Rimini; er, Lancashire - a photo on Flickriver

Most buses don't work all day every day. You need extra buses at rush hours, or for shoppers, or for football matches, over and above the requirement for the all-day normal services. So that means that some of the fleet has to spend some of its time waiting to be called into service. That's not - to use the modern management jargon - 'sweating the assets' and it means that a bus that you've paid for (or still paying for) isn't earning money in the evening and at weekends.

Meanwhile, for many years, coach and express companies had the opposite problem. Weekends and holidays were their busiest times, when trippers flocked to the seaside or countryside. So it became a habit for coach companies to hire buses from bus operators whose buses would otherwise be unused. They might not have been as comfy as the latest Bedford coach, but they did the job and everyone was happy. The bus operator got a bit of additional vehicle hire income; the coach company fulfilled its contract; and passengers got to their destination.

This is one of the more unusual hires. Manchester City Transport had a small fleet of these 'half decker' buses used on shuttle buses to and from Manchester Airport flights. In those days passengers would check in at a city centre office and then the bus would take them all the way to their plane, and so the plane's destination would be shown on the bus - in this case, Rimini in Italy.

The 'half decker' layout was there to accommodate air passengers' luggage, so they were ideal to hire to coach companies taking holidaymakers to the coast. So one wet day, Manchester 38 found itself not on Princess Parkway but in Bolton, probably on the way to Blackpool, on hire to Happiway Tours (Manchester) Ltd which later became part of the Shearing's concern.

None of these Manchester half deckers still exists, although some similar London ones do, and the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester has a later airport 'blue express' bus, number 55 of 1962, in store and awaiting restoration.

If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester and its collection of vintage buses, go to www.motgm.uk.

© Greater Manchester Transport Society. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited and may result in action being taken to protect the intellectual property interests of the Society.

Taken in: UK / England / Bolton (show map)

Taken on: January 1, 1962

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