Dealer Stock Buses

Does anyone know when dealer stock buses became a "thing" i.e was around the time the facelift 200 classic came out or before such as with darts? and other then ADL did the other manufactors make dealer stock buses?

They've been around for a very long time - coaches more than buses historically, the lightweight (Bedford, Ford etc) manufacturers were usually available with a stock Plaxton or similar body from a dealer such as Alf Mosely or Yeates of Loughborough. Buses were historically made to order, but even Leyland were known to make a few chassis for stock from time to time.

On the bus side the significant first appearance was post-deregulation essentially replicating the coach market which jp4712 mentions had been around for decades before. It was initially more common from the dealers for the smaller suppliers (like Scania) as a way to get into the market by being able to deliver new buses quickly for new contracts and/or commercial developments that were now able to happen faster with most manufacturers holding some stock build models available by the mid-90's. It was around this time that the other sector that gets mixed in/confused with manufacturer stock supplies emerged, that of the finance/lease companies (most well known being Mistral & Dawsonrentals initially) who would both sell new buses or lease/rent vehicles for fixed term contracts (and of course would then be able to sell nearly new models on the secondhand market as they came of these 2-5 year rentals) and would build up big fleets of fairly mainstream products to be available at very short notice supply.

It is one of those things driven by operators being willing to take standard spec vehicles on faster delivery to meet contract deadlines rather than the traditional more bespoke specifications of fleet orders (if for nothing else most operators would specify their own moquette/seats). If the move to franchising becomes more widespread than just the traditional urban Combined Authorities then you may see the decline of stock builds as each of the franchises seem to come with their own dedicated spec.

I'd say it was probably around 1990 when the new bus market was beginning to recover from the de-reg shock/van derived minibus explosion, and fuelled by the need to obtain buses quickly for tenders such as London Regional Transport ones.

I remember a batch of Leyland Olympians were stock built in 1993 and were some of the final Leyland ones registered.

Alexander certainly built bodies on various chassis in 1988/9 (Mercedes minibus, Leyland Olympian, Volvo Citybus and Scania N113DRB at least) which were supplied to various operators from stock.
Yorkshire Rider Olympians 5200-5222 were dealer stock and were supplied with red seat moquette instead of Rider's usual pink and grey style of the period.
Going further back, Millburn Motors of Glasgow bought a batch of 20 Alexander bodied Leyland Tiger Cubs in 1954/5 and sold them to various operators including Barton and Edinburgh Corporation.

Many Thanks!

The first ones I can put my finger on were a batch of Alexander bodied Scanias in the summer of 1988.
Most went to Kentish Bus and a couple to Boro'line Maidstone.
IIRC they were built for the dealer Stuart Johnson.

Pyewipecarshed said:

The first ones I can put my finger on were a batch of Alexander bodied Scanias in the summer of 1988.
Most went to Kentish Bus and a couple to Boro'line Maidstone.
IIRC they were built for the dealer Stuart Johnson.

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It was indeed Stuart Johnson. East Kent also had 2 such red seated R types.
I think that today's Worksop based Scania dealership is in fact the former Johnson business.

First had a batch of T-KLF Volvo Olympian’s with a dealer stock interior. Defiantly noticeable compared with the First specification interior on the S-LLO batch that mainly went to Rotherham after London.

Firstly used in London, then went to Doncaster for a number of years then ended up at various depots.

Much of the Leyland Lynx/Lynx II production was stock build. A friend whose dad worked for LRT in Edinburgh in the late eighties and early nineties told me that when it bought its 12 dual-door Lynx IIs in 1991, VL Bus & Coach (the joint Volvo/Leyland sales house at the time) initially pushed for it to take single-door vehicles from stock. After LRT threatened to take its future business elsewhere VL Bus & Coach caved in and agreed to supply them as a one-off order. I think the only other operator to take bespoke Lynxes was West Midlands Travel.

Pyewipecarshed said:

The first ones I can put my finger on were a batch of Alexander bodied Scanias in the summer of 1988.
Most went to Kentish Bus and a couple to Boro'line Maidstone.
IIRC they were built for the dealer Stuart Johnson.

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Man of Kent said:

It was indeed Stuart Johnson. East Kent also had 2 such red seated R types.
I think that today's Worksop based Scania dealership is in fact the former Johnson business.

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I think you're absolutely on the money. I seem to recall that Kettlewells of Retford and Fowlers of Holbeach got some single deck Scanias with Plaxton Derwent bodies, whilst there were some double decks of which one went to Fowlers but many more went to BTS for work in North London. They were E/F regs so 1988, and I think Fowlers got theirs when taking over the RoadCar 505 in 1989?

DunsBus said:

Much of the Leyland Lynx/Lynx II production was stock build. A friend whose dad worked for LRT in Edinburgh in the late eighties and early nineties told me that when it bought its 12 dual-door Lynx IIs in 1991, VL Bus & Coach (the joint Volvo/Leyland sales house at the time) initially pushed for it to take single-door vehicles from stock. After LRT threatened to take its future business elsewhere VL Bus & Coach caved in and agreed to supply them as a one-off order. I think the only other operator to take bespoke Lynxes was West Midlands Travel.

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I don't think that's quite right.

