Or “You Want Me To Drive This Bus Where?”

When I rebooted this blog, I promised some school bus tales, so here goes.

Training to drive the bus wasn’t too difficult, despite the obvious differences between it and a car. Off-road training and on-road training, as well as many hours in the classroom, had me set up to pass the Ontario B Class licence tests without too many issues. Of course, all that training really didn’t prepare me for the bulk of the challenges to come. There were students to consider, schools, and the thousands of little roads in and around the school district, most of which I’d never heard of.

On my first day driving a bus route, I did have the benefit of an experienced driver come with me. It was a dark and very cold January morning that I headed out to Townline Road, a gravel track out towards Lake St. Clair. I had my map (not easy to read in the dark), but I had never been this far west of the City, and had hardly driven a bus in the dark at all, so it was all very challenging. Add to the mix that my fingers were frozen (buy some decent gloves, I thought) and the fact that I was pretty nervous, and it all added up to a tough start. I do still remember picking up my first student, though, and she was still smiling when we got to school so I must have been doing something right.

The next day I was on my own, and my route timings were terrible. Being new, I did everything slowly, and ended being late to school for the first run, then late for the second run’s start, and even later to that school. In the afternoon, the drivers waiting at my second run school were radioing to find out where I was, so late was I. It wasn’t that I got lost or anything, but until you get into the routine of it, and get to know your route, it all seems to take way too long.

With the added distraction of the students, mostly well behaved I will admit, I let some of that training I worked so hard at, go by the board, and worked on speeding up some of the processes, like loading and unloading. It was a case of concentrate on a few things then, when you’ve mastered them, work on a few of the other things. It took me a while to remember to check that tail swing on the corners, because I was so busy with the other stuff.

But it started to come together. I bought some better gloves, a light for my maps, and even some variable-focus lens glasses as reading the maps wearing my fixed focus glasses was difficult. I also started to find out about the locale. I had no idea just how far the school district extended, and for the longest time I was driving out on country roads that I really hadn’t known existed. Things were not helped by the fact that I couldn’t learn a specific route because as a new boy, I was put onto covering other people’s runs, so I had new maps and new places to drive all the time. Fortunately, map reading, and finding my way around, comes easily to me, so it wasn’t too long before a run out to Duart, or to Florence (relatively remote farming communities, both), were becoming a lot easier. Indeed, the Dispatcher had me doing different routes almost daily as I was both effective at covering them, and I was keen to learn and to take them on.

The first few weeks were also complicated by the Canadian winter, with ice and snow to deal with, and such cold that I hadn’t experienced before. The buses were heated, of course, but the for the first twenty-five minutes or so, it was like driving a freezer. More than once I had to stop the bus to hack ice off the windows, the mirrors and even the Stop sign. That said, as my abilities and knowledge improved, so did the weather, and by June and the summer vacation, I had the school district down, my route timings were where they should be and I had never been lost, nor had even the slightest of collisions, which wasn’t too shabby for a newcomer. Dealing with the students was another issue, though, and I tended to leave them to their own devices, especially as I had different routes most days. The little ones were noisy, the middle schoolers at the French language schools were difficult (not because they spoke French, they didn’t while they were on the bus, but it was more to do with a perceived entitlement, I think), and it took me a lot longer to get to grips with having to cope with kids running around the bus, and to drive the darned thing at the same time. I quickly came to appreciate the high school students as generally, if left alone, they just kept themselves to themselves.

I had a couple of wobbles when driving, at least early on. Getting called in to work very early (a consequence of my being overly helpful, I think) on a dark and snowy morning and having to drive out to Ridgetown in an old and rickety bus, had me questioning why I was doing this, because the pay was definitely not stellar given the effort required. A couple of times when students were being very difficult also had me thinking that it wasn’t worth the hassle, at least given the poor compensation. Then on other days, particularly when the mornings were lighter and the weather was warmer, it did seem like a pretty good job. Like the time I had some high schoolers from Wallaceburg laughing like drains and leading me on a circuitous round around Sombra, trading on my unfamiliarity with the place, having me drop them at their homes rather than their actual stops, all because I was struggling with the map. You lose some, you win some.

Even in those early days, though, I was getting the warning signs that the company I was working for were operating on a shoe string. Not that the buses were dangerous, or too many operational corners were being cut, but there was definite lack of investment, in equipment and drivers, that didn’t bode well for the future.

That’s for another day, though.

Or “How Do You Drive One Of Those Things?”

I have a wealth of School Bus stories, but I’ll start with the basics, just how do you drive one of those things?

