to see them around. I know a number of companies have 12s, I just need to not be lazy looking for them. :p
 
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I must say that I have nothing but disdain for mom-and-pop (privately-owned) bus operators. They act like arrogant, stupid pricks that have no clue what they're doing and just hide away in the charter business wrangling with each other for clients while putting forth an aura of "industry professionalism". Most of these fools use Van Hools, D4505s, and J4500s because they don't know better and they still think they're doing a great job.

Just look at stupid Orange Belt and Silver State for examples of mom-and-pop stupidity in the bus industry. Mom-and-pop bus lines have contributed to the overall degradation of new motorcoach quality by ordering inferior products and the lowest common denominator, just like NJT.
 
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From what I was old last year, the reason companies like Van Hool, Setra, Jonckheere, LAG, etc. all came into the US (mid 80s), was due to the fact European tourists and customers didn't like the buses that were being used at the time.

IDK how true that is, but as for build quality on coaches and buses in general. Buses overall have declined in quality and it doesn't help that so much EPA junk is stuffed into the buses, making reliability a problem on them.

As for mom and pop companies, some are good and some are bad. The good ones like Mears, Annett, Cruzado, TraveLynx, and Red Coach are impressive. Then again, those companies haven't bought from MCI in a while, minus TraveLynx.

They have MCI D4505s and I think some MC-12s left?, Van Hool C2045s, and Volvo 9700s. Speaking of which, here is the ex-hound working for TraveLynx. It's an old video, but most companies around here have the same buses they bought six or more years ago.

 
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Well, you know about the D4505 and C2045, so you know TravelLynx isn't really a good company.

Perhaps the bus industry would be better off without companies like TravelLynx. After all, if they didn't exist, the D4505 probably wouldn't exist too. At least the C2045 was cheap.

Without mom-and-pop bus lines, the MC-12 would be dead and buried too, instead of just dead and not buried. Lentzsch miscalculated his fleet. You either go all or you go nothing, not halfway.
 
TraveLynx is actually a good company. I wouldn't judge what coaches they use, just because of bad experiences with Greyhound. Everyone maintains buses differently compared to Greyhound and in some cases better.

Greyhound just can't maintain stuff as well as they use too these days and it's sad for anyone that's been riding them for a long time. The other companies, Mears has been Van Hool loyal for a long time (1998), Annett and Red Coach uses Prevost H3-45s.

ABC Companies is not too far away from Mears' garage, so they can order new buses or parts easily. Annett has been using Prevost coaches since the mid 80s and that relationship is still strong to this day.
 
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Any company that only offers charter services and uses D4505s and C2045s is not a good company. Maintenance and driver training doesn't matter. There is already way too many charter companies and they are doing no good for anybody by staying in the market. Management is incompetent. Every charter bus is a problem. Each charter bus added to the market is adding a problem. No Routes = No Good. Period.

We need a lot less charters and a lot more lines ASAP!
 
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Are you sure about that, cause maintenance and good driver training does matter. A machine or machines aren't good when you fail to maintain them. A properly trained driver goes a long way too. Charter companies with those said buses, the good ones, seem to be doing very well for themselves.

New D4500CTs are out of the question for charter companies. The last time DL3s (or D4500CTs) were relevant, it was during the last decade of the 20th century. D4500CTs are mostly bought by transit systems and that's really about it.

Why should other companies go for a bus whose design dates back to Greyhound's last glory years when you can go for one that is relatively newer? Academy Bus and Megabus are both giving everyone competition around here. That has caused everyone else to step up their A game with how they do business.
 
Some interesting facts from a New Flyer/MCI fact sheet:

MCI's sales are 35% public sector (transit agencies, universities, prisons) and 65% private sector (charter, line-haul)

MCI sold 835 new coaches and 312 pre-owned coaches

Virtually all of those public sector purchases would be new coaches... so doing a little math...

