Bus Manufacturer News & Discussion

[Jordan Adam]

Hang on, Rotala have how many on order? Clearly I'd missed that one.

May be wrong there as i'm not the most in tune with their operations. But i believe they're for Manchester.

 

[Alexbus12]

May be wrong there as i'm not the most in tune with their operations. But i believe they're for Manchester.

Believe 10 are going to Preston too

 

[aswilliamsuk]

Ah yes, of course - thanks for confirming.

 

[LOL The Irony]

Belfast Telegraph reporting Jo Bamford of JCB is looking at buying Wright but you have to log in to their site to read all of it.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...to-secure-a-deal-with-wrightbus-38507226.html

The son of the chairman of UK machinery giant JCB has become the latest entrepreneur to be linked with a takeover of troubled manufacturer Wrightbus.

The Ballymena bus-builder has been tipped to go into administration this week if it cannot finalise a deal with a buyer.

Earlier this week, Mid-Ulster businessman Darren Donnelly said he was walking away from discussions over a purchase of Wrightbus.

Now it's emerged that Jo Bamford - whose father Lord Bamford is chairman of JCB - is involved in talks.

Mr Bamford's hydrogen fuel company Ryse Hydrogen has already worked with Wrightbus on a contract with Transport for London to convert buses to hydrogen fuel. Mr Bamford has not responded to a request for comment, while Wrightbus also refused to comment on the businessman's involvement, which was first reported in the Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper said Mr Bamford was in talks about buying at least part of the firm, which has been facing trading difficulties following a downturn in its markets...

 

[F Great Eastern]

Perhaps what doesn't help either is the fact that in the last 12 Months Volvo haven't sold a single B5TL to the UK mainland. So Wright's only "popular" decker offerings are the B5LH (Popular in London only) and the Streetdeck (limited popularity although Rotala have 70+ on order)

Delivered approx 200 in Ireland though, to Go Ahead, Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann.

Once the current order made last year is fully delivered though that'll be it, no more are coming.

 

[ClydeCoaster]

Obviously the bus industry in the UK is going through a crisis; passenger numbers are in free fall, 2 of the big groups are selling up, and there's a real downturn in investment in new stock, but the crisis will come to a head at some point in the near future with councils talking about buying bits of First and Metro Mayors talking about franchising - it will / has to stabilise. Once that stabilisation / recovery arrives, if Wrightbus fails, Optare sales at a minimal trickle, are British operators really only going to be left with ADL?? Yes there's niche offerings from Volvo/MCV and the Mercedes Citaro, but surely if Wrightbus fails the market will be crying out for competition?

 

[scosutsut]

Obviously the bus industry in the UK is going through a crisis; passenger numbers are in free fall, 2 of the big groups are selling up, and there's a real downturn in investment in new stock, but the crisis will come to a head at some point in the near future with councils talking about buying bits of First and Metro Mayors talking about franchising - it will / has to stabilise. Once that stabilisation / recovery arrives, if Wrightbus fails, Optare sales at a minimal trickle, are British operators really only going to be left with ADL?? Yes there's niche offerings from Volvo/MCV and the Mercedes Citaro, but surely if Wrightbus fails the market will be crying out for competition?

Agreed - it still beggars belief that its Wrightbus, and not Optare that find themselves in this mess, looking at recent few years worth of sales.

 

[Jordan Adam]

Looks like some good news.

https://www.route-one.net/top-story/wrights-group-sale-to-credible-bidders-is-imminent/

Wrights Group: Sale to ‘credible bidders’ is imminent

Wrights Group has informed its employees that a deal to sell the company to “credible bidders” is likely to be completed over the next few days.

Staff were told today (19 September). The company describes the development as “hopefully good news for everyone”. It adds that it is in “a race” to complete the sale.

Its announcement suggests that more than one potential buyer remains involved. Employees’ contracts will be TUPE’d to the new owner. The buyer“will take over all business operations” of Wrights Group when the transfer is complete.

“This ongoing business and its employees are our number one priority and we are confident that a positive outcome can be delivered over the next few days,” the company says in a statement.

It expects to provide a further update next week. Wrights Group appointed an outside company to search for an investor or buyer after it hit financial difficulties.

 

[LOL The Irony]

Looks like some good news.

https://www.route-one.net/top-story/wrights-group-sale-to-credible-bidders-is-imminent/

So I guess it'll be owned by JCB now.

 

[CM]

So I guess it'll be owned by JCB now.

Where in that article does it say JCB are taking over the company?!

