While buses would initially remain a side project for Luce (with only nine bus bodies produced between 19 ), the onset of the Great Depression would change his company forever. Completed in 1927, the bus was put into use as a school bus. In place of wood, Luce constructed his bus body from steel and sheet metal wood was used as a secondary material.
Driven to produce an improved design to sell to his customers, Luce sought input to develop a stronger bus body capable of surviving unimproved roads. Due to a combination of unsatisfactory construction quality of the bus body and the rough conditions of the rural Georgia roads, the wooden bus body started to disintegrate before the customer had finished paying for the vehicle. In 1925, Luce sold a customer a Ford Model T with a wooden bus body the customer sought to use the bus to transport his workers. Along with the dealership in Perry, Luce owned the Ford franchise in Fort Valley, Georgia, a rural farming community south of Macon. What is now Blue Bird Corporation began life as a side project in a Ford Motor Company dealership in Perry, Georgia.
was an entrepreneur who developed some of earliest purpose-built school buses, transitioned from wagons. Remaining under family control into the early 1990s, Blue Bird changed hands several times in the 2000s in February 2015, it became a publicly owned company (with previous owner Cerberus Capital Management holding a 58% share).Īs the second quarter of the 20th century began, Albert Luce Sr. Luce closed his automobile dealership to concentrate exclusively on bus production. īlue Bird Body Company was founded in 1932 in Fort Valley, Georgia, as A.L. Currently, Blue Bird concentrates its product lineup on school buses, school pupil activity buses (SPAB) and specialty vehicle derivatives. Best known for its production of school buses, the company has also manufactured a wide variety of other bus types, including transit buses, motorhomes, and specialty vehicles such as mobile libraries and mobile police command centers. The Blue Bird Corporation (originally known as the Blue Bird Body Company) is an American bus manufacturer headquartered in Fort Valley, Georgia.
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