school bus
A school bus is any type of bus owned, leased, contracted to, or operated by a school or school district. It is regularly used to transport students to and from school or school-related activities, but not including a charter bus or transit bus ...
, and charter bus service across the United States and Canada. It is owned by Variant Equity Advisors.
History
Coach USA traces its history back to 1922 as Lackawanna Bus and later Consolidated Bus Lines, a small outfit operating local service in
Bergen County
Bergen County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of New Jersey.New Jersey and later along the
Jersey Shore
The Jersey Shore (known by locals simply as the Shore) is the coastal region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about of oceanfront bordering the Atlantic Ocean, from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Po ...
Community Coach
Community Coach is a bus operator in northern New Jersey owned by Coach USA, operating fixed route and charter service.
Routes
Directly controlled
Community Coach, as Community Transit Lines, operates a single line run from the Port Authority Bu ...
, today the headquarters of Coach USA, began operations in 1958 under Denis's brother, John. The latter took over the operations of Consolidated Bus Lines, using the operating authority of another company that the Gallagher family had purchased in Paramus, New Jersey three years prior; through other acquisitions by the Gallagher family, six of these companies would become subsidiaries of Coach USA at its inception in 1995, when Frank Gallagher sold the firms to Notre Capital Ventures.
At its inception, Coach USA consisted of six companies:
Suburban Trails
Suburban Transit is a bus operator in central New Jersey owned by Coach USA which provides commuter bus service from Mercer, Somerset, and Middlesex County to New York City and local bus service along the New Jersey Route 27
Route 27 is a stat ...
,
Community Coach
Community Coach is a bus operator in northern New Jersey owned by Coach USA, operating fixed route and charter service.
Routes
Directly controlled
Community Coach, as Community Transit Lines, operates a single line run from the Port Authority Bu ...
, Leisure Line, and Adventure Trails in New Jersey, Gray Line of San Francisco and Arrow Stage Line in Arizona (not to be confused with unaffiliated Arrow Stage Lines). Listing on the
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
in 1996 under ticker TOUR, and later switching to the New York Stock Exchange under stock ticker CUI, Coach USA, under the leadership of Richard Kristinik, would expand quickly, acquiring Progressive Transportation Services Inc. a contractor of municipal transit systems in Upstate New York. Coach USA acquired additional companies throughout the United States in the next three years to expand to over 5,000 buses and many more taxicabs, as its acquisitions also included yellow cab firms throughout the United States. During this time, the Gallagher family would start another company, Student Transportation of America, based in the area of its Coast Cities operation.
In 1998, Kristinik retired, and Larry King succeeded him.
Stagecoach Group
Stagecoach Group is a transport group based in Perth, Scotland. It operates buses, express coaches and a tram service in the United Kingdom.
History
Stagecoach was born out of deregulation of the British express coach market in the early ...
would purchase Coach USA in mid-1999 for $1.88 billion.
Under Stagecoach ownership and the helm of Frank Gallagher, the owner of its predecessors, Coach USA sought to continue expansion, but the company, hit hard by the loss of charter business after the
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
, caused Stagecoach to crash to a loss of over £524 million, at which point Stagecoach, having lost over 70 percent of its investment and now under the leadership of its founder, Brian Souter, after the downturn cost the previous CEO of Stagecoach his job, announced that all of the taxicab operations and most of Coach USA's subsidiaries were for sale, as Stagecoach sought to focus mostly on operations in the
northeast
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
, where Coach USA today maintains subsidized transit operations and scheduled service.
Retrenching, Stagecoach sold its companies in New England to Peter Pan Bus Lines.Coach USA sell-offs keep strategy on track '' On Stage'' issue 51 July 2003 page 4 Companies in the Southwest, West, and Rocky Mountain regions were sold to
KKR
KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strateg ...
to form Coach America, and companies in the southeastern United States were sold to
Lincolnshire Management
Lincolnshire Management is a private equity firm focused on investments and acquisitions in middle-market companies across a range of industries. In 2010, Private Equity News ranked Lincolnshire as a top ten performing private equity firm. Additi ...
, rebranded as American Coach Lines (which was merged with Coach America in 2006), all at heavy losses. The contract transit division (Progressive Transportation) was sold to competitor First Transit. As a result of the sale of most of Coach USA's operations, the company's headquarters were relocated from Texas to the
Community Coach
Community Coach is a bus operator in northern New Jersey owned by Coach USA, operating fixed route and charter service.
Routes
Directly controlled
Community Coach, as Community Transit Lines, operates a single line run from the Port Authority Bu ...
garage in Paramus, New Jersey. Eight of the sold companies would be reacquired when Coach America declared bankruptcy in 2012, along with Lakefront/Hopkins in Ohio, with the intent of expanding (and in the case of California, reintroducing) the Megabus brand.
Coach USA's operations today consist primarily of scheduled services in the
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
Southern Tier
The Southern Tier is a geographic subregion of the broader Upstate New York region of New York State, consisting of counties west of the Catskill Mountains in Delaware County and geographically situated along or very near the northern border ...
of New York and southern Wisconsin, along with its Megabus operations throughout the eastern and central United States. In December 2018 Stagecoach announced it had agreed to sell all of its North American operations to Variant Equity Advisors subsidiary Project Kenwood Acquisition with the deal concluded in April 2019. Coach USA closed Chicago Trolley & Double Decker Co. in 2019. Coach USA closed Lakefront Lines in Ohio and Butler Motor Transit and Central Cab in Pennsylvania in 2020, due to the
pandemic
A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...
Elko, NV
Elko (Shoshoni: Natakkoa, "Rocks Piled on One Another") is the largest city in and county seat of Elko County, Nevada, United States. With a 2020 population of 20,564, Elko is currently growing at a rate of 0.31% annually and its population has ...
)
*
Community Coach
Community Coach is a bus operator in northern New Jersey owned by Coach USA, operating fixed route and charter service.
Routes
Directly controlled
Community Coach, as Community Transit Lines, operates a single line run from the Port Authority Bu ...
Clarksburg, WV
Clarksburg is a city in and the county seat of Harrison County, West Virginia, United States, in the north-central region of the state. The population of the city was 16,039 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Clarksburg micr ...
New York, NY
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
Gillette, WY
Gillette (, '' jih-LET'') is a city in and the county seat of Campbell County, Wyoming, United States. The town was founded in 1891 as a major railway town on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
The population was estimated at 32,030 a ...
Megabus is an intercity bus service providing discount travel services since 2006, operating throughout the eastern, southern, midwestern, and western United States and in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Megabus is notable for using curbside bus stops instead of traditional stations, low fares starting at $1, and in recent years, operating a point-to-point network of routes with buses making few stops en route to their destination.