400: new public sector coaches

435: new private sector coaches

312: pre-owned private sector coaches

So sales of new coaches, which I would imagine are far more profitable, are split more or less evenly between the public and private sector. Public agencies are also much more likely to spring for expensive powertrain options like diesel electric hybrids and CNG fuel. So that better explains the importance of the public sector to MCI. It also explains why New Flyer, a company who sells a majority of its product to the public sector, would want purchase MCI.
 
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Interesting letter and attachment....thanks for posting it.

I wonder what if any, influence or synergy may occur as a result of Marcopolo's 19.9% ownership of the company?

At first glance, it would appear to just be an investment, but who knows in the future.....
 
railiner said:
I wonder what if any, influence or synergy may occur as a result of Marcopolo's 19.9% ownership of the company?

At first glance, it would appear to just be an investment, but who knows in the future.....
Click to expand...
I found that interesting too.I also found it interesting that, at this point, Daimler doesn't own a major share of New Flyer (they owned 10% of MCI). Daimler was supportive of the merger and has agreed to continue to allow MCI to be the US distributor for its Setra coaches and use its Detroit Diesel engines. I guess Daimler was impressed by New Flyer when the company picked up the parts and support business when it shut down Orion.
 
New Flyer's mission statement alone is better than MCI's.

But anyway, it's not surprising that MCI still sells a bit more private sector than public sector motorcoaches, since the J4500 is still (AFAIK) the bestseller and it's almost only used by the private sector. Those 400 public sector units are probably all New D's. These figures mean the D4505 is dead as a private sector coach, even though Greyhound took 4 more state-owned units in January 2016. Anything more than token amounts of D4505 sales would de-throne the J4500 as bestseller.

Of course, if the J4500 were no longer bestseller, that could change everything. If it is still bestseller, Prevost can't have overtaken MCI by many units. Since neither Prevost nor MCI has claimed another bestseller, I'll assume the J4500 is still bestseller, and that all 4 models (D, J, H, & X) sell about the same number overall. That is, unless Van Hool's CX45 is now bestseller. :eek:

Companies don't get sold for no reason. MCI must have been doing poorly for KPS to sell them to New Flyer.

Meanwhile, the CPTDB joke is still ongoing, as somebody copied the Texas DMV VIN list to the Greyhound roster, yet neglected to account for units transferred to Americanos.
 
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How does Greyhound deal with customs when crossing the border on the Chicago-Toronto route? Do they pre-clear in the Detroit/Windsor terminals or do they clear at the Peace Bridge?
 
Aha, I was just on Airliners and saw this:
"The 737MAX is the slightly to largely inferior offering compared to the 32xNeo; the 787 is too expensive to build and won't command the selling price Boeing hoped for due to the A330/A330neo; the 777 Classic is largely doomed because of the A350 and the 747 is, for all intents and purposes, dead and buried. Boeing's hopes now hinges on the 3rd evolution of the 777, hoping Airbus will sit still with their A350 development, and a vague plan of coming up with a A321neo 'killer'.

At the same time Boeing are raising the dividends, buying back stock and paying out bonuses - if the word on this thread are to be taken at face value.

I'm quite certain Boeing will not go even mildly down the drain, but it's not the first time the company has lost its way on the commercial side of the business. I think their biggest problems are that the 787 has failed to deliver on its dual promises of much lower production costs and angel of death to the A330, that the 737MAX has not been able to present a convincing enough argument, and that they are still embracing the MCD culture of applying ever increasing layers of lipstick to their pigs, all whilst wallowing in corporate arrogance. The 777X won't save either of that, if it'll save anything at all."

Reminds me of MCI, eh? Except MCI doesn't even have a 777X.

Then I saw this:
"In 2008-1010 I pointed out that with the unprecedented overruns in the 787 program, I was reasonably convinced that the program would not be able to break even to well over 1,000 frames.

I was laughed at and told I was stupid and knew nothing about airplane programs. Well, with 1,143 frames on order, Boeing is still not able to make a profit off of the 787. And now, with the information in this article, it seems as if the 787 program may never be profitable.

In general, I've seen a sense of arrogance and complacency out of Boeing since around 2002-3. Looks like those chickens are coming home to roost."

Reminds me of being "told" by the "bus industry professionals".
 

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