Quite the obituary! More widely it highlights the now significant difficulties faced by smaller operators operating in rural areas. All rather sad yet seemingly inevitable. Franchising of bus services seems to considered the way forward for metropolitan areas but where is the vision for maintenance of rural connectivity?The Hulley decision has been published.
Decision for Henry Hulley & Sons Ltd (PC0003407)
Written decision of the Traffic Commissioner for the North West of England for Henry Hulley & Sons Ltd, and transport manager Mr. Alfred Croftswww.gov.uk
Doesn't the recent Government report about bus travel, suggest that usage has dropped 21% since 2009? COVID certainly affected bus usage in many areas, maybe the capped fares didn't increase modal shift as much as hoped. With operators like Hulleys, I could see significantly less passengers in winter. Operations supported by schools services, but once they become unreliable, passengers seek alternatives.
The 55 and 170 have heavily revised route and timetables so they can't easily be compared.
Can anything be read into Hulley's all-too-brief ownership of Go-Coach in Kent and its subsequent buyback by its previous owner?
I was looking at the timescales around this. The Hearing mentioned that there had not been an MOT failure since May 2023, whereas the ownership of Go-Coach did not take place until December 2023. Maybe Austin Blackman (owner of Go-Coach) had been working behind the scenes at Hulleys before that - I seem to remember some vehicle loans before December 2023.
Indeed. But in some cases, does the operator know what the potential users actually wants/ needs and would use? If you can't get to work, school, hospital, shopping etc is there a point?
Problem is where there’s demand, users require consistency and reliability and sadly in the case of Hulleys and in particular Alf, he didn’t seem to get that and would blame anything and anyone but himself.
One thing I’ve noticed is there’s very little negativity towards the services now they are run by Andrews. You couldn’t blink without seeing a post on Facebook about a service missing or a bus not turning up. Even local councillors got involved at one point.
Well, to be fair, that could partly because one agitator who fell out with Alf no longer has an axe to grind.
Hulley's were looking to acquire an operator with workshop facilities, in which they could improve the maintenance of their fleet. That was the reasoning behind the Go Coach purchase.
The mitigating circumstances are that Alf Crofts had a sudden period of illness which took him out of the game for a while, and that he admitted he had taken on too much responsibility. He didn't feather his own nest and I get the impression he was as gutted as anyone else when Hulley's failed.
Coaches were very much a minority operation. A lot of bus companies have found that coaching takes up too much management time, energy and money in a competitive market, and that resources are better used when directed towards their bus services.
You may well be correct. There are very few independent bus operators remaining, but those that do are either fairly large (40+ buses - think Grant Palmer, Lynx etc) or operate a mixed bus / coach fleet. There are operational challenges of running bus and coach together, particularly as the driving hours legislation doesn't marry up fantastically, but as a way of building up an operation with enough vehicles to spread overhead but sufficient geographical focus to minimise excessive empty running, it can work well.
acquiring a secondary operation with ‘workshop facilities’ hundreds of miles away is hardly going to do much maintenance wise. They would have been better off renting some kind of industrial unit or workshop in or around Derbyshire and setting up maintenance facilities that way.
I think you misunderstand. The TC has a binary choice with repute - it’s either lost or it isn’t. So to say it isn’t but advise it’s severally tarnished as a well chosen wording. You could imply it’s a final warning. But as he can’t give a warning formally this is the alternative.
It's worth noting as well that Hulleys network was vast and so having a bus sat in Bakewell wouldn't have done much for the 55, 63 or 110/111 services which combined covered a PVR of 6.
I fully agree, indeed I raised the point about the distance way back up thread somewhere.
And the time / cost of ferrying vehicles the best part of 200 miles is not very efficient either.
Wasn't there also the issue that the owner of Go Coach wanted to sell the business, but not to a big group, whilst Hulleys needed a good maintenance programme. After all, I doubt the Enviro 400s went inside the workshop at Baslow. It was nice to see the stream of hired Go Coach buses. When I was in Tonbridge a few weeks ago, there was 7532 outside the railway station.
Personally I think Alf wanted to play buses and wanted to look like a big company with long fleet numbers and swapping vehicles between depots etc, but given the financial issues Hulleys were under (it didn’t just happen over night!), begs the question was it really the right thing to do and spend money on?
Or see a London Country bus (9001) in the Peak District! (Now repainted into Kentish Bus livery)
There’s a whole world of difference between someone biting off more than they can chew and someone deliberately ignoring the rules. Clearly the Traffic Commissioner has understood that; indeed, his comments about the two year suspension refer to giving the individuals time to understand what went wrong.
Absolutely- the conduct was incompetent but not quite so incompetent that repute is lost.
It’s a fine line between “explanation” and “blame”. I think it’s fair to say that Hulleys were in a doom loop for a good old while and many (although by no means all) of the reasons for that were external.
Yes indeed.
It was a blame game. How many times on social media did Alf or whoever was doing the social media apologise on behalf of the company? I can tell you the answer was very very low if at all.
