Bus driving, long hours but interesting times

Bus driving, long hours but interesting times
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published as
Oh, the bus driver's lot is not a happy one
in the
Nortland Reader
now the
Reader Weekly
August 31, 2000

Would you like a job that may pay over $18,000 per year that requires a moderate skill level, has some variety, and let’s you meet lots of people?  Try bus driving.  You have several opportunities in the Northland area from driving a mini-coach to a school bus to a city bus to an over-the-road coach.

The minimum requirements are being 18 or over (21 for some employers), having a valid driver’s license, passing a physical and a background check, and having a willingness to learn.  The larger employers will train you and pay you at least minimum wage for your training time.  Training varies from one to two weeks for school bus to five weeks with DTA.

If you like kids the best place to start is with a school district or a school bus company.  The Duluth Public Schools are not currently hiring but Ken Willms, manager of transportation, says that could change anytime.  Voyageur Bus Company is hiring according to Josh Penshak, the trainer at Voyageur.

Your starting pay at Voyageur would be $8.75 per hour; after several years experience you might get about $12.50.  Your usual schedule would be about 6:30 to 9:00 and 2:00 to 4:30.  Your actual schedule would vary according to the route you picked at the beginning of the school year.

Note: most of what follows is based on my own experience with Medicine Lake Lines and Ryder in the Twin Cities.  Medicine Lake Lines/Ryder operated school buses, mini-coaches, and transit buses.  It may not be exactly the same as you would find in Duluth.

You might find your training a piece of cake or you might wonder if you’ll ever do it right.  Persistence really helps.  It took me seven days before my school bus trainer would let me be tested.  Even then I took one left turn on the test too wide and had to back up in the intersection.  Would you believe that three years later I was training others in transit buses?

After you finish your training and have your Class B commercial driver’s license (CDL) in hand, you will be assigned a route.  For the first few days you will be accompanied by an experienced driver as you learn the route.  I don’t know why but in my car I could generally find my way around but with a school bus it took three days to learn my first route.  Three years later, I was often handed a route copy and asked to substitute on a route in ten minutes or less.  Duluth with its grid pattern of streets should be easier than the labyrinths of Twin Cities suburbs.

One of the jobs of a growing child is to test limits.  School bus riders are no exception.  Fortunately, on most routes you’ll find those who get obnoxious are the exception.  A word from you will suffice to get many kids to sit facing forward and talking quietly.  But if you have some seemingly incorrigible kids, you have many tools that are covered under “student management” in your training. 

You can find a safe place to pull the bus over and have a chat with the miscreant.  Or, you can write the student up and let the school deal with him or her.  One of my most satisfying experiences was, after a particularly obnoxious sixth grader returned from a two-day bus suspension, he apologized and was very helpful thereafter.

You might be able to get more work hours with charters.  I can’t say what kind of charter work you would get in Duluth.  I know I had a wide variety in the Twin Cities from school outings to ferrying the cast and crew of “West Side Story”, the latter charter being a story in itself.  You might also be a minor hero just by keeping your cool when a student breaks her arm on an outing.

Your success as a bus driver depends more on your attitude than anything else.  If you have a positive, problem-solving attitude, you will be a successful bus driver.  The bus drivers who didn’t succeed were often their own worst enemies.  One driver who I had trained got mad at another driver and didn’t show up.  I was disappointed because she had showed such great promise.  Another driver deliberately rammed the bus in front of him; fortunately no students were in either bus but the other driver was out for at least three weeks.  I know the ramming driver was immediately fired; I don’t know if any charges were made.

On the other hand, I knew many drivers who had been driving ten to twenty years and came to work every morning with a smile on their face.  I know if we hadn’t moved to Duluth I would probably still be driving from the terminal now owned by the British company First Group.

Do I miss bus driving?  Yes and no.

Although I normally get up at six, I don’t miss getting up at five or even earlier.  I also don’t miss the split shift, spending 15-20 minutes to drive home, spending an hour or two on a task, and then driving back, and getting home finally at 6:30 or a later in the evening.  I don’t miss the rowdy kids.  And I don’t miss the routes where I barely met the schedule and wondered when I’d get my next break.

But I do miss the easy charters where I nap, eat lunch, or read.  I do miss being in control of a big machine.  Every morning when I pulled out of the garage I felt a sense of pride: hey!  I can do this!  And of course I miss the people.  The chats and chess games in the drivers’ room.  The passengers who always had a friendly greeting.  The seniors who appreciated help with their groceries.  And of course, I miss getting paid to drive to interesting places.

But although the pay isn’t as great, I’d rather write about bus driving than do it.

©2000, 2007 Melvyn D. Magree