TRIVIA : Most Unusual names for bus/coach operators (current/historical)

[martinsh]

Happy Al's coaches in Birkenhead now known as just Al's coaches

I've met Al and you certanily wouldn't ever describe him as "Happy" !!

 

[Statto]

I've met Al and you certanily wouldn't ever describe him as "Happy" !!

An old joke is, i went on Happy Al's once & everyone was miserable.

 

[DelphDonkey]

Avon being, I think, olde English or Anglo Saxon for river.... so being by the Mersey, it makes more sense than immediately apparent

Afon (pronounced with a v) is the Welsh for river. In Oldham there used to be Universal Buses, whose operating area fell some way short of that.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Afon (pronounced with a v) is the Welsh for river.

Yeah - that's it! I knew somewhere the etymology meant that River Avon means River River, in the same way that Mount Fuji is Mount Mount in Japanese. I saw it on QI years ago

 

[Whisky Papa]

In Oldham there used to be Universal Buses, whose operating area fell some way short of that.

The same might reasonably be said of my old employer UK North Buses!

 

[TheSel]

I suppose a lot depends on your definition of "unusual", but in 1930, Crosville bought out a company by the name of "UNU Motor Services" of Llangefni. UNU stood for "You Need Us".

 

[MotCO]

Whippet? I suppose it is fairly sensible, as animal names go.

Wasn't it originally Go Whippet?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Wasn't it originally Go Whippet?

To be honest, it's perfectly common to use animal/bird names in marketing and no different in the transport industry. Whether it's a company name or a branded service, there's loads, especially when trying to convey speed.... Swift, Falcon, Whippet, Greyhound are obvious ones and that's aside from the use of cats (and their connotations with agility) with both vehicle models (mainly Leyland but others such as ACE) with Tigers, Panthers, Pumas etc

** Doesn't always stack up.... the BMC Falcon wasn't known for its agility or pace

I'm sure there was a thread (that I started?) where we discussed all of these animal/bird related ones. Going back to Badgerline, it was actually a massive marketing success in terms of recognition - distinctive and unusual but effective

Not technically a company name but one of the more interesting ones was Luton and District's minibus operations that originally had a very restrained image but then adopted a very distinctive one with a comedy rabbit logo and the name Hoppenstopper

 

[CBlue]

Wasn't it originally Go Whippet?

They started off as Whippet Coaches. The "Go" was added on quite some time later when doing so was a bit of a fad among operators, although that's now been dropped.

 

[65477]

In my bus spotting days I always wondered why a secretive communist country on the Adriatic ran a local company - Premier Albanian

 

[Mr Manager]

Basic Hour 24 was the trading name of Sheffield omnibus.Another off the shelf trading company.

 

[Merthyr Imp]

The Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield Joint Transport and Electricity Board ran trolleybuses and buses in that part of the country until taken over by SELNEC in 1969 ; catchy name, n'est ce pas?

On a par with the West Bridgford Urban District Council Passenger Transport Department.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Always thought VFM Buses (‘means Value For Money’) was an odd name for the South Tyneside bit of Go Ahead Northern in the early 90s. Might have made sense if it was a Magic Bus style low-cost competitive spoiler, but it was just a division of Go Ahead the same as Wear Buses and Coastline.

Kingfisher was a daft name for Yorkshire Rider Huddersfield, especially when FirstBus corporate edicts prevented any kind of development of a brand identity for it. Might have made more sense with a Badgerline style bird graphic.

Definitely a vote for "Kingfisher" here. All the other bits of YR got geographical names, but not Huddersfield. I'm certainly not aware of kingfishers having any local significance. Yorkshire Tiger itself gets an honourable mention. Makes me wonder if Ray misread his brief and thought it was a company based in Hull rather than Huddersfield!

As mentioned above, PMT always raised a chuckle. "Cumfybus" of Southport also scores some cringe points, especially coupled with their "toytown" branding.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Basic Hour 24 was the trading name of Sheffield omnibus.Another off the shelf trading company.