 

[LOL The Irony]

Where in that article does it say JCB are taking over the company?!

Here.

Belfast Telegraph reporting Jo Bamford of JCB is looking at buying Wright but you have to log in to their site to read all of it.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...to-secure-a-deal-with-wrightbus-38507226.html

 

[Jordan Adam]

So I guess it'll be owned by JCB now.

I guess it means we can now officially call the Streetlite a "Tractor"...

 

[CM]

Here.

Try reading it properly, it still doesn't say JCB are taking it over. It's says that the son of the chairman of JCB is potentially taking it over.

 

[LOL The Irony]

I guess it means we can now officially call the Streetlite a "Tractor"...

Try reading it properly, it still doesn't say JCB are taking it over. It's says that the son of the chairman of JCB is potentially taking it over.

What's to say it isn't going to become part of JCB?

 

[CM]

What's to say it isn't going to become part of JCB?

The article? Go read it....proprely.

The fact that it says clearly in the article that it is the son of the chairman of JCB? It's clear you're only reading the bits of the article that agree with you.

 

[Jordan Adam]

I highly doubt we'll see it become part of JCB, however i wouldn't be surprised if in the future Wrightbus & JCB did have some form of partnership if this sale does go ahead.

 

[GusB]

May I suggest that if @LOL The Irony has access to the Belfast Telegraph, they should quote from said article. It's utterly frustrating when people just post a link and it ends up at a web page that either requires one to either subscribe or register in order to read it. The forum rules also require this.

 

[MotCO]

Doesn't look good....

"Future of 'Boris bus' maker Wrightbus in the balance as frontrunners flee

The future of “Boris Bus” maker Wrightbus is hanging by a thread after two major bidders withdrew from a process to rescue the company.

Chinese engineering giant Weichai and Jo Bamford, the son of JCB founder Lord Bamford, walked away from an auction of the company within hours of one another on Friday.

With sources warning that the company has little more than a week of a cash remaining, Wrightbus could collapse into administration within days, putting 1,400 jobs at risk.

Weichai formally dropped out on Friday morning. Mr Bamford walked away later in the day after talks broke down about the amount of rent he would have to pay to lease the company’s Ballymena headquarters."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...us-maker-wrightbus-balance-frontrunners-flee/

 

[Gingerbus1991]

Doesn't look good....

"Future of 'Boris bus' maker Wrightbus in the balance as frontrunners flee

The future of “Boris Bus” maker Wrightbus is hanging by a thread after two major bidders withdrew from a process to rescue the company.

Chinese engineering giant Weichai and Jo Bamford, the son of JCB founder Lord Bamford, walked away from an auction of the company within hours of one another on Friday.

With sources warning that the company has little more than a week of a cash remaining, Wrightbus could collapse into administration within days, putting 1,400 jobs at risk.

Weichai formally dropped out on Friday morning. Mr Bamford walked away later in the day after talks broke down about the amount of rent he would have to pay to lease the company’s Ballymena headquarters."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...us-maker-wrightbus-balance-frontrunners-flee/

You would maybe think ADL would be interested, as they at the moment only have a small market share in the Ireland, mind you Brexit is perhaps a risk on it's own for companies

 

[MotCO]

You would maybe think ADL would be interested, as they at the moment only have a small market share in the Ireland, mind you Brexit is perhaps a risk on it's own for companies

Wrightbus body a lot of Volvo chassis as noted earlier in this thread, to take advantage of the Volvo support network in Ireland. ADL do body some Volvo chassis (eg. the new long E400 XLB for Edinburgh, so wouldn't ADL just wait for Wrights to collapse and jump into the gap with buses bodied in Falkirk and Scarborough. Demand for buses is lower this year, so there probably is spare capacity, and it is cheaper than taking over another factory and staff.

 

[Jordan Adam]

Wrightbus body a lot of Volvo chassis as noted earlier in this thread, to take advantage of the Volvo support network in Ireland. ADL do body some Volvo chassis (eg. the new long E400 XLB for Edinburgh, so wouldn't ADL just wait for Wrights to collapse and jump into the gap with buses bodied in Falkirk and Scarborough. Demand for buses is lower this year, so there probably is spare capacity, and it is cheaper than taking over another factory and staff.

In all fairness the reason ADL haven't bodied the B5TL yet is (as mentioned already) the B5TL barely sells in the UK Mainland. I do however think a ADL body on the B8RLE chassis would do well.

