Badgerline

Badgerline was a bus operator in and around Bristol from 1985 until 2003. Its headquarters were in Weston-super-Mare. Initially a part of the Bristol Omnibus Company, it was privatised in September 1986 and sold to Badgerline Holdings in a management buyout. It went on to purchase a number of bus companies in England and Wales. In November 1993, Badgerline Group was listed on the stock exchange and, on 16 June 1995, it merged with the GRT Group to form FirstBus's bus services in and around Weston-super-Mare.

History

1906-1980

The Bristol Tramways Company started operating buses in 1906 to feed traffic into their tram services from beyond the boundaries of the city of Bristol. In 1910 a branch was opened in Weston-super-Mare where the company's first bus station was opened on the sea front in the 1930s. Others were built after World War II at Wells, Bath and Bristol. The company changed its name to the Bristol Omnibus Company in 1957 as it no longer operated trams, but by then it was owned by the British Transport Commission and so became a subsidiary of the National Bus Company (NBC) on 1 January 1969.

1980-1985

In the 1980s the NBC split its subsidiaries into smaller operating units. Bristol Omnibus established a separate operating unit for its services outside Bristol in September 1983 and then introduced three distinct brands in April 1985, with operations in Somerset and the Avon outside the city of Bristol becoming Badgerline.

1986-1990

Badgerline was established as a company in its own right and sold to a group of its managers and staff on 23 September 1986. This was the second bus-operating NBC subsidiary to be sold.

Northern Counties Palatine bodied Leyland Olympian & Badgerline Bristol VR in May 2011
In December 1986, six of the company's managers and 90 other staff formed Badgerline Holdings as a limited company to purchase Badgerline from NBC. Employees held 95% of Badgerline's share capital. It went on to buy two travel agencies, Roman City of Bath, and NBC subsidiary National Travelworld. On 7 August 1987 Western National, which operated in Plymouth and Cornwall, was sold by NBC to Plympton Coachlines with Badgerline Holdings having an initial 39% shareholding, which was increased to 66% in August 1988.NBC privaties two more subs
''Commercial Motor'' 13 August 1987 page 22

In April 1988, Badgerline Holdings purchased Midland Red West Holdings,In Brief
''Commercial Motor'' 21 April 1988 page 28 another ex-NBC employee buy-out that had purchased Bristol Omnibus in September 1987, and continued to operate city services in Bristol. Because of this the company was referred to the Monopolies & Mergers Commission who reported in March 1989 on concerns regarding the ownership by a single company of the two principal bus operators in Avon. Ensuing discussions led to the company giving two undertakings:
# it would not seek to re-register any services that had been lost
# tenders for subsidised routes would be done fairly and scrutinised by an auditor.

The company created three subsidiaries in 1987 in an attempt to expand into new operating areas, none of which lasted more than a year. It sold its share in Red Admiral to Southampton Citybus but their operations in Poole and Salisbury lost £962,000.
*Badgerline South operated 21 Iveco and 12 Ford Transit minibuses in Salisbury.
*Badger Vectis operated in Bournemouth and Poole as a joint venture with Southern Vectis using 7 Iveco minibuses and 16 single deck buses, mostly Bristol REs.
*Red Admiral operated in Portsmouth as a joint venture with Southampton Citybus.

1990-1995

The company expanded into South Wales and Essex and then floated on the stock exchange as the Badgerline Group in November 1993, followed by acquisition of Potteries Motor Traction and Yorkshire Rider in 1994.

Badgerline Group had also unsuccessfully promoted guided buses and articulated buses as solutions to Bristol's transport problems in the 1990s.

The Badgerline Group merged with GRT Group to form FirstBus