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California has long been recognized as a pioneer and trend-setter in so many ways, even in a field so seemingly mundane as school buses. If one lived in California during its golden decades, one couldn’t help but admire the superb yellow buses plying the freeways and streets, with their transit-style configuration and bellowing diesel engines. They were made by two companies, Gillig and Crown, and constructed so well out of such high quality materials, that their longevity eventually contributed to their demise. There are still some left ferrying children, even though twenty or thirty years old. Most have found productive lives in their retirement years, often south of the border, or in the case of this Gillig from the sixties, re-purposed as a home on wheels.
The Gillig brothers set up shop in Hayward, across the bay from San Francisco, and were intrigued by some early designs they had seen for transit-style school buses. By 1940, their first version was in production, but things didn’t really get underway until after the war. Unfortunately, there are no ready pictures available of the really early Gilligs; the one above here is probably from the fifties, and was used well into the eighties.
Gillig experimented and built both mid-engined (underfloor) buses as well as rear-engined ones. Their main competitor from the LA area, Crown, built only under-floor buses. In the forties and fifties, Gillig buses were mostly powered by the legendary Hall-Scott 590 gasoline six (I promise a full story on H-S engines soon), mostly in underfloor designs.
In 1957, Gillig purchased the Pacific Bus line from Kenworth Truck. Aspects of the Pacific Bus were integrated into the Gillig line, and the older one above reflects that.
In 1965, Gillig introduced the C-180 series bus, which our featured bus is almost certainly an example of. It was a turning point, because it used the new Cummins C-series diesel engine, and now mounted in the back (Gillig also still offered mid-engine buses with the lay-down Cummins diesel too). As you can see from this underfloor shots (looking forward), the drive-shaft on these buses is very short, as the engine and transmission are in a longitudinal orientation.
Here we see the underside of the engine, and its non-stock exhaust system. Gillig did use some other diesel engines other than the Cummins, especially the Caterpillar 1160 V8. Given the twin exhausts on each side, I’d say this one most likely has that engine.
During the fifties and sixties, California had an explosion of school-age kids, and Gillig was doing a nice business transporting them. In Northern California, they enjoyed a 70% market share, while Crown had the lion’s share of the Southern California school bus business. To meet the explosive demand, in 1967 Gillig built the first tandem-axle 40′ school bus, the DT-16 series (above). This shot from the front doesn’t exactly do it justice, but at the time, these were monsters. And their seating capacity was 97! Bus drivers were made of sterner stuff back then. That and they knew how to shift the ten-speed Spicer gearboxes with a thirty-some foot long linkage.
These tandem axle buses were unusual in that both axles were driven, like on a big semi truck. Typically, if a bus is heavy enough to require a second rear axle to meet maximum axle weight regs, it’s done with a tag axle, or un-driven, with just a single wheel on each side. Maybe it’s because these Gillig buses were built like tanks, almost literally. Unlike the GMC, other transit and highway coaches, and even the Crowns that were built mostly or partly out of aluminum alloys, these Gillig buses are built all out of steel, and the extra-heavy duty kind.
Gilligs were also used in Oregon and Washington, but from the barely visible lettering, this one appears to have spent its working days in the very picturesque Victorian town of Ferndale, on the mouth of the Eel River in Humboldt County, CA. Great place to walk around for a couple of hours.
This bus, which looks to be a 35 footer, has obviously been drafted into a new line of work, ferrying its owner as well as the VW Pickup behind it; or so I assume. How the little trailer plays into it, I don’t know. It sports some decidedly non-stock exhaust pipes, and since there’s no sign of any mufflers, it undoubtedly makes some soulful tunes at full chat.
The end of the baby-boom era also spelled the end of the Gillig-Crown duopoly of California’s school bus market. Convention schoolbuses are typically assumed to have a ten year life; the Gilligs and Crowns lasted two to three times as long. But as school-age population declined, and budgets were easier to justify on the cheap conventional buses, both California bus makers bit the bullet; Gillig in 1982, Crown in 1992.
Gillig had diversified into city buses before then, with their popular Phantom series. A school-bus version was built from 1986 – 1993, but after that, Gillig focused on transit buses, and now has the highest market share for them in the US. But the old tanks will undoubtedly be around for decades to come, unless steel prices really go through the roof.
I would love to hear that bad boy at full bellow from the pipes. I’m sure it is an awe-inspring sound.
No doubt — I was thinking the same thing.
I learned to drive school buses on a 1962 Gillig. You didn’t mention the strangest part of the rear engined buses was the shift pattern. It was the standard 3H we’re all familiar with but the pattern (from top left) went R-1-5-4-3-2. Never figured out why Gillig did it that way.
Two of the Gilligs in our yard had Fuller 10 speed Roadranger transmissions. But the pattern was the same. It was strange learning a new shift pattern. In the Roadranger buses you’d start in 5th unloaded. 4th loaded, 3rd loaded with football players, 2nd loaded with football players on a hill, and 1st gear was reserved for climbing telephone poles.
Don’t forget the transmissions were not synchro-meshed either. So double clutching was required. To downshift you had to bring the revs up with the clutch out in neutral. Good drivers (myself included) got so they could shift without using the clutch, just watching the revs.
I’ve also driven Crowns and Thomas Buses. Crowns were my favorite, with Gillig a close second.
