The coach division of Bournemouth Transport has expanded its operations post-pandemic. Richard Sharman visited the South Coast to find out more
Yellow Coaches is a name that is well known in our industry, and it has a long and interesting history. For me it was seeing its East Lancs-bodied Volvo B10M double-deckers arriving in Oxford every Saturday morning in the mid-1990s, normally in convoy, carrying foreign students to the Oxpens coach park for a day out in Oxford, that got my attention. But how has the operation changed over the years?
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A coaching unit with heritage
Bournemouth Transport, as it is known today, was previously a municipal operator, owned by Bournemouth Council. It has always maintained a small coaching unit but this increased in size in 1994 when it acquired Dorset Travel Services (DTS). The acquisition of DTS brought with it several National Express contracts and a fleet of modern coaches. The DTS fleet name continued alongside Yellow Coaches for a short period before it was absorbed into a single identity for private hire in 1997. During this period a revised Yellow Coaches livery was introduced, with a yellow base and a revised fleet name of DTS Yellow Coaches on a blue background, plus two blue ribbons down the side.
Operations continued under that fleet name until 2001 when the coaching unit was absorbed into Bournemouth Transport. National Express contracts continued to be run between Dorset and London, but private hire work ceased by 2004. By the end of 2005, the company became 90% owned by Transdev, with 10% being retained by Bournemouth Council. The operation then transferred to RATP Group ownership in 2011, and in 2018 RATP acquired the remaining 10% of the shares.
Some 12 years later, in 2016, private hire operations slowly recommenced with two Caetano Levantes. By 2017 four coaches were operated and in 2018 seven Setra coaches arrived from fellow RATP Group company Epsom Coaches, which had just ended coach operations to concentrate on its Quality Line bus operation. On 2 July 2018, the operations of Bournemouth Transport Ltd were acquired in a management buyout by its three directors, David Squire, Phil Pannell and Simon Newport.
Recruiting the right person
The groundwork for the expansion of Yellow Coaches was now in place at the Yeomans Way depot, but it needed the right person to drive the division forward and grow its opportunities. This is where Jay Thornton stepped in: “I started in the industry a few years ago, following my lifetime ambition. I had always had an interest in buses, and it became my career goal to work with them in some way. This led me to go about gaining my PCV licence independently. At the time I already had my own business, so was able to do casual driving initially as a coach driver for Go South Coast. Shortly after I joined, the company acquired Excelsior. There were a lot of experienced staff there, and I learned a lot from them. From there I progressed to an Operations Supervisor role, working for Adam Keen. I developed a passion for coaching, which surprised me as my main interest had always been the bus side, but I think it was the attention to detail and high levels of presentation that was the most appealing to me. Everything always has to be just right,” enthused Jay.
“I can still flip between both buses and coaches, but coaching is where my passion now lays, and it’s that passion that Yellow Buses heard about and that got me noticed, as I was using social media a lot at the time. I was offered the position of Sales Executive in January 2019, so after three years at Go South Coast I decided to make the move and use all the experience I had built up on the road, and in the office.”
From the ground up
“When I first started at Yellow Coaches I could see that the groundwork has been done, but realised fairly quickly that the division had huge potential and there was so much more that I could bring to help expand the offering to the customer,” explained Jay. “When I arrived we had the National Express contracts, a couple of Caetano Levantes and the former Epsom Coaches Setras. There was no identity with the coach division that said ‘this is us and this is what we offer our customers.’
“I was given a bit of free reign by Simon and David to get on and build the division. They said ‘you know what we want to achieve,’ it was nice that they had that trust in me. I started by building a new customer base and signing up for everything coaching related. When I joined we had one cruise ship logistic provider, this has now been built up to four logistics operators. We don’t provide our own tours and holidays, but there is no reason why we cannot operate them for someone else, so we have been working with some nationwide holiday providers to build this side of the business up. Another important aspect of the division was to build its own identity on social media and with our website, of which a new version has just been launched. I was also very aware of the heritage of Yellow Coaches and wanted to ensure that our new livery would incorporate some aspects of that. I have an issue with liveries that do not flow, so it was important to me that this new livery looked good from every angle. Back in the 1990s, our coaches had a bold fleet name down the side of the vehicle, so rather than having the Yellow Coaches name stacked like it was in the RATP era, we brought it back to being side by side but excluded the enlarged Y and S with Bournemouth underlining it. This version was to be a modern take on it, with added three-dimensional ribbons that represent motion. I designed the livery in-house with our graphic designer.”
“The move away from RATP ownership just after me starting had meant there were no corporate livery guidelines on branding, allowing us to take ownership of our identity.”
Moving the brand forward
“With the livery designed, we then set about rolling it out, the first coach to be treated was a Caetano Levante that was cascaded from fellow group company, at the time, Selwyns – 980, FJ56 PAO, which was then re-registered as Y6 YEL. This then married in with our website and promotional leaflets. However, we still had quite a mixed fleet at the time so it was like taking baby steps at first as the livery roll out started to take place.” explained Jay.
“At that point, we not only invested in the new identity but also the fleet. The Setra S416GT-HD’s went one by one, to be replaced with Euro VI-engined Irizar i6s. This helped to speed up the livery roll-out. With branded vehicles now increasing, we started an email marketing campaign, and this has led to us building great relationships with all the local schools. Even with all this technology, I am a great believer in also using traditional methods, so going to see prospective customers is always nice and allows us to explain what we offer.
“With schools, it’s all about budget, so we cater to their needs and provide coaches when they need them, often between school contract runs. It’s all about reaching out to the local community and offering them a service that is value for money.”
