(first posted 10/31/2018) I really enjoyed Paul’s article on the GM PD 4501 Scenicruiser last week – and it got me thinking. That, and as you may have heard, Greyhound has also been in the news lately, unfortunately not in a good way. A video recently emerged of passengers on a Greyhound bus from Phoenix to Dallas who “mutinied” when they saw the driver trying to remain awake behind the wheel. Not quite consistent with the slogan I’m most familiar with…
GM PD 4106
MCI MC 5C
MCI MC 8
Well, hopefully they’ll recover from this very embarrassing (and dangerous) incident. It did however remind me of my poor college student days “riding the dog” in the mid to late 70’s. I can remember traveling on the old (by then) GM PD 4106s, the somewhat newer MCI MC 5’s, and the brand new MCI MC 8’s. I haven’t ridden a Greyhound bus since 1979 and it got me wondering what the fleet was composed of today – let’s take a look…newest to oldest…
Greyhound’s most modern coach is the MCI D4505, first introduced in 2010. It’s 45 feet long and 102 inches wide, seating 50. Caterpillar, Detroit Diesel, and Cummins engines can be ordered – but most come with a Cummins ISX 12 liter inline 6 cylinder, with 425hp and 1,450 lb-ft torque. Transmission is a Gen V Allison B500 6-speed automatic.
Next newest coach is the Prevost X3-45, purchased in 2009. This coach has similar dimensions, and also seats 50, but comes with a 13 litre Volvo D-13 SOHC inline 6 cylinder, 435hp and 1650 lb-ft of torque, coupled with the Allison B500.
The MCI G4500 was introduced in 2001, same dimensions, but with a different seating design that carries 55 passengers. Power train is a Detroit Diesel Series 60 12.7 litre SOHC six, 475 hp and 1550 lb-ft, also with a B500.
Greyhound’s oldest coach stems from 1998 and is the MCI 102DL3 – a 45 foot coach, all of which were recently given a major refurbishment. Older Cummins M11 motors were replaced with the Cummins ISX and a B500. Also as part of the refurbishment, they were painted in the older “neoclassic” livery.
It’s doubtful I’ll ever ride the dog again, but if I did, I think I’d choose the Prevost – and make sure I had some no-doze to hand to the driver before boarding…
Ugh. Greyhound brings back two memories from the late 80’s:
First year University coming home on the bus a few times, invariably sitting next to a guy who had just been released from prison and heading home to Brantford. Once I found out the train was only a little more money that was it for the bus.
Some of our Dutch relatives booked the trip of a lifetime and their travel agent set them up to travel all over North America on…. Greyhound. It had been so awful they wouldn’t even talk about it by the time they got to our town. I would have said screw it and rented a car.
Last rode Greyhound about 2 years ago. I appreciated the free Wi-Fi but didn’t appreciate the folks who ignored the “reasonable volume” rule on their personal music sources. Folks, headphones don’t keep other passengers from hearing music when you max out the volume control.
But what really is annoying about Greyhound is the station and the ticket buying situation. Stations that close before the last bus of the day. And wonky automated ticket kiosks are a royal pain.
As far as the buses, I believe that at least one of the buses I rode was a Prevost while the other was an MCI. Seats on both seem “tight”, the biggest difference I noticed was the overhead bins, and the access to them.
In Canada, the recent issue isn’t so much the quality of Greyhound Canada’s fleet, rather they have significantly reduced, or dropped, many rural routes across the country. More people having cars, lower gas prices for car drivers, and less costumers, are the reasons most often cited by Greyhound. Greyhound has asked the Canadian government (and provinces) to subsidize some routes.
As a large country, with many remote communities and open spaces, many smaller cities and towns were more accessible by bus in the 1970s and 80s. Today, fewer riders and more access to cars, means less people relying on long distance bus service. As more of the population relocates to urban areas, expect the trend to continue.
My most recent Greyhound (and Voyageur Colonial) experience was as a student back in the 80s. The buses providing the backbone for both companies then was the MCI MC-8 and MC-9.
