Get the most out of your buses with Refurbishment..

Why do bus operators refurbish buses? And why is it becoming so popular amongst bus companies as a way of extending the life of their buses?

In a time when bus companies have to be financially aware of the costings of various different things and rather than buying brand new buses for hundreds of thousands of pounds they revive some of their older buses through refurbishing them. After seven or so years buses are sent for refurbishment to give them a possible five extra years in service and after that with buses in near to new condition they're able to re sell them and invest in the whole system again for other vehicles.

There are different approaches to giving buses some love and care, some companies opt to only  refurbishing essential work such as seating others go 'all out' to invest a substantial amount of money in bringing a tired bus into what would be seen by passengers as a brand new bus despite the age.

Nottingham City Transport are a prime example of where they use refurbishment to extend the life of their buses and allow them to use the funds from their unwanted assets to invest in new buses and the refurbishment of other buses.

With Nottingham City Transport and their refurbishment programme they replace any of the panels that need replacing, deep clean their buses inside and out, re-seat their buses with new cushions and moquette and in some cases extend the buggy bay, install real time equipment and next-stop displays and repaint/re-vinyl their buses. With this level of refurbishment it brings them up to 'brand new' standard at the fraction of the cost of a new one.

Nottingham City Transport also make use of their spare bits and pieces from their sold assets such as their withdrawn Scania Wright Fusion bendy-buses the seating from them buses were transferred over to their ex Maroon Line Scania OmniTowns now in use on LocalLink53.

The refurbishment of vehicles for Turquoise Line 76/78/79 use Scania Omnidekka that are 53' plate, 04 and 55' plate and were refurbished at different years and with them being at different ages rather than the slight change in vinyls between the older models and the newer ones you couldn't tell the difference between a 53' plate and 55' plate and if you asked a passenger 'how old would you say these buses are' they'd say around 4 or 5 years old.

With the option of using the car or other operators service, bus companies have to make their buses look more appealing and attractive as possible to get as many people as they can on their buses and as we've discussed in another article that the way the company portray themselves through presentation of buses is the impression they're giving the passengers before they've used the service or company.