They are not Scania engined as such - they are Scania chassis. The delay on deliveries of Volvo B13R was linked to delays at Caetano retooling for the Volvo B13R chassis. I am pretty certain they could not afford to do this so the Volvo option is no longer available. The Caetano website seems to confirm this.
The delay with Volvo is that they will be built on a brand new chassis so the bodywork had to be modified to fit the chassis. We originally ordered Volvos but switched the order to Scania as Volvos won't be available until early next year at best.
7 years is the lifespan of coaches on NX work.There is lots of 67 and 68 plates that are due for replacement this year .
The chassis is not brand new but fairly new. I was interested to hear that it will be made available on the Volvo chassis although other sources had indicated that Caetano was unable to afford/justify the retooling needed. Time will tell I guess.
I believe they switched it to 5 years when our 68 reg Levante 3s were new, then because of Covid everything got an extra year, then because of problems getting new vehicles everything got an indefinite extension, now they have gone back to 7 years or under a certain mileage
I wouldn't be so sure as Park's seem to be a law to themselves as they know they have got National Express over a barrel due to no other operator wanting the majority of South Devon/Cornwall work. Previously Park's had an old fleet and just stuck private plates on their vehicles, so customers didn't know how old their fleet actually was.
Go South Coast could do the work from Plymouth if they wanted to they are a contractor already on the network .
The 18 plate Boa Vista's have come off the network recently. 2, maybe more, have gone to Walter's Coaches in Oxford.
Go South Coast isn't a NatEx contractor, they haven't been for around four years after the work was taken in-house. They are a Flix operator instead now. Plus it is a bit far given Plymouth Citybus are in the area!
I seem to remember Parks doing a Scotland - Cornwall run, so is that why they established a small base there?
Our 68 plates are either at or approaching a million km, though they were off the road for months during Covid, so it's over 100000 miles a year they do
What’s the mileage threshold to take them off?
They bought Trathens in the mid-90's, which at the time was a fairly sizeable NatEx contractor in the south-west (if slightly tarnished with some issues with VOSA).
Why would it be a pain running a depot in a remote location?
Who is "Dennis Park"?
Dennis Park sounds like a failed chassis for a bus ngl. And as mentioned with remote depots, Edwards have operating bases away from their HQ in Cardiff for NX stuff and it seems to be a profitable venture for them. An upside if they were to take over the SW England stuff is they know the business already and would be preapared to invest in it at least. Plus Avonmouth is on the way to London so could easily send a staff shuttle car/coach into Gordano Services and the like to do a driver change or if operational issues occur. They already send the 502 into Bristol to do driver changes, so I can't see how it would be any different from that tbh.
From memory I'm sure it's somewhere round the 900k km mark now or 7 years whichever is first
That sounds more like a list of reasons for not taking over a company.
Park's vehicles, especially their Levante 2's will have done a lot more than that. They essentially run them into the ground 24/7 with many of them not returning to the depot for days, even more so pre-covid when they also had base in Rochdale. It is no wonder that they have reliability problems when the coaches get so little downtime/maintenance and are constantly driven to the limit.
If that is true then that is more proof that Park's have NX wrapped around their finger and that Park's get treated 'differently' to everyone else. As mentioned previously Trathens were always falling foul of speed and tacho infringements and Park's were and still are no different. For example, the driver involved in the 2007 Heathrow crash had numerous previous speeding offences and had been found to have tampered and adjusted the speed limiter, but Park's continued to employ him. I am led to believe that the reason he wasn't sacked was because this was (and possibly still is) a regular occurrence and a blind eye was turned. It shows how little their driving standards are when one of (their now ex) drivers put on social media complaining about how he ws caught speeding and he didn't know what the speed limit of coaches were.
I'm sorry, but if you don't know the speed limit of your vehicle, you should have never become a PCV driver. That is diabolical.