Here in BC Greyhound is basically walking away from routes north or west of Prince George, a fair sized (by our standards) city that marks the informal start of northern BC. Many small communities hundreds of KMs up the highway will have no bus service at all, and airline service is sparse and expensive if available at all. Other routes have had the number of runs reduced over the last half dozen years or so. The business model just doesn’t work any more for many of the reasons Daniel M states.
You can’t blame Greyhound for giving up, but it is kind of a shame. Up until the late ’90s this was a vibrant, thriving transportation system. No matter where you were or how precarious your transportation was you always knew you could get home on the hound, eventually, if you kept 50 bucks to one side and waited long enough. It’s been decades since I’ve had to do it, but it was comforting to know you could.
These busses are a far cry from the old grinders I knew, 400 plus horsepower seems to move these new ones along pretty well. It was well known in mountainous BC to try and avoid getting behind the ‘hound going up a hill, and get the hell out of the way of one coming down….
I think the federal and provincial governments should be prepared to assist Greyhound, or step up their own investment in providing service. I’m located in Ontario, and the Ontario government considered divesting Ontario Northland, the crown corporation that provides rail and bus service to Northern Ontario. Given how valuable this service is to northern and remote communities, the province continues to invest in the service.
I just checked a number of Greyhound routes in busier Southern Ontario, and it’s the reduced frequency of many routes that strikes me, from when I rode the coaches back in the 70s and 80s.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens. BC simply doesn’t have the population to support a large scale subsidy or crown corporation and the feds, of all political stripes, simply don’t care what happens out here. Bus service to the impacted areas ends in about a month and there are a few proposals about how to replace it floating around. Time will tell.
Greyhound is just another one of those things that gets taken for granted and never considered until it’s gone.
If the provincial government isn’t prepared to assist Greyhound, or offer their own service, there may be an opportunity for a private service offering smaller shuttle buses. Hopefully, one of these firms can propose a profitable plan that still provides adequate service to these communities. Even with provincial help, if necessary.
It may require the local municipalities themselves to offer a service, with provincial government aid. I doubt passengers would be daily commuters in remote communities, so reduced frequency could be expected.
The Saskatchewan government has been facing declining passenger numbers on the provincially owned Saskatchewan Transportation. Their solution was simple – shut it all down.
Greyhound travels along the Yellowhead Trail and along the Trans-Canada Hwy through Saskatchewan. They still do the Calgary-Alsask run. But for the remainder of the runs the government believed private firms would pickup the slack.
No idea how well that one worked out.
Have been travelling Greyhound for the past thirty years. Sad to see it going downhill. They still have service for their courier service, but not for passengers as they don’t use buses,
Neat compact coach. I read Temsa on its side. I had to look that up, it’s a Turkish manufacturer. Powered by Cummins, in this case?
The Temsa was being used as a demonstrator for that particular photo, launching a new route. MCI and Prevost buses have been the mainstays of the Ontario Northlands fleet for years.
After the previous wide spread purchase of the Orion-Ikarus 286, and its tendency for premature rusting, Ontario governments haven’t purchased buses of European origin since that time. At least to my knowledge. With the recent exception being the Alexander Dennis E500 being used quite heavily in Ottawa’s transit fleet.
The last time I took a grey hound it was the old mci 8 in the photos. I can’t believe they have seat belts in the seats now and free wifi would be better than the old tv vcr combo.
As for cutting the routes in BC I can understand why they have gotten out of them. But from what I have heard they kept making the schedule less appealing and raising the rates while complianing ridership was dwindling. We are lucky on Vancouver Island as a local outfit called the Tofino bus has taken the route over and has a better schedule. I am not sure about price though. Another outfit called Island link also has buses and minibuses (Mercedes sprinter vans) that also runs similar routes. We used to have a train but it hasn’t run in years but the tracks and bridges are no longer safe and the old service was for tourists and not for commuters so I don’t hold much hope of it being restored anytime soon.