The simple answer is “quite easily”. They’re big, for sure, but pretty simple beasts and easily handled by anyone who has a mind to do it. Automatic gearboxes, power steering, hydraulic brakes with ABS all round, they’re really not any harder to drive than a car, but you do have to learn the tricks required to make the corners without riding the curbs, and to turn it around without nailing too many mailboxes. In fact in some ways they’re easier to handle than a regular car because you have seven very handy mirrors at your disposal that give you so much more visibility.

To get a licence, though, you do need some special training and that’s down to the fact that apart from the Police and the EMS, school bus drivers are the only people on the road who can stop traffic legally. Those red lights and the extending Stop sign are powerful tools and you really do have to learn to use them wisely. Your cargo is special, too, with up to seventy-two children on board, you have a huge responsibility, when they’re on board, and when they’re approaching or moving away from the bus. What a shame that the pay doesn’t reflect the training and levels of responsibility school bus drivers undertake.

The First Student (my employer) training program was thorough, and it had to tie in with the Ontario licensing programme, which is similarly demanding. Hours driving off-road, trying not to squash plastic cones, hours in the classroom, and hours on the road, before rigorous written and on-road tests to Ministry of Transportation standards. Despite the individual failings of some of the drivers after having attained their licence, you could put your kids on the bus knowing that every driver was trained to a very high standard.

Driving on the road becomes easier with practice, as does understanding how to drive a rigid vehicle nearly forty feet long round some very tight turns, and without clouting another vehicle with the dreaded tail swing, that is the amount the rear overhang of the bus can swing left or right behind you. While you’re driving, you’re also following a pre-set route, with pre-set pickup points, to a fairly tight schedule. Local knowledge helps, but when you start out, or you take on a new route, it can be tough to follow a route, and its stops, often in the dark and often in awful weather. When I started I was covering other drivers’ absences so I could do many different run in a week, and then it was all paper maps and a little light rigged so that you could see it on those dark early mornings. Now it’s an Android tablet PC with the routes downloaded and audibly read back to you as you drive, which is better for all concerned. Of course the down side of that was the driving data collected that was extremely good at catching you if you drove like a dork.

Having mastered all that, then there was the students. The truism that ten percent cause ninety percent of the problems was very true of children on the bus, and with a good bunch of kids you could spend uneventful hours driving around the lanes of the district, almost enjoying it. If you had a few difficult kids, then trying to drive, to navigate and to police the kids was a difficult task. That task was often underestimated by the schools’ administration, and by the School Boards, so working with little support was also not good. However, the ten/ninety rule meant that most times the runs were trouble free.

By the time I’d decided to retire, I could get a new route memorized in two days. I knew the area, the schools and quite a few of the kids, so it all became relatively easy. I had my fair share of incidents (for later posts, I think), but in my seven years driving, I never had a collision and had a completely clear driving record, and of that I was very proud.

More riveting bus stories to come, you lucky people, but I’ll leave you here with the thought that for all my moaning and complaining, I’d always be happy to put my kids, or grandkids, on the school bus.

Or “How To Drive A School Bus”

My successful job application was for the role of School Bus Driver. Twenty-five or so hours a week, on a split shift, bussing the students of Chatham-Kent to and from their schools. I’d never driven a commercial vehicle before, and obviously had never ridden in a North American yellow school bus. But how hard could it be? Training free, but unpaid, so not too bad.

I’d applied months before and heard nothing, but the manager of the local bus company, First Student, called me and asked if I was still interested, and if so, would I come in for interview? I didn’t need asking twice.

At the bus yard, I was interviewed by the Safety and Operations Manager who, having commented that I had filled the many forms in really quickly, gave me a cursory interview, checked my drivers’ licence and told me when I was going to start training! The regulatory stuff regarding the bus drivers’ licence was more tricky, especially was when I applied for the licence, I had to submit a medical and a drugs test. Safety first.

Training went well, on road and off road stuff, and a whole heap of classroom work. Training was undertaken by a couple of drivers, suitably qualified of course, who did that as well as drive bus runs morning and afternoon, so training hours were nicely in the middle of the day. As I remember, it was November and stupidly cold, but hey, this is Canada I guess.

Things ground to a halt, though, when the the licensing people referred my application to the Medical Review Board, on account of my having had a TIA a couple of years previously. Cutting a very long story short, the application was approved months later and in late January 2015 I passed my written and road tests and became an Ontario School Bus Driver.

There’s much to write about that job, which can wait until later. I drove regular bus runs for a year before being elevated to a full time job in the office as Safety Officer. I became a Driver-Trainer (suitably qualified) and worked in the “Wash Rack” cleaning buses for a while. All along, I drove bus routes when the need arose. The pay was lousy, the expectations too high for the compensation, but it was an education, an experience, and a job.

All of that said, though, I’m very happy to be retired now.