Another two were SIMCO358 which became Lynton Travel Group who then got BitterCrisp as the entity for County Bus and Coach (as part of London Country NE.

 

[Factotum]

Kippax and District Motor Co. Ltd. always intrigued me as a child. We called it Kippers​

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Streamline of Huddersfield is worth a mention, simply because most of the vehicles used in public service were Dennis Darts which were anything but streamlined!

 

[DelphDonkey]

The same might reasonably be said of my old employer UK North Buses!

There was nowt reasonable about UK North ... Moving swiftly on, GM Buses (the original, not the UK North version) and, much later, Goodwins Coaches have both used 'Little Gem' as a fleetname/brand. It is, of course, a lettuce.

 

[Deerfold]

Basic Hour 24 was the trading name of Sheffield omnibus.Another off the shelf trading company.

A lot of people seem to get this the wrong way round.

Sheffield Omnibus was the trading name (the name they traded under) of Basic Hour 24 (the name of the company at Companies House).



Bus route 903 between Keighley and Silsden (with one journey a day to/from Addingham) is run by Jacksons of Silsden Limited

This is the website of that company: http://www.jacksonsfuneralservices.co.uk/

Jacksons Funeral Services​

Our company has been involved in the funeral profession for over 100 years, providing an infrastructure of support for the local community.

...

Jacksons Funeral Services and Emmott & Bradley Funeral Services are divisions of Jacksons of Silsden

 

[padbus]

There was a coach operator in Oxford called Crappers.

 

[dmncf]

Turbostyle Coaches, based in Crawley.

On A Mission Coaches, based near Leighton Buzzard, but I think they're no longer operating which is a shame because I liked their name.

 

[Western Sunset]

When I were a lad up in Derby, we had Felix buses running between there and Ilkeston. Though since Felix, the cartoon cat, "kept on walking", I wonder if this referred to the reliability of their fleet?

 

[MotCO]

A lot of people seem to get this the wrong way round.

Sheffield Omnibus was the trading name (the name they traded under) of Basic Hour 24 (the name of the company at Companies House).



Bus route 903 between Keighley and Silsden (with one journey a day to/from Addingham) is run by Jacksons of Silsden Limited

This is the website of that company: http://www.jacksonsfuneralservices.co.uk/

What vehicles did they use?

 

[Gloster]

Bus route 903 between Keighley and Silsden (with one journey a day to/from Addingham) is run by Jacksons of Silsden Limited

This is the website of that company: http://www.jacksonsfuneralservices.co.uk/

...and did they only sell one-way tickets.

 

[adrock1976]

I recall in the late 1980s/early 90s that in the West Midlands, there was a London Liner coach service. The main office was at Miller Street, B6.

This may have been a sister company of West Midlands Travel, as I saw leaflets in their travelshops promoting it.

 

[Titfield]

Provence Private Hire (of St Albans)

Why Provence?

 

[Deerfold]

O

...and did they only sell one-way tickets.

Oddly enough, I think they do. I can report having safely travelled with them though - but only on a multi-operator ticket or at the start or end of a long distance journey by train.

 

[MotCO]

I recall in the late 1980s/early 90s that in the West Midlands, there was a London Liner coach service. The main office was at Miller Street, B6.

This may have been a sister company of West Midlands Travel, as I saw leaflets in their travelshops promoting it.

Yes, if I recall they used blue Metroliner double deck coaches, and was run in conjunction with London Buses who used red double deck coaches (I think Metroliners as well, although they also had some East Lancs Olympians with coach seats to operate a service to Eastbourne).

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I recall in the late 1980s/early 90s that in the West Midlands, there was a London Liner coach service. The main office was at Miller Street, B6.

This may have been a sister company of West Midlands Travel, as I saw leaflets in their travelshops promoting it.

London Liner was originally operated jointly between London Transport and Central Coachways (which was the coaching arm of West Midlands PTE, later WMT). After about 3 years, WMT purchased the London vehicles and assumed sole operation and yes, it was based in the Miller Street site opposite the old depot.