 

[Gingerbus1991]

In all fairness the reason ADL haven't bodied the B5TL yet is (as mentioned already) the B5TL barely sells in the UK Mainland. I do however think a ADL body on the B8RLE chassis would do well.

I am fairly surprised we've not seen LB take some form of b8 single from ADL yet.

I wonder how the volvo 4-cylinders stack up against the Cummins-6 that ADL use in term of fuel economy, especially on city work, LB are big fans of volvo stuff.

 

[Mikey C]

Doesn't look good....



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...us-maker-wrightbus-balance-frontrunners-flee/

Maybe the buyers would prefer to buy the business from administration than as a going concern?

 

[Gingerbus1991]

Wrightbus body a lot of Volvo chassis as noted earlier in this thread, to take advantage of the Volvo support network in Ireland. ADL do body some Volvo chassis (eg. the new long E400 XLB for Edinburgh, so wouldn't ADL just wait for Wrights to collapse and jump into the gap with buses bodied in Falkirk and Scarborough. Demand for buses is lower this year, so there probably is spare capacity, and it is cheaper than taking over another factory and staff.

I was thinking more along the lines of bodywork support, as ADL dont have dealer support for there own bodywork, wiring etc etc.

If ADL took over Wrights, perhaps renamed ADL Ireland, giving more companies an option of a gemini or eclipse body on an ADL-cummins powered or scania chassis for instance, of course heavy weight single deckers are far and few between now.

I am surprised though that Volvo haven't supported the weight shaving trend of introducing some sort of light weight single decker chassis with a D5K engine.

As of yet the only light weight options are powered by Cummins or Daimler.

 

[F Great Eastern]

I was thinking more along the lines of bodywork support, as ADL dont have dealer support for there own bodywork, wiring etc etc.

If ADL took over Wrights, perhaps renamed ADL Ireland, giving more companies an option of a gemini or eclipse body on an ADL-cummins powered or scania chassis for instance, of course heavy weight single deckers are far and few between now.

I'll explain it again how it works in the Republic of Ireland as you appear not to understand and still are thinking about how it works in the UK which is not comparable.

Bus services in Ireland are not deregulated. Over 90% of the town and city bus networks as well as about 95% of regional services are ran under contract for the National Transport Authority by Dublin Bus, Bus Eireann and Go-Ahead Ireland as these services are deemed Public Service Obligation routes and are subsidised by the state.

The procurement of buses for these routes and operators is handled centrally by the National Transport Authority under multi-year framework tender contests. Such contests require between 120-180 vehicles to be delivered a year and the tenderer must also supply maintenance, spares and engineering support for the vehicles that they are offering over a certain number of years and have the capacity to do so.

Because of the engineering and maintenance requirements, you always find that the chassis builder or the integral builder are the ones doing the bidding and are subcontracting the body side of things. All of the Wright double deckers in Republic of Ireland, almost 1000 of them, were delivered under tenders that were won by Volvo Bus outright who are said to have easily scored higher than others in the engineering and support network scoring part of tenders.

Volvo dominate the bus and coach market in Ireland whether that's from city bus network and regional services as above or the commercial intercity coach market where the B11R chassis reigns supreme and anyone who is anyone has their fleets based on them or their predecessors. Mercedes and Scania have a fairly small support operation each, but it's dwarfed by the kind of support network that Volvo has and in any case Mercedes and Volvo are not active in the double decker bus market.

Bodywork support is not so much of an issue since non heavy stuff can be subcontracted and is. It's the engine, chassis and maintenance support network that ADL lack in Ireland. They would need to substantially invest in building such a network to support a number of vehicles growing by 150 every year. Now if they were willing to take a hit upfront to get into that market who knows. Whilst Cummins have support in Ireland, they don't have the infastructure to support 150 in 2020, 300 in 2021 etc.

Perhaps they could team up with Volvo again like they have done in the past, however that's a marriage that neither Volvo or ADL particularly want because at the end of the day they are big rivals who would far rather that they were not lining their biggest competitors product at all, which is why Volvo have been getting closer to MCV rather than Wrightbus recently, since WrightBus' move to integrals puts them in direct competition.

 

[37114]

're ADL into Ireland, I thought Wrights support is through Mercedes rather than Wright's own dealers? Maybe the demise of wrights would open this up for ADL to use.

On a wider ADL buyout of Wright, that makes no sense. You would be taking on more production capacity (which would be under utilised), duplicated range of products and historical liabilities such as pension commitments to gain a disproportionate size of the market share to the cost. There is also the small matter of the fact that ADL have done a good job of probably creating this situation by taking a lot of Wrights customer base (Lothian, Brighton and Hove, First and some London customers) that they won't gain many customers that they don't already have access to.

