Virginia Overland Transportation
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Virginia Overland Transportation was an organization in Virginia in the United States which operated new and used bus dealerships and a number of intrastate urban-suburban bus lines for about 30 years in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Representing Wayne Corporation and several other franchised product lines, the company sold approximately 3000 new and used buses between 1976 and 2004. In the 1970s and 1980s, Virginia Overland acquired and consolidated a number of other privately-owned Virginia public service companies, some dating back to streetcar and interurban operations in the early 20th century. Based primarily in the Richmond-Petersburg region, at one time or another, the company also operated local bus services in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads areas of the state. By 1984, it was operating the second largest privately-managed fleet of school buses in Virginia, a school bus contractor second in size only to Laidlaw Transit.
After labor troubles in 1986 and 1987, several of its major public school division customers converted to self-operation of their school buses beginning in 1989. In June 2004, the government-owned Greater Richmond Transit Company assumed Virginia Overland's contract operations for welfare-to-work van service and a transit service for a state-owned university. Principally as a result of the reverse privatizations, which represented 80% of its gross revenues, the privately-owned company went out-of-business later that year.
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[edit] History, growth through acquisitions
Virginia Overland's parent company was formed in 1973 as a small school bus management and consulting company. In 1975, it expanded into operating a cooperative school bus system serving 5 independent schools in the Richmond area. The following year, the service had grown to 13 schools and the company began to acquire all or controlling portions of a number of other older Virginia public service transportation companies, some with roots back to interurban streetcar operations as early as 1915, and urban-suburban bus line bus operations dating from 1928. (Under Virginia law, an "urban-suburban bus line" is defined as a bus service "the majority of whose passengers use the buses for traveling a distance no more than forty miles, measured one way, on the same day, between their residences and their places of employment, stores, or schools.")
[edit] Transportation services
As an innovative and versatile provider of privatization services, Virginia Overland Transportation contracted school bus transportation, commuter transportation, paratransit services, university inter-campus transportation, shuttle bus services, special event operations, and chartered bus services for federal, state, and local government agencies as well as non-profit organizations, businesses and companies.
Virginia Overland's largest long-term contracts included the yellow school bus systems for Petersburg City Public Schools from 1981-1989, Hopewell City Public Schools from 1984-1996, and Virginia Commonwealth University's campus transit services from 1989-2004. The company also transported the Richmond Jewish Community Center's summer day camp program for 27 years, and operated the shuttle bus system at Richmond International Raceway from 1989 to 2004. The company operated an FTA award-winning welfare-to-work van service in the Richmond under contract to Greater Richmond Transit Company from 2001-2004.
[edit] Emergency services
Virginia Overland staff utilized the company's resources to assist in emergency situations in its communities on several instances.
On the morning of February 24, 1977, the Benjamin Harrison Memorial Bridge on the James River near Hopewell was struck by an ocean-going tanker ship, severing State Route 156, a major commuter artery between Charles City County and Prince George County. Later on the day of the accident, state officials called upon local bus, taxicab, and water transportation providers, including both Greyhound Lines and Trailways, to offer potential solutions for the commuters. Virginia Governor Mills E. Godwin Jr.'s Office of Emergency Services selected Virginia Overland to operate the land portion of what became an innovative solution, a hybrid combination of land and water services to comprise a unique system for commuters, which was in operation within 3 days, essentially operating from dawn to dusk. Virginia Overland used two-way radio-equipped vans and school buses based on each side of the river to coordinate with the passenger ferries. Expanded parking was provided by VDOT at both docks. During this operation, commuters would drive to the ferry dock area on the side of their residence and literally "Park, Ride, and Ride." The van and bus service on the south shore ran between the dock at Jordan's Point and various schools and places of employment, including many businesses in Prince George County, Hopewell and notably Fort Lee, a large base of the U.S. Army located nearby. In the opposite situation, some workers who lived on the south side of the river, parked and rode the ferry, and then vans or buses transported them to employment, mostly at Charles City County Public Schools and other governmental offices. Services continued for 20 months until the bridge was reopened.
In 1984, during a large cold weather industrial fire, the company was commended by the Richmond Bureau of Fire for taking the initiative of sending a transit bus to the scene and operating it all night to provide shelter for fire fighters. The company also won praise from the Hopewell Fire Department for its response during the August 6, 1993 Virginia tornado outbreak in the Tri-Cities area which killed 4 people and caused $50 million in property damage. The company sent staff and school buses from its Richmond terminal to provide shelter from the rain and shuttle services for displaced elderly residents from a large heavily-damaged apartment complex.
