Remaining Independents in Merseyside

[mr t]

RE: Remaining Independents in Merseyside

(25/02/2019 11:41)motormayhem1 Wrote:  When i worked at supertravel , I was talking to the owner who was telling me he had the funds in place from a financial backer for him to put a bid in for GTL but the thing that put him off after looking into it was as you say
1. Ageing fleet upgrade
2. Facilities upgrade
3. Fare evasion
As he stated to me it would of cost him millions and the financial backing was only in place for him to buy GTL and not upgrade the company so any upgrades would have to come from revenue etc.
At first I thought he was pulling my leg but he was being serious about putting a bid in for it just before they got a bid from GO-AHEAD.

All this was why glenvale was actually only a day away from going bust before Stagecoach stepped in all the others backed out, whilst Arriva was all over them on every single route in Liverpool on virtually the same frequencies. The public had had enough because buses kept breaking down or never turned up and so used Arrivas, and most of the drivers were also on the fiddle a new manager told me after it so they had to get rid of half the drivers for robbing, and some nights he caught drivers sitting off together, and in his words was worst depot/company they had EVER seen in the company. and engineers were often sent out on the 361 the "to test" new vehicles or ones that just been fixed, so obviously rarely ran. Gillmoss was just a scrap heap of dead buses - it was only buying CMT that kept them going a bit longer with their new vehicles, plus the Traffic commisioner and Merseytravel was all over them as well for their dismal performance and awful vehicle maintenance and they were about to be summonsed and have their ops license cut by 40 as they only ran about 75% of services