“the pattern (from top left) went R-1-5-4-3-2. Never figured out why Gillig did it that way. ”
“In the Roadranger buses you’d start in 5th unloaded. 4th loaded, ”
I sense a connection here…
I drove quite a few Gillig Phantoms as I was learning, more or less, to be a bus driver. Kent State University (yep, THAT Kent) ran its own bus line that, when Federal mass-transit money became available, was expanded to serve all of Portage County, Ohio. As well as intercity runs to Akron and Cleveland.
The thing about Kent’s Campus Bus Service was, every ONE of their employees was a qualified full-time student. The drivers were. The mechanics were. The dispatchers were; even the General Manager, a dapper chap in his thirties, was an adult student carrying (barely) a full courseload. In addition to providing cheap help, it was an excellent opportunity to break into the world of public transportation. I remember hearing a few student-employees talking in the offices about bidding for new buses…one said Flxble needed to “sharpen their pencils a little more” to get the next CBS bid; as Gillig was still the lowest. That was in 1988; seven years before Flxble locked the doors forever.
We trained on late-1960s GMCs; but we had four Gillig Phantoms – two 40-footers and two 30-foot shorties. The shorties were a handful; the very short wheelbase and the long, long rear overhang to allow the transverse engine and transaxle.
Good buses; but by that time, the description “tank” didn’t apply. They weren’t of the same stuff the old Gillig school buses were made of.
Thanks Paul you’ve answered a longstanding question of mine, why are the school buses in LA different than everywhere else. They all look so old and out of date, and none of them appear to be based on typical commercial chassis from the big auto or truck manufacturers.
I figured LAUSD had them special made (like UPS trucks) and they were paying a fortune for them….which wouldn’t come as a surprise seeing as it is such a poorly run district (example: it recently came to light here that at least $5 billion was wasted just trying to make the local community colleges “greener”. Five. Billion. Dollars.)
So all of these buses are at least a quarter century old then? They must be slapping a fresh coat of pain on them every 20 years or so and calling them good.
UPS trucks are a strange bird, they are only made for UPS and they are crushed whenever UPS can’t figure out a way to make it run another year. They are never sold off.
There’s more to it than that.
Gillig and Crown continued to use the archaic “streamlined” design, long after the Midwest bus manufacturers, led by Wayne, dropped it in favor of the modern cubist style in the mid-1960s.
For whatever reason, Gillig wasn’t willing (or able) to design a new school bus outer body. The Phantom transit coach is based on a Japanese design Gillig licensed; and once they had the transit bus out, they immediately cobbled together a school-bus version of it.
It didn’t sell well and Gillig is out of that market. Crown, too…Crown was purchased by Carpenter Coach of Indiana which itself went bust shortly thereafter. The school bus market has really shaken down, with International, formerly AmTran, before that Ward, having the lead. BlueBird and Thomas are the only other major players.
I thought most rear engined buses with V8′s used the Cummins VT903 rather tha the Cat V8, as the Cummins is physically much smaller.
Gillig was fortunate to be big in maybe the only market in the country where a school system could keep a steel bus on the road for 30 years.
There were a lot of those in western Washington too. The Federal Way district where I went to school was already using them before I graduated in 1957, and it wasn’t many years after that that you just didn’t see any school buses that weren’t flat-nosed Gilligs.
We had them in the Northshore District (Bothell/Woodinville) when I was a kid in the late 70′s and early 80′s and the ones I rode on were pretty old at the time.
+1, Lots of Crowns and Carpenters. The Carpenters had gas V8′s converted to Propane in the early 70′s
This is fascinating. Out here in corn country all we ever see on the roads are Blue Birds and Thomases. I was doing some poking around on teh Internets just now and am shocked to learn how many of the bus makers of my 1970s-80s kidhood are now defunct – Wayne, Carpenter, Ward, Superior.
Ward is still around, after two reorganizations – it’s the coach division of International/Navistar. Ward went bankrupt (as did Carpenter and Wayne) and was reorganized as AmTran; and about ten years or so, International purchased it.
Since International is no longer just a chassis maker and has its own captive bus-body company…and since Ford and General Motors no longer make chasses for school buses…it’s been a hard thing for BlueBird and Thomas. Both of them, I see, are now using Freightliner mediums as platforms.
Thomas is a subsidiary of Freightliner which is why there is no more Ford B series. When Ford sold it’s Louisville HD truck line to Freightliner part of the agreement was a 10 year no compete agreement that somehow got the B series and F850 involved ending their production.
Blue Bird was pretty much forced to develop their own chassis for their conventional line since Ford couldn’t build them one, GM wanted out, Navistar only supplied IC and I’m not sure if Freightliner cut them off or they just didn’t want to buy from the competition.
The Blue Bird’s nose does look a lot like a Freightliner but it is unique. However while they each may make their own frame rails a lot of the running gear bolted to them is sourced from the same suppliers, ie Cummins engines and Allison transmissions so they are a lot alike.
I shot a Jailbar Ford house bus yesterday front yard classic rather than curbside but unusual all the same, saw it and thought of Paul I’ll load it soon
Thanks Paul; keep the bus stories coming!
Having lived my entire life on the East Coast except for a few years in Chicago, these buses are completely foreign to me. “School bus” was synonymous with a square Bluebird or Thomas on a Ford or GMC chassis during that period of time. Thank you for the glimpse into an unglamorous but fundamental part of the West Coast automotive world!
The old “DC Transit” bus company ran these buses into the ’70′s. Not sure what make the ones I rode to school in were, but they were always full!
The second photo in this series is NOT of a Gillig. It is a Kenworth-Pacific. Probably mid 50′s. In fact, it appears to belong to my home town school district, of Camas, Washington! I may have ridden that very bus!