Thomas Built Buses

Thomas Built Buses is a manufacturer of buses, mainly school buses, although in the past they have produced transit buses and bodies for buses used for transit. The company is based in High Point, North Carolina.

In 1999 Thomas and Dennis form Thomas Dennis, a joint venture to market the SLF series of buses.

History

In 1916 after World War I, Southern Car Works, a major streetcar manufacturer, closed down due to the economy at the time. As a result, Canadian-born Perley A. Thomas, a chief engineer at Southern Car Works, lost his job. Shortly after he was asked by Southern Public Utilities Company to consider refurbishing several Southern Car Works streetcars. With several ex-coworkers, he opened the Perley A. Thomas Car Works. By the late 1930s, with the streetcar market shrinking, Perley A. Thomas Car Works ceased production of streetcars in 1936. The company found a new market in manufacturing school buses.

Perley Thomas continued to designing vehicles though began handing operation operation of the company to his children. In 1958, Perley Thomas died at the age of 84. His children and grandchildren continued to successfully run the company which became known as Thomas Built Buses in 1972. In 1978 the company introduced its first bus chassis and the Saf-T-Liner® transit-style school bus. In the 1980s, Thomas began producing a Type-A school bus called the Minotour, and also began producing commercial buses.

Freightliner acquired Thomas Built Buses in 1998. Thomas became a wholly owned subsidiary of Freightliner which was a division of DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler). This saw the introduction of the FS-65 model which was a Thomas conventional body on the FS-65 chassis. Working close with Freightliner, this product was close to being a fully integrated school bus. Thomas's next product, the C2, would be a revolutionary integrated school bus which used many new features such as multiplex wiring.

Current products

School Bus

• Minotour - SRW and DRW - small school bus ('short bus') based on cutaway van chassis
• Saf-T-Liner C2 - Conventional school bus
• Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley - Electric version of the C2, available 2019
• Saf-T-Liner EFX - Front engined school bus to replace the Saf-T-Liner EF
• Saf-T-Liner HDX - Rear engined school bus

Commercial Bus

• Transit-Liner C2 - Conventional school bus
• Transit-Liner EFX - Front engined school bus to replace the Saf-T-Liner EF
• Transit-Liner HDX - Rear engined school bus

Past products

School Bus

• Conventional - Built on variety of chassis
• FS-65 - Built exclusively on the Freightliner chassis (1997 to 2006)
• Mighty Mite - Minibus built on International, Dodge D300, and Chevrolet chassis (mid-1980s to early 1990s)
• Saf-T-Liner EF - Front engined school bus (1977 to 1990s)
• Saf-T-Liner ER - Top-of-the-line rear-engined bus (1977 to 2002)
• Saf-T-Liner MVP-EF - Economical front engined school bus later renamed Saf-T-Liner EF (1991 to 2012)
• Saf-T-Liner MVP-ER - Economical rear-engined bus (1991 to 2001)
• Westcoast-ER - Variant of the Saf-T-Liner ER featuring dual rear axles
• Vista (1989 to 1998)

Commercial

• Chartour (c. 1989 to c. 2000)
• CL100 - 20 to 28-foot minibus (2000 to 2004)
• CL960 "Citiliner" (c. 1984 to c. 2000)
• Conventional
• FS-65 - Built exclusively on the Freightliner chassis (1997 to 2006)
• SLF - Low floor midibus (1999 to 2007)
• TL960 "Transliner" (1995 to 2002)
• Transit-Liner MVP-EF - Economical front engined bus later renamed Saf-T-Liner EF (1991 to 2012)
• Transit-Liner MVP-ER - Economical rear-engined bus (1991 to 2001)
• Vista (1989 to 1998)

See also

• Thomas Dennis, a joint venture between Dennis and Thomas Built Buses (1999-2003)

External links

• Official site