A real shame if you are in northern BC perhaps someone can come up with a ride share service or maybe the towns can get together and run their own bus service.
As a kid in the ’70s, seeing the occasional Greyhound, or for that matter, Continental Trailways bus sharing the highway seemed common. My folks made the occasional run to the Greyhound station to pick up a visiting great aunt or a cousin.
After about 1980, it seems like I have not seen a single intra city bus that was not obviously a charter or private.
That led me to ask the oracle known as Google just how many hounds are in the pound. Greyhound’s site happily came up, tail wagging, with 1,200.
The FAA’s website states there are 164,200 fixed wing aircraft under their authority.
The old grey dog isn’t dead, but she ain’t what she used to be.
My closest flirtation with modern scheduled intra city bus transportation was word that my daughter’s friend, who spent her first year at university without a car, about 3 hours from home, did in fact take the bus a few times. The 6 hour round trip was enough to tip the balance for a parents a few time. She did not enjoy it, primarily due to her fellow passengers.
My daughter attends university about 55 minutes away, and the bus station is 35 minutes away in city traffic – going the wrong direction from her destination. Her first two years she was without a car, and I was delighted to transport her as needed, it was a great time to keep up the bond and get nice conversation time.
I haven’t ridden the “long dog” since my Air Force days and that was 40+ years ago; don’t have much desire to do so either. I still see Greyhound buses fairly frequently around here; US 41 runs through Evansville and Interstate 64 runs across the northern edge of Vanderburgh County. Back in the day most Greyhound routes took you through every wide place in the road, making frequent stops along the way. Now, at least as I understand it, Greyhound functions as more of a city to city express service. It may have changed but several years ago we investigated using Greyhound in order to not have to fly from Evansville’s airport. We could have gotten to Louisville non-stop or to St. Louis with only one stop; the issue then would have been getting from the bus terminal to the airport. In any case we ended up leaving our car at the hotel in St. Louis as they allowed us to park the car there while we were gone and their shuttle took us to the airport and back.
I like the color scheme on Greyhound’s current smooth-sided coaches, very fresh and recognizable from far.
There was a Greyhound UK division, I just learned that it’s defunct since December 2015. Long-distance (trans European) coach services are all in the hands of privately owned “touringcaroperators”, littered all over the continent.
But all for fun trips. A day, a weekend, or longer vacations. The coaches are often very luxurious and 500+ hp engines are quite common. Widely used brands here are VDL (family business), Van Hool (family business), Setra (Daimler) and Neoplan (MAN).
Keep them buses and coaches coming Jim! No matter old or new.
I wasn’t aware (or forgot) that Greyhound existed in the UK. It makes sense as everyone will know the name from songs, movies etc, and Greyhound is actually British owned, controlled by First, which is based in Aberdeen Scotland.
Strangely, there was a previous, unconnected bus service decades ago called Greyhound, controlled by the public bus service in Bristol, which eventually merged with it’s equivalent in Aberdeen to become…First.
Greyhound is British owned? Well how about that, I never knew! Till now.
In the modern corporate world, for better or for worse, protecting nationalism is pretty much a thing of the past.
And as an aside, local trains in Aberdeen (and all of Scotland) are effectively run by the Dutch national operator.
Yes, national public transport has become an international business. Our regional public bus service is run by Arriva from the UK. Fully owned by Deutsche Bahn AG, by the way…
…but in Central Europe a there’s been a lot of route cancelling. For example, Eurolines don’t do the Bratislava-Vienna-London route anymore. Not that I could do a 22 hour journey with the way my back is these days but when I was a student in the 90s it was the only sensible option when I went to Austria for work during the summer break (tickets were open for six months and usually they had a seat on a day’s short notice).
First purchased Greyhound a few years back. They purchased Greyhound and the rest of Laidlaw ‘s transit and school bus subsidiaries and merged them with First’s comparable subsidiaries in 2007.
One big change has been First’s buses. The U.S. and parts of Ontario get new buses and the old ones get shipped out to Western Canada. The buses built for Greyhound Canada had emergency directions at each window in English and French.