 

[37114]

I'll explain it again how it works in the Republic of Ireland as you appear not to understand and still are thinking about how it works in the UK which is not comparable.

Bus services in Ireland are not deregulated. Over 90% of the town and city bus networks as well as about 95% of regional services are ran under contract for the National Transport Authority by Dublin Bus, Bus Eireann and Go-Ahead Ireland as these services are deemed Public Service Obligation routes and are subsidised by the state.

The procurement of buses for these routes and operators is handled centrally by the National Transport Authority under multi-year framework tender contests. Such contests require between 120-180 vehicles to be delivered a year and the tenderer must also supply maintenance, spares and engineering support for the vehicles that they are offering over a certain number of years and have the capacity to do so.

Because of the engineering and maintenance requirements, you always find that the chassis builder or the integral builder are the ones doing the bidding and are subcontracting the body side of things. All of the Wright double deckers in Republic of Ireland, almost 1000 of them, were delivered under tenders that were won by Volvo Bus outright who are said to have easily scored higher than others in the engineering and support network scoring part of tenders.

Bodywork support is not so much of an issue since non heavy stuff can be subcontracted and is. It's the engine, chassis and maintenance support network that ADL lack in Ireland. They would need to substantially invest in building such a network to support a number of vehicles growing by 150 every year. Now if they were willing to take a hit upfront to get into that market who knows. But whilst Cummins have support in Ireland, they don't have the infastructure to support 150 in 2020, 300 in 2021 etc.

Perhaps they could team up with Volvo again like they have done in the past, however that's a marriage that neither Volvo or ADL particularly want because at the end of the day they are big rivals who would far rather that they were not lining their biggest competitors product at all, which is why Volvo have been getting closer to MCV rather than Wrightbus recently, since WrightBus' move to integrals puts them in direct competition.

I think ADL would be more open that you think to.a Volvo partnership, you only need to look at Lothian as an example of thta

 

[F Great Eastern]

're ADL into Ireland, I thought Wrights support is through Mercedes rather than Wright's own dealers? Maybe the demise of wrights would open this up for ADL to use.

All Wright double decker vehicles in Ireland, almost 1,000 of them are based on the Volvo B5TL or B9TL chassis and are supported by Volvo Dealer Irish Commercials in Dublin, Naas and Galway. There's also Dennison Commercials in Northern Ireland which can also do work if required and vehicles needing more complex work following being deroofed or serious crash damage etc are carried out in Ballymena.

The only vehicles which are supported by Mercedes dealerships in Ireland are the Streetlites and there is under 100 of them. They were able to undercut Volvo because of this although most of that was because that a Streetlite is cheap lightweight junk so a heavyweight bus like the B8RLE was never going to be able to beat such a vehicle as that on price.

On a wider ADL buyout of Wright, that makes no sense. You would be taking on more production capacity (which would be under utilised), duplicated range of products and historical liabilities such as pension commitments to gain a disproportionate size of the market share to the cost. There is also the small matter of the fact that ADL have done a good job of probably creating this situation by taking a lot of Wrights customer base (Lothian, Brighton and Hove, First and some London customers) that they won't gain many customers that they don't already have access to.

It would also be extremely bad for the industry, choice and would basically kick out a decent sized competitor and would strengthen ADL and weaken Volvo and already the balance in the UK is too much in ADLs favour.

 

[Robertj21a]

One simple fact may be that ADL has improved their products quite significantly in recent years whereas Wrights integrals have not been particularly weĺl received by many. Streetlites are not the most popular of vehicles (other than with the accountants) and the Streetdecks appear to have suffered a number of mechanical problems too.

 

[F Great Eastern]

One simple fact may be that ADL has improved their products quite significantly in recent years whereas Wrights integrals have not been particularly weĺl received by many. Streetlites are not the most popular of vehicles (other than with the accountants) and the Streetdecks appear to have suffered a number of mechanical problems too.

People moan at Streetlites and don't get me wrong, I don't like them and they are cheap lightweight rubbish, but didn't Alexander / Transbus make a whole market of making cheap as chips DARTS that were a pile of crap but were cheap and cheerful and were attractive to operators, before being dumped relatively young in age compared to a heavyweight and ending up with Dawsons and Ensign bus with huge numbers of them trying to flog?

I hate to say that a Streetlite is a modern day DART but they seem to serve similar purposes in relation to being cheap to acquire and run but not very durable.