Caldaire Holdings (West Riding etc, United etc) bought loads of them and they weren't dealer spec. The United MkIIs came with their own special mock Tilling moquette. I also remember that whilst Blazefield did have some that were dealer stock/standard spec, they also got some DP seated ones for the 36.

TheGrandWazoo said:

I think you're absolutely on the money. I seem to recall that Kettlewells of Retford and Fowlers of Holbeach got some single deck Scanias with Plaxton Derwent bodies, whilst there were some double decks of which one went to Fowlers but many more went to BTS for work in North London. They were E/F regs so 1988, and I think Fowlers got theirs when taking over the RoadCar 505 in 1989?


I don't think that's quite right.

Caldaire Holdings (West Riding etc, United etc) bought loads of them and they weren't dealer spec. The United MkIIs came with their own special mock Tilling moquette. I also remember that whilst Blazefield did have some that were dealer stock/standard spec, they also got some DP seated ones for the 36.

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I was going to mention the Caldaire ones. Apart from a few ex-demonstrators and secondhand ones theirs were built to order. If I remember rightly the West Riding Group had the second biggest fleet of Lynxes after West Midlands Travel.

A grey area is the Merthyr Tydfil Transport examples of 1987/8. They were leased from Leyland as part of a package which also included a couple of coaches, but I don't know if they were stock built or constructed to MTTs specification... does anyone know?

TheGrandWazoo said:

I think you're absolutely on the money. I seem to recall that Kettlewells of Retford and Fowlers of Holbeach got some single deck Scanias with Plaxton Derwent bodies, whilst there were some double decks of which one went to Fowlers but many more went to BTS for work in North London. They were E/F regs so 1988, and I think Fowlers got theirs when taking over the RoadCar 505 in 1989?

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Those Plaxton Scania SDs & Alexander Scania DDs through Stuart Johnson Scania were the first I could think of as explicitly stock built models post deregulation.

DunsBus said:

Much of the Leyland Lynx/Lynx II production was stock build. A friend whose dad worked for LRT in Edinburgh in the late eighties and early nineties told me that when it bought its 12 dual-door Lynx IIs in 1991, VL Bus & Coach (the joint Volvo/Leyland sales house at the time) initially pushed for it to take single-door vehicles from stock. After LRT threatened to take its future business elsewhere VL Bus & Coach caved in and agreed to supply them as a one-off order. I think the only other operator to take bespoke Lynxes was West Midlands Travel.

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TheGrandWazoo said:

I don't think that's quite right.

Caldaire Holdings (West Riding etc, United etc) bought loads of them and they weren't dealer spec. The United MkIIs came with their own special mock Tilling moquette. I also remember that whilst Blazefield did have some that were dealer stock/standard spec, they also got some DP seated ones for the 36.

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I can't help suspecting that what VL were trying to persuade Lothian there were to take standard layout single door buses rather than sticking with dual door models, whilst the Lynx may have been designed for a dual-door option these were the only ones ever bought for the UK (or at all?) so would have been a non-standard offering that would have complicated production and by the time they were delivered it was pretty clear no one else would be taking up that option.

There is always that complication about what counts as 'stock build', I think a lot of the new buses my employers buy are from stock builds but sometimes the purchase occurs early enough that they haven't actually been built yet (though were ordered by the sales team/dealer without a customer identified so count as stock) so some of the internal fit outs such as seating can be adjusted to company standard designs before they are actually delivered so moquette/seats isn't always a clear indicator. One clear tell is volume though, if more than about 20 or so are bought in one go it is unlikely to have been out of stock because stock orders are normally smaller batches (West Midlands were buying Lynxes in 50 or more, as did Midland Red West & the Caldaire orders were often large batches) but I think the stock builds in the early 90's were larger than you tend to see now probably due to the lower cost per vehicle then meaning the value of stock sat in the yard waiting a buyer is higher now than it was then.

Another early-ish example was all-Leyland Olympians. Some were built circa 1988 but again the edges get blurred very quickly. There were demonstrators, stock buses and vehicles built to order all with the same interior!
I seem to recall the Isle of Man Transport order from 1988 was one ex-demonstrator (IoMT 88) and five stock buses (83-87).
Many more were built for stock in 1989-1991 and a lot of those finished up on London tendered work.

Dwarfer1979 said:

Lynx may have been designed for a dual-door option these were the only ones ever bought for the UK

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Two of the prototypes were built with dual doors (albeit further back than on the Lothian buses), and E254 TUB was built with dual doors (in the same place as the Lothian ones). It was intended as a Leyland demonstrator but was sold to West Riding off the production line without ever doing any demonstrator-ing. West Riding rebuilt it to single door on delivery and put it into service with their Sheffield and District subsidiary.
There was a 2-door bus for Singapore but whether it was bodied by Leyland or locally I don't know.

Just ahead of the Stuart Johnson Scania SDs and DDs, there were the 28 Bexleybus Olympians supplied by Kirkby's on a three-year lease - a cancelled GM Buses order if I'm correct.
Three had already been finished with DP seats but Kirkby had the seating changed in the others to bus seats.

Pyewipecarshed said:

There was a 2-door bus for Singapore but whether it was bodied by Leyland or locally I don't know.

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It had a modified version of an Alexander PS body.