Wayne Wheeled Vehicles

Wayne Wheeled Vehicles
Industry	Transportation
Fate	Dissolved by parent company
Predecessor	Wayne Corporation
Founded	1992
Defunct	1995 (1995)
Headquarters	Marysville, Ohio, United States
Area served	North America
Products	school buses
Parent	Harsco Corporation

Wayne Wheeled Vehicles (WWV) was a tradename of a division of a vehicle manufacturer that specialized primarily in the production of school buses. It was owned by Harsco Corporation, who purchased the rights to use the Wayne brand name, certain product rights, as well as parts and tooling during the liquidation of assets of the Wayne Corporation in late 1992.

The BMY Division of Harsco operated the WWV function from an assembly facility at Marysville, Ohio, where it also assembled military trucks. School bus production began there in 1993 and ended in early 1995. The entire operation was closed and the property vacated.

Overview

After the bankruptcy of Richmond Transportation Corporation in 1992, Wayne's other product rights and many assets (but notably not the corporation and subsidiaries themselves with pensions and other liabilities) were purchased at liquidation auction by BMY, a military truck assembler owned by steel giant Harsco Corporation.

BMY specialized in assembly of the "Big Foot," a five-ton truck whose tires partially deflated for sand travel.^[1] Truck sales had dropped off considerably after the end of the major actions of the 1990 Persian Gulf War. As a result, management searched for a secondary product line to fill in slow periods between military truck orders.

School bus assembly of several Wayne models commenced at the BMY facility located near Marysville, Ohio in 1993; for the first time since the 19th century, Waynes were not built in Richmond, Indiana. The WWV name was adopted to reflect the addition of the products at BMY, which was often also called BMY-WWV. However, BMY-WWV was entering a tough market already plagued by over-capacity of the other school bus body companies. Additionally, the military truck order volume did not improve; truck assembly at the Marysville plant ended in June 1994.^[2]

Harsco announced a deal in January, 1995 to sell the BMY-WWV operation to Warrwick Industries, a Goshen, Indiana-based commercial bus manufacturer of Goshen Coach products.^[3] After the deal with Warrwick Industries failed to consummate, Harsco ended bus assembly at the Marysville plant in June 1995.^[2]^[4]

Products

Wayne Wheeled Vehicles purchased the rights to the Wayne product line and returned the full-size Lifeguard conventional and Lifestar transit-style school buses to production. The most notable change was the change in chassis supplier for the Lifestar after the 1992 model year. Instead of using the International 3900 chassis (shared with the AmTran Genesis), WWV switched to an all-new chassis supplied by Crane Carrier Corporation.

BMY-WWV also produced hundreds of Wayne Chaperone models built on G30 cutaway van chassis supplied by General Motors under the Chevrolet and GMC brand names.^[5]

Wayne Wheeled Vehicles Product Line
Model Name	Chaperone	Lifeguard	Lifestar	RD 9000
Production	1992-1995	1992-1995	1992-1995	1995
Chassis Type	Chevrolet G30/GMC Vandura	Ford B-Series International 3800	International 3900 (1992) Crane Carrier (1993-1995)	Spartan Motors
Notes	Introduced in late 1980s, replaced Busette after 1990			RD 9000 was a prototype rear-engine Type D school bus Never mass-produced.

RD 9000 prototype

In 1995, WWV unveiled a prototype of an all-new transit-style school bus called the Wayne RD 9000, featuring many innovations never before seen in school buses.^[6] However, between several lost bids for more military trucks and questionable profitability of the WWV production, BMY shut down completely and closed the Marysville plant in 1995. The RD 9000 never entered mass production. Most of its groundbreaking features were eventually adopted by the other school bus builders, but not until 5–10 years later.

References

School Bus manufacturers, North America

Active manufacturers

Full-size and small buses	Blue Bird Corporation (small buses made by Girardin Minibus) IC Bus Lion Bus (full-size buses only) Thomas Built Buses, Inc

Small buses only	Collins Industries Collins Mid Bus Corbeil Girardin Minibus(renamed Micro Bird by Girardin) Starcraft Bus Trans Tech Van Con

Defunct manufacturers
(including date of closure
or last school bus manufacture)

2000s	Carpenter Industries, Inc (2001) American Transportation Corporation (AmTran) (2002; became IC Bus) Les Enterprises Michel Corbeil (2008; acquired by Collins) Liberty Bus (2005) U.S. Bus Corporation

1990s	Coach and Equipment Manufacturing (1999; still in business) Crown Coach Corporation (1991) Gillig Corporation (1993; still in business) Mid Bus (1998; acquired by Collins) TAM-USA (1991) Wayne Corporation (1992; became Wayne Wheeled Vehicles) Wayne Wheeled Vehicles (1995)

1980s	Ward Body Works (1980; became AmTran) New Bus Company (1989) Superior Coach Company (1985)

1970s	Northern Coach Perley A. Thomas Car Works (1972; became Thomas Built Buses)

1960s	Hackney Brothers Body Company (1966)

1950s	Kenworth-Pacific (1957; still in business)

List of school bus manufacturers

North American bus builders

Active	Blue Bird Corporation Champion Bus Incorporated Collins Bus Corporation DINA S.A. ElDorado National Environmental Performance Vehicles Ford Motor Company Gillig Corporation Girardin Minibus Glaval Bus Goshen Coach IC Bus Lion Bus Millennium Transit Services New Flyer Motor Coach Industries New Flyer Industries North American Bus Industries Nova Bus Optima Bus Corporation Prevost Car Setra Stallion Bus and Transit Corp. Starcraft Bus Thomas Built Buses Trans Tech Van Con

Defunct	ACF-Brill Aerocoach AM General AmTran Beck Canadian Car and Foundry Carpenter Body Company Crown Coach Corporation Dupont Industries Eagle Bus Fageol Fifth Avenue Bus Company FitzJohn Flxible General Motors Diesel Division (GM Coach) GM Truck and Coach Division Kenworth LAG Motorcoach Les Enterprises Michel Corbeil Mack Trucks Marmon-Herrington MASA Neoplan USA Orion International Pullman-Standard St. Louis Car Company Superior Coach Company Transportation Manufacturing Corporation Twin Coach U.S. Bus Corporation Ward Body Works Wayne Corporation Wayne Wheeled Vehicles White Motor Company Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, October 12, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.