 

[tbtc]

I might have this wrong (and I'm happy for anyone to tell me I'm wrong - I've had a quick google and can't be certain), but...

...in days gone by there used to be a coach company in Sheffield who ran coaches predominantly in red/cream livery, called Sheffield United Tours - but they were nothing to do with Sheffield United Football Club (the team who play in colours similar to the coach livery) - it was a merger between a "Sheffield" company and a "United" company IIRC. Like a number of coach operators, they sometimes went by their initials. I think they were bought up by one of the bigger coach operators (Wallace Arnold or Shearings or someone who was later bought up by them - not sure)

Anyhow, that's not the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that an operator came along in the late 1980s to compete with the dominant bus company (so far, so unremarkable)... second hand Leyland Nationals and some Atlanteans from LRT in Edinburgh... painted in a dark red/white colour scheme... although they ran out of the same Charlotte Road depot that Sheffield United Tours had once used, they were nothing to do with Sheffield United Tours but alluded to it - if my memory is correct then the bus company was "sut" - not "Sheffield United Tours", not "S.U.T", no punctuation or anything like that, just "sut"

As the old Sheffield United Tours company no longer existed, I guess there was no problem legally, they weren't claiming to be Sheffield United Tours, they were just a company called "sut"

(they were bought by South Yorkshire Transport/ Mainline, turned into a "low cost" operation, merged with Sheafline to take on all of the low-value routes, then abandoned when everything went under the "Mainline" brand - as various local garages like Herries Road and Greenland and Leadmill were closed as SYT became Mainline became First, the successor company opened a new garage at... Charlotte Road... thing going full circle!)

An honourable mention to South Yorkshire Road Transport, which sounds like a reasonable name for a bus company in Sheffield or Barnsley or Rotherham or Doncaster... but not Pontefract!

Go OK Travel can be read to be a very offensive term....

...whereas OK GO were a popular American beat combo in the hit parade, particularly around twenty years ago

 

[Busaholic]

I might have this wrong (and I'm happy for anyone to tell me I'm wrong - I've had a quick google and can't be certain), but...

...in days gone by there used to be a coach company in Sheffield who ran coaches predominantly in red/cream livery, called Sheffield United Tours - but they were nothing to do with Sheffield United Football Club (the team who play in colours similar to the coach livery) - it was a merger between a "Sheffield" company and a "United" company IIRC. Like a number of coach operators, they sometimes went by their initials. I think they were bought up by one of the bigger coach operators (Wallace Arnold or Shearings or someone who was later bought up by them - not sure)

Anyhow, that's not the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that an operator came along in the late 1980s to compete with the dominant bus company (so far, so unremarkable)... second hand Leyland Nationals and some Atlanteans from LRT in Edinburgh... painted in a dark red/white colour scheme... although they ran out of the same Charlotte Road depot that Sheffield United Tours had once used, they were nothing to do with Sheffield United Tours but alluded to it - if my memory is correct then the bus company was "sut" - not "Sheffield United Tours", not "S.U.T", no punctuation or anything like that, just "sut"

As the old Sheffield United Tours company no longer existed, I guess there was no problem legally, they weren't claiming to be Sheffield United Tours, they were just a company called "sut"

(they were bought by South Yorkshire Transport/ Mainline, turned into a "low cost" operation, merged with Sheafline to take on all of the low-value routes, then abandoned when everything went under the "Mainline" brand - as various local garages like Herries Road and Greenland and Leadmill were closed as SYT became Mainline became First, the successor company opened a new garage at... Charlotte Road... thing going full circle!)

An honourable mention to South Yorkshire Road Transport, which sounds like a reasonable name for a bus company in Sheffield or Barnsley or Rotherham or Doncaster... but not Pontefract!



...whereas OK GO were a popular American beat combo in the hit parade, particularly around twenty years ago

Something in what passes for my brain tells me that S.U.T. was a B.E.T. company, but as my experience of Sheffield is confined to changing trains there once on a Saturday morning I've no idea what it's based on!