For a variety of reasons I'll get to in a moment, the school bus industry will likely need to hang onto existing buses a bit longer and order more spare parts than usual. Fortunately, however, a growing number of manufacturers have responded to this need. Therefore, it is incumbent upon you, the school transportation managers, to know what you're up against, and to take advantage of the solutions out there. Those who don't will be more a victim of their own procrastination than any marketplace conditions, however real. Why focus on parts?
There are several reasons why school bus operators will need to pay attention to their parts inventories more than in the past. First, while budgets for new buses have been healthier than they've been in a long time throughout most areas of the country, they still haven't kept up with all of the need. You know that budgets haven't addressed either your backlog of new bus orders or keeping pace with the growing transportation demand, thanks to the historic levels of enrollment in the nation's public schools. SCHOOL BUS FLEET's own survey data pretty much support that conclusion, as new bus orders have been hovering around the 37,000 unit level in recent years. The second reason why you'll need to think about parts is a little more short-term, however. In this publication and others, you've no doubt read about the bus production and delivery bottlenecks caused by the shortage of Allison transmissions. This isn't only because Allison underestimated the demand for those subsystems; I don't think anyone expected the overwhelming growth in all affected markets, not just in the school bus segment. The transit bus market, for example, hasn't been as healthy as it now is in decades, and the truck industry — the real "600-pound gorilla" in the heavy vehicle markets — has reached similar record levels. Demand for tour coaches and shuttle buses is similarly head-spinning. Now, contrary to some Chicken Littles' predictions out there, this is probably a temporary bottleneck that might take a year and a half to go away at most. Still, the result of all this is that for a while you'll have to adopt a "Baskin Robbins" strategy: Take a number. Be patient. Manufacturers ease the process
Fortunately, several manufacturers are offering some pretty innovative tools to help you with parts inventory management. For example, Navistar has launched its Diamond Connection(tm), a computer-based stock management system that tracks what you have on hand, when you bought and used it, and even comes with a way to automatically order parts when the system recognizes that inventory is getting below recommended levels. Freightliner Custom Chassis Corp. offers a similar system called Parts Pro, which has been in use for about five years. A less high-tech approach is that by AmTran Corp. It recently created a parts council that will function like its dealer advisory group but will devote all its attention to aftermarket issues. In forming the new council, AmTran noted that its parts volume has doubled in the past three years.