The ones shipped up from the U.S. have the directions in English and Spanish,.
Here in the Holy Land, buses are still a major transport. Taxes on cars are quite high – make wallets feel holey. Still, they are giving public transit competition. The railway isn’t too bad but it is a hub & some spokes and costlier in % terms than EU. Gasoline is cheaper in cash terms but income is lower. Parking in T”A & J’lem is impossible. Public Bus services are provided by operators over ‘licensed’ routes. Local routes- drivers do not handle cash. – debit card or coin machine. Longer distance by buy a ticket at a machine or debit card (inter company) Drivers drive & do doors. Sometimes- hand over printed receipts. Buses fr Europe or China.
Never rode the bus (in the states) until last October. Due to last minute problems with my truck, I booked the Dog from VT to FL. Compared to the alternatives it was by far the cheapest as well as the most direct. A 20 mile connection at one end and a 10 mile connection at the other for nearly door to door service (connection rides provided by helpful friends).
The buses (there were five or six of them, mostly the latest iteration described above) weren’t too bad, smooth as a train most of the time. Seats were adequate. Contrary to the incident described, the most impressive aspect for my trip was the drivers. All were very competent in both driving abilities and in keeping order on the bus.
From there it went downhill. The stations were dismal places, especially in the south. Station personnel were not the brightest bulbs on the planet although some were clearly working hard under difficult conditions.
The five hour layover in New York City and the midnight connection between Boston and New York are best described as repressed memories. (But if life was always a bed of roses, we’d get bored).
No one put a knife to my throat. I was surprised to see elderly people (besides myself) who were well dressed and none the worse for the experience. For my 40 hour journey I decided to fast. I highly recommend this approach. Also, bring wheeled luggage.
Four years ago, I rode a Greyhound bus from Portland to Boise, ID to pick up the new Acura TSX. I found the bus to be very comfortable, the wifi was reasonably ok and helpful, to make a hotel reservation in Boise, and the ride was certainly comfortable and quiet. The only issue was that some folks in the very back lit up some pot, and that made the driver very unhappy. He pulled over at a rest area and made everyone get out, and tried to wrangle a confession, to no avail. And then as punishment, he opened the two big roof vents/escape hatches which made for a cold and drafty next 20 some miles, before he relented and closed them again.
Bolt Bus is a very popular bus for younger folks to take between Eugene and Portland. It has a much better image than the Greyhound bus, and doesn’t use bus stations. Unknown to most of its riders, Bolt is actually owned by Greyhound (they bought it a few years back).
On the east coast, MegaBus also seems to be doing pretty well – I’ve never ridden one, but I see them on the road pretty regularly, and one of their stops is the White Marsh Park-and-Ride lot not too far from my house in suburban Baltimore.
It looks like most of them are operated by Coach USA.
I’ve known a number of folks to use MegaBus in lieu of Greyhound. I think it’s cheaper, and the drop-off points can be more convenient. In Richmond, the MegaBus drops you off right in the middle of downtown, whereas the Greyhound station is several miles away on North Boulevard. (Very convenient if you want to take in a baseball game or visit the breweries in Scott’s Addition though.)
The situation changes at night. The drop-off point downtown is a parking lot, which can be a little sketchy if you get in late at night!
I’ve never had the dubious pleasure of riding Greyhound. With cheap Allegiant Airlines flights readily available hopefully I’ll never feel the urge to ride the bus.
I was told that until very recently Greyhound didn’t identify their passengers, and didn’t ask for ID, so someone “on the lam” could disappear easily. I doubt that’s true today.
The blue and grey(gray?) livery is very attractive, I’ll give them that much.
The blue and gray livery lends the appearance of a charter or more exclusive service, as opposed to the basic no-frills white exterior. While the traditional/retro graphics maintain the brand identity.