Yellow Coaches’ operating area is shared with Go South Coast and National Express Group coaching units but as Jay explained, this is not seen as an issue: “We are quite fortunate that we have good relationships with many local independent operators, being locally owned and operated ourselves.
Minibus fleet
Yellow Coaches now has several minibuses in the fleet. Jay explained how this came about: “Two months after I joined the company, in March 2019, we won our first minibus contract which was a school contract for the local authority. We have since helped them expand this service by originally using a larger vehicle than required. This led on to two other local college contracts. Shortly after this, the Covid-19 pandemic came along, but these routes still operated throughout that period. So we now have several minibuses for these contracts and that can be hired out,” recounted Jay.
“In addition, we acquired several First Travel Solutions contracts to transport rail staff across the county, this lead us to expand the minibus fleet further and we have standardised on EVM for those. The customers like them and every one we have purchased has been well prepared for us.”
PSVAR and rail replacement
“At this point, our portfolio had expanded, but there was still room to take it further, so I spent months building our working relationship with First Travel Solutions as we had not done much rail replacement work previously. Our premium work, such as cruise transport and coach holidays, runs from April to October, so I was more than aware that we needed something for those winter months so it proves longevity for everything else.
“Pre-Covid we knew that Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations (PSVAR) for coaches were coming in. We already had some Caetano Levantes in the fleet that are compliant, and at that point, non-PSVAR coaches were still being accepted for rail replacement work, but we had enough premium work to keep the Irizars busy eight months a year. The pandemic changed that situation and the Government was now putting pressure on rail operators to find compliant vehicles. Our long term plan was always to implement PSVAR into our coach division as a one sized fits all fleet. We brought those plans forward as one of our other customers has now decided that most of their allocation of vehicles needs to be PSVAR-compliant for their wheelchair-user customers. I think we are all aware that the PSVAR requirement will be expanded as time goes on, so we reached out to Julie Hartley at Irizar UK, who has been a great help to us over the last 18 months, and helped arrange to get the first Irizar i6 converted. The second one will also go back to the factory for conversion, and any subsequent vehicles purchased from Irizar will be PSVAR-compliant. We are also trying to lead the way locally in respect of accelerating our investment in having a PSVAR-compliant fleet.”
Express work taken in-house
Bournemouth Transport had a long history of providing coaches for National Express from the South Coast to London, but that situation was to change in the months following National Express Group’s purchase of the Lucketts Travel Group in March 2020, which had been building a portfolio of coach operators throughout the South Coast. By August of the same year, it had given two operators on the South Coast notice that it would be taking its contracts in-house, and Bournemouth Transport was one of them.
Jay explained how the situation worked out for them: “It was a question of just dealing with the situation. Timing-wise for us it was not so bad, we had not long taken delivery of a batch of new Caetano Levante 3 coaches on lease. The older Caetano Levante 2 coaches in the fleet had already been cascaded to general private hire, rail replacement and school work, so there were no issues with us keeping those as we already had the work for them. There are no hard feelings there and we continue to grow our coach division and work with National Express to provide duplicate services.
Working with megabus
“The loss of our National Express work lead to other doors opening that wouldn’t have been possible before,” said Jay. “A short time after our express service contracts had ended, we entered into a new relationship with megabus that would take us to areas not covered by us in our past. December 2020 was to be the first month that we undertook work for megabus, and this was to assist during the busy Christmas period. It saw our coaches operating as far south west as Falmouth and as far north as Bradford. This work just slotted in nicely, as we had the coaches and drivers to carry it out. We have now jointly introduced a Heathrow and London service from Weymouth, Poole and Bournemouth that has been well received by the local community. We have a large group of people living in the area who love travelling throughout the country, and they are grateful that they now have a choice of provider. It’s all about giving the public a choice.”
“We have a working with the brilliant team at megabus to continue developing that commercial relationship by using our knowledge of the local area and their expertise of the megabus brand and what they think is going to work for them to find a happy medium,” enthused Jay.
“Since we have started working together we have also provided services for the Silverstone Grand Prix, picking up in various towns and cities throughout the south.”
Yellow Coaches provides the coach drivers and depot facilities for the megabus services to London & Heathrow from Dorset.
Open-top services
A recent change has been the incorporation of Yellow Buses’ open-top tour work into the coach division. As Jay explained, it’s all about customer service: “The ‘staycation’ wave that is hitting the UK right now has been good for our coach division, and we realise that our open-top bus services also require that enhanced level of customer service, so from this season our Buster’s Beach Bus came under the coach division. We put all our drivers through enhanced customer service training with Simon Scarborough Associates to give our customers that premium experience they deserve whilst on holiday. We also revamped our open-top services for this season, so they now go from Bournemouth to Mudeford via Hengistbury Quay, and from Alum Chine via Bournemouth Pier to Boscombe Pier.”
Another partnership operation is the Golden Tours Bournemouth open-top tour, which Yellow Coaches is providing the drivers and depot facilities for.
“Golden Tours has a heavy presence in London, but were looking to expand to tourist locations in the UK. They had already expanded into York and Windsor, and then approached us. We are all about building relationships, so we were more than happy to discuss what we could do to help make this happen. Their route did not clash with ours as it’s a tour bus with taped commentary rather than a stage carriage service.”
Looking ahead
Talking about the future, Jay explained: “Our coach division currently has 34 drivers and a fleet of over 20 vehicles. We made no redundancies during the pandemic. We are now recruiting for coach drivers again, and in the grand scheme of things we have another half a dozen vacancies. We offer multiple separate rotas for each type of work we do. For example, there is a rota just for megabus work or Golden Tours and so on. We are happy to work with anyone and we are all about building those working relationships with other operators and third parties.”
It would certainly seem the future is looking bright for Yellow Coaches.
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