[edit] Bus dealerships
Virginia Overland operated several bus dealerships, notably a franchise for Wayne Corporation which delivered over 2,000 new school and commercial buses between 1976 and 1990. (Wayne Corporation closed in 1992)
The dealership also represented other franchised product lines, including Mid Bus, Champion Bus Incorporated, and several manufacturers of wheelchair lifts and accessories, with sales primarily in Virginia and North Carolina.
Including the new buses from Wayne, Virginia Overland sold approximately 3,000 new and used buses and vans to its customers between 1976 and 2004 from its dealership locations in Henrico County, Petersburg, Hopewell and Richond,
[edit] Employees, labor problems
Virginia Overland Transportation was staffed by many employees with prior public service expertise, including current and former (GRTC) and Richmond Public Schools employees, as well as some from other local public school divisions and retirees from military service and other organizations. The wide range of services and bus equipment combined to attract bus enthusiasts as employees. At its peak in 1984, the company was operating 135 revenue vehicles, and had over 175 employees.
In October 1986, some of the employees at the largest operation in the Tri-Cities area and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for labor union elections. The company management felt that a unionized operation could not compete with the advantages of school district self-operation of school buses because public employee unions of school bus employees are generally not recognized by local and state government in Virginia, a right-to-work state. (In 1976, a similar unionization attempt of school bus drivers working for ARA Transportation, another school bus contractor, by the Teamsters Union in Norfolk had resulted in considerable violence and several buses were burned. The unionization there failed after the Virginia State Police assisted in ensuring that the Norfolk City Public Schools bus operations were not interrupted by the protesters).
In an attempt to avoid an election, Virginia Overland management appealed the request for election. NLRB hearings were held on several issues in the fall of 1986 and early 1987 in Richmond and Petersburg. However, the company was unsuccessful in blocking an election. Following an NLRB determination that an election be held, approximately 75 of Virginia Overland's hourly transportation and maintenance employees voted at the Petersburg terminal in May 1987. The election results were to remain non-union.
[edit] Reverse privatization
Virginia Overland's labor problems and NLRB hearings were closely watched by the public school officials from Petersburg and Hopewell. Two years after winning the election and remaining non-unionized, at the expiration of the current contract period in 1989, the largest portion of its services were assumed by self-operation by Petersburg Public Schools in 1989. Another smaller contract operation for nearby Hopewell Public Schools also converted to self-operation in 1996. The only other public school bus contract in Virginia at Norfolk (operated by Laidlaw Transit) had also converted to self-operation in 1991.
The 3 school division conversions, at Petersburg, Norfolk and Hopewell, were urged by Virginia Department of Education officials as "cost-saving". The contracting companies unsuccessfully disputed the state's financial calculations and cost allocations for the reverse privatizations, which effectively ended all public school bus contracting in Virginia at the time.
[edit] Closing 2004
After over 30 years in business, in June, 2004, Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC), the local public transit agency in Richmond, Virginia jointly-owned by the City of Richmond and Chesterfield County, assumed self-operation of Virginia Overland's contracted services for a welfare-to-work van service, as well as provision of the VCU Campus Transit system using Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funded equipment. The loss represented 80% of the non-subsidized private bus company's income, and the company's Richmond-based business was forced to close.
A former Virginia Overland subsidiary operation in the Norfolk area (divested in the 1990s and now owned by Serco Group) operates as Transquest and was continuing bus contract operations transporting students to independent schools as of 2007.
Virginia Overland Transportation's parent corporation was dissolved in 2005.
[edit] Listing of Virginia Overland predecessor organizations, dates formed
- Petersburg and Appomattox Railway (1915)
- Hopewell and City Point Railway (1915)
- Petersburg, Hopewell, and City Point Railway (1916)
- Richmond Ashland Railway (1918)
- Petersburg, Hopewell, and City Point Transportation Co. (1928)
- Petersburg-Hopewell Bus Lines (1939)
- Bon Air Transit Company (1946)
- Tri-City Coaches, Inc. (1958)
- Hopewell Bus Company (1965)
- VRH Corporation (1973)
- Virginia Overland Transportation Co. (1975)
- Virginia Overland Charter Service (1976)
- Virginia Overland Bus Sales (1976)
- Virginia Overland Tri-City Coaches, Inc. (1981)
- Dominion Coach Company (1983)
- Virginia Overland Bus Lines (1983)
- Laidlaw Transit VA (Norfolk) (1985) (Note: an eastern VA subsidiary of Laidlaw Transit only)
- Mechanicsville Bus Line (1988)
- Virginia Overland Transportation Services, Inc. (VOTS) (1990)
- Overland Bus Sales (1990)
- Virginia Public Service Transportation (1992)