The alternator failed on my Subaru last April in the middle of the Mojave desert near Edwards AFB. Fortunately another driver in the party (it was a Boy Scout trip) had a deluxe AAA membership so the tow to Victorville was free, and he gave me a ride home to San Diego. Once the car was fixed a few days later, Greyhound proved to be the fastest and by far the cheapest way to get back to Victorville. It was pleasant enough, though one unfortunate young man got removed by security for not having a ticket. (He quite obviously had some other problems for which he was uh self medicating. I hope he got help.)
Certainly a much better experience than my previous Greyhound trip in the early 80s which was just ludicrously slow.
In Alberta, Red Arrow has established itself as a premium, and pleasant, alternative to Greyhound. The coaches are all relatively new Prevost H3s, and all feature 2+1 seating, making for a more comfortable experience. Seat selection, and better kept stations in better locations, make the 15% premium good value. Unfortunately they only serve major centres within the province, so travellers going east/west are still left with whatever Greyhound offers.
My wife has used Red Arrow numerous times for winter trips to Calgary to visit my daughter’s family and grandchildren. She would rate every trip on the Red Arrow with two thumbs up.
I used to love the Red Arrrow. Do they still offer the fridge in the back with small pop and snacks? My mom used to put me and my little brother on it to visit my grandma in Red Deer. 2 unaccompanied minors (family services would probably take away your kids for that now days). The busses were always clean and filled with business types and not the unruly crowd usually found on the hound. I noticed one loading up passengers a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting Calgary and the bus looked clean and modern.
Glad to hear they are still in business.
Well done Jim. I`m always curious when theres something new in cc´s bus section.
When I was a student, which is not so long ago, I was also familliar with long distance bus riding. It is relatively new here in Germany due to laws which supported the railway. After this market was opened several companies started in this business, but soon after market concentration began and now there are a few big players there. Even the two biggest “flixbus” and “meinfernbus”(german for my long distance bus) are merged together now.
The driver is human, like all the rest of us. That is the implied caveat emptor of riding with a human driver — and always has been.
He needs to be cut some slack and more lawsuits for slander need to be levied against YouTube. I love YouTube for all the wrong reasons, but hate it at the same time too.
Coaches are really nice though. If I were to win the lottery, I’d get a pusher much like these.
I hope I never have to take an intercity bus anywhere ever again.
A charter long-distance motorcoach trip is a totally different thing, however. That is something I would consider, especially since my driving days may be limited due to my good eye going bad last fall.
I’ve never found it necessary to ride the Greyhound, all of the short-distance trips where I’ve had to go without the car being on Amtrak routes. As long as you don’t mind the possibility of it being behind schedule, the train is a relatively pleasant way to get there.
If I needed to get somewhere that Amtrak didn’t serve, I’d consider traveling by bus. However there do seem to be a fair amount of news stories of criminal activity at the Greyhound station here in town. I don’t hear the same sort of thing about either of the train stations.
The 102DL3 is powered by a Detroit Diesel Series 60, not Cummins M11 or ISX.
MCI will build to spec with any engine you want, no? Just bring money.
Speaking of custom builds. Weirdest one I have seen was a fleet of Saudi Arabian MC-5s that returned to the US for auction. They had been built with a ventilated double-roof insulation scheme (pretty brilliant). They had been built long after MCI had moved on to the MC8, maybe even the MC9, but 35′ is what the buyer wanted. They were equipped not with the standard 8V71 or the then-new 6V92TA but rather the cockroach of the road, the antiquated 6V71, because that’s what the buyer wanted.
GREYHOUND LINES INC. should be Federally funded as AMTRAC has for years. Greyhound serves all of America and when Trailways was going under, Greyhound bought them and saved many drivers jobs. Greyhound is losing money and has been for sale for a few years. I am a retired GREYHOUND Driver, the company took our benefits away as we had a pass for space available, same as the airlines have. I still love the Company I worked for, and hate to see it in trouble as it is. I am afraid it will be sold and subdivided and that will be the end as we know it today. WHY you may ask, well if different areas our owned by different owners ( GREYHOUND NAME) and a connecting schedule comes in and there is no driver or another bus (brake down)that is a hiccup that falls like dominoes though the system as we know it to be today. That will lead to the complete collapse of GREYHOUND, period !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just saw this and boy it does bring back memories.
