With Bus Sales Up, Crown Coach Is Prepared to Roll Merrily Along
Armed with an improved climate for public transportation and $30 million in new financing, Los Angeles-based Crown Coach International has launched a major expansion program that is expected to produce nearly $80 million in sales in 1985, said Chairman Llewellyn C. Werner.
“The Proposition 13 wave has crested, hit the beach and receded,” Werner said, leaving cities, counties and school districts with more money to buy the school buses, fire trucks and transit buses made by Crown Coach, one of the nation’s oldest manufacturers of school buses.
In addition, school districts are buying more buses to accommodate the Baby Boom Generation’s children, who are now reaching school age, he said. That contrasts with the “bus glut” of the late 1970s, when enrollment was declining and school districts facing desegregation programs didn’t buy as many vehicles as many bus companies anticipated.
“This is a nice position to be in, suddenly,” Werner said.
Privately held Crown Coach International (formerly Crown Coach Corp.) is expecting to deliver a record 500 school buses and hire “several hundred people” in 1985, Werner said. The company now has more than 350 employees at its downtown factory and at its recently purchased plant in Chino, up from about 180 employees a year ago, he said.
Sales in 1985 “will be pushing $80 million,” compared to nearly $30 million in 1984 and nearly $20 million in 1983, Werner said.
Higher sales also reflect the success of the company’s diversification program, which includes the sale of products that Crown Coach once manufactured only for itself, Werner said. For example, Crown Coach supplies chassis to a motor home manufacturer and makes cabs with chassis for a fire-truck manufacturer.
Crown Coach also is investigating future diversification ventures, Werner said. It currently builds large “articulated” buses--hinged in the middle for better cornering--under a 7-year-old agreement with Ikarus Body & Coach Works of Hungary.
Crown Coach’s nine-acre facility at 12th Street and Sante Fe Avenue in downtown Los Angeles is one of five sites being considered by the state Department of Corrections for a medium-security prison. If the site is selected, Crown Coach plans to move all of its operations to its 300,000-square-foot factory on the 36-acre Chino site, Werner said.