I remember when Greyhound was exclusive to MCI.
I remember when it was exclusively GM.
In my brief tenure with Greyhound (2001), I drove mostly MC12’s with 6V92’s and one with a 50 series Detroit (4 cylinder) or the DL3 with the 60 series Detroits. As the G model was brand new, there were few in the fleet at that time.
In 2024, the dog has been in the news a lot. Seems they’re selling off (or walking away from leases on) downtown bus terminals all across America.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/17/business/greyhound-buses-transportation-cities/index.html
…which means that in some cities, Greyhound terminals are no longer accessible by public transport. Here in Las Vegas, the Greyhound terminal moved from downtown to a city bus terminal that’s far from downtown, but still accessible by city bus.
I never thought about it, but it sounds like the “Chinatown bus services” as well as things like MegaBus, really cut into Greyhounds market for the highly-trafficked routes. So Greyhound is left with just the routes from small-town to small-town. I have never rode a Greyhound, but many of my relatives have, some to visit me, and I used to visit the Greyhound terminal in Oakland, which obviously had seen better days but still had some glimples of its former glory – and was quite busy! However, that has been sold off and essentially abandoned except, it appears, for periodic late-night dance parties:
https://oaklandside.org/2023/03/09/oakland-greyhound-bus-station-abandoned-history-underground-raves-party-alden-global/
Along with the decline of Greyhound’s passenger service, they also entirely dropped Greyhound Package Express two years ago. This was a very low cost shipping service that took advantage of unused underfloor luggage space in passenger bus routes, or occasional buses that had a small rear section cordoned off for cargo use. GPX was very slow, and usually required you taking care of the “last mile” from the nearest bus stop to your destination or dropoff point. But it was much less expensive than UPS or FedEx for heavy or bulky items where speed of delivery wasn’t important. Some other services of this sort like Yellow Freight have also disappeared recently. These were great for when you saw the wheels, tires, or seats you wanted being parted out, but 1,000 miles away.
As of May 2021, Greyhound Canada stopped all service. Buses still arrive from, and depart for the US in large urban centres, but all domestic service has been discontinued.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/greyhound-canada-1.6025276
The former Greyhound.ca web address, now redirects to a FlixBus welcome page.
I’ll quote myself from 2018, in the posts further above:
“In Canada, the recent issue isn’t so much the quality of Greyhound Canada’s fleet, rather they have significantly reduced, or dropped, many rural routes across the country. More people having cars, lower gas prices for car drivers, and less costumers, are the reasons most often cited by Greyhound. Greyhound has asked the Canadian government (and provinces) to subsidize some routes.
As a large country, with many remote communities and open spaces, many smaller cities and towns were more accessible by bus in the 1970s and 80s. Today, fewer riders and more access to cars, means less people relying on long distance bus service. As more of the population relocates to urban areas, expect the trend to continue.”
I have roughly a decade worth of memories/ experiences riding the dog from the early 80s to early 90s. The route was always Minneapolis MN to Duluth MN. I have three trips burned into memory and each worthy of it’s own story. Maybe some day. The 80s experience would be very long in the tooth busses and somewhat decent rider service. Contrast that with the young woman who cut my hair a couple weeks ago. She has ridden the dog from Minneapolis to Chicago three times in the past two years. When asked about the bus ride and WiFi she said it was quite nice and the floors were not sticky as I always remembered them being. Her customer service experience on the other hand was a royal PITA and due to having zero human beings to talk to other than the bus drivers. Everything MUST be done online, or via automated kiosks if your trip started or ended in one of the few remaining terminals. That is not a problem for those of us with cell phones and basic computer literacy. The problem is many dog riders are the poorest or the poor and down on there luck. Some do not speak english well and are at the mercy of others helping them out.
My motorcoach has the M11 with a tune. It’s a bruiser.