Economics of coaches

[renegademaster]

Went on a coach today, seemed roughly about 30 passengers. The journey time was 3 hours. I paid about £15 , and with only 30 passengers , assuming that everyone paid the same (that might be the incorrect assumption, but I only bought the tickets 4 days before), that would make national express £450 , that seems quite low. Coach Drivers are relatively well paid are they not, 3 hours of driving plus whatever positioning time can't be cheap, nor can the fuel.

In my experience that was one of the more busy coach trips that I have been on, many been only 15 or so on a 50 seat coach. My impression was that coaches are purely commerical and don't receive subsidy , is that correct?

 

[Leedsbusman]

Went on a coach today, seemed roughly about 30 passengers. The journey time was 3 hours. I paid about £15 , and with only 30 passengers , assuming that everyone paid the same (that might be the incorrect assumption, but I only bought the tickets 4 days before), that would make national express £450 , that seems quite low. Coach Drivers are relatively well paid are they not, 3 hours of driving plus whatever positioning time can't be cheap, nor can the fuel.

In my experience that was one of the more busy coach trips that I have been on, many been only 15 or so on a 50 seat coach. My impression was that coaches are purely commerical and don't receive subsidy , is that correct?

£150/hr revenue seems pretty good to me.

 

[heart-of-wessex]

that would make national express £450 , that seems quite low. Coach Drivers are relatively well paid are they not, 3 hours of driving plus whatever positioning time can't be cheap, nor can the fuel.

In my experience that was one of the more busy coach trips that I have been on, many been only 15 or so on a 50 seat coach. My impression was that coaches are purely commerical and don't receive subsidy , is that correct?

Its a big group, when you think about all the other money they've made on all the 200+ National Express services running that day as well, and anything from the National Express West Midlands bus services running around Birmingham, and the huge fleet of private hires / rail replacement contracts from thr National Express Travel Solutions division and the Sammy's Lane garage operation charging non Nat Ex perators £90 for screenwash, then there's a mass profit in one day overall

 

[TravelDream]

I often wonder about economics too, but I think it's fair to say National Express have been pretty ruthless with revenue and cutting routes/ services if they don't make an appropriate return.

I've been on a NX coach going Bristol Airport to Cardiff as the only passenger onboard. £8 revenue for a 1.5 hour coach journey seemed madness. But that coach would have come into Bristol very early packed to the brim with passengers paying more than what I paid. Rather oddly the driver decided to run into Newport, stop, and then continue to Cardiff (They only carry passengers on this leg with the 111 from Birmingham to Cardiff). They have clearly worked out it makes sense to run the operation the way they do.

 

[JKP]

Went on a coach today, seemed roughly about 30 passengers. The journey time was 3 hours. I paid about £15 , and with only 30 passengers , assuming that everyone paid the same (that might be the incorrect assumption, but I only bought the tickets 4 days before), that would make national express £450 , that seems quite low. Coach Drivers are relatively well paid are they not, 3 hours of driving plus whatever positioning time can't be cheap, nor can the fuel.

In my experience that was one of the more busy coach trips that I have been on, many been only 15 or so on a 50 seat coach. My impression was that coaches are purely commerical and don't receive subsidy , is that correct?

You are correct to say that generally express coaches do not receive direct subsidy for their services. Historically, some services also provided local links between communities and were registered with the Traffic Commissioner thus making them eligible for fuel duty rebate over that section. Scottish Citylink coaches still provide this function in parts of Scotland but am not sure about National Express.

 

[azOOOOOma]

Out of interest what sort of MPG does your average coach get?

 

[G_for_Gnome]

Went on a coach today, seemed roughly about 30 passengers. The journey time was 3 hours. I paid about £15 , and with only 30 passengers , assuming that everyone paid the same (that might be the incorrect assumption, but I only bought the tickets 4 days before), that would make national express £450 , that seems quite low. Coach Drivers are relatively well paid are they not, 3 hours of driving plus whatever positioning time can't be cheap, nor can the fuel.

In my experience that was one of the more busy coach trips that I have been on, many been only 15 or so on a 50 seat coach. My impression was that coaches are purely commerical and don't receive subsidy , is that correct?

The assumptions made here are correct if you have boarded at the journey’s origin point, and there were no stops between there and your destination. These days with the pared down National Express network that is probably a very feasible scenario (that your journey and the coach’s full journey were the same)

But, if the coach had served several stops before it reached you, then a number of seats could have been sold many times throughout the journey. Passenger 1 boards at stop A, leaves at stop B. Passenger 2 boards at stop B, takes the same seat, leaves at stop C and so on and so on. Take it to an extreme and have all of your 30 passengers boarding and alighting each time, and you can see how the revenue can stack up before the coach even reaches you.

Additionally, each one of your 30 passengers might be connecting to another service at the destination as part of a longer journey with a more expensive ticket

And yes as others have mentioned, it is likely that it won’t be the only journey that vehicle will do on that day

I suspect it is still the case for all express scheduled coach operators, because their services are provided by subcontracted coach companies (although NX seem to be moving a lot to in house companies) they are subject to differing rates for coach hire in different parts of the country, as each area sustains different market rates. Journeys provided by operators hailing from an area with more competitive rates might mean ticket prices can be kept lower, to attract more custom.

 

[heart-of-wessex]

Out of interest what sort of MPG does your average coach get?

Mine does circa 9mpg, our Irizar does 8mpg not sure what our ex-NX Levante does but probably similar

 

[whoosh]

It might be the return journey where the real money is made. Just need to get the coach and driver there as cheaply as possible - fill some empty seats with a good priced ticket.

 

[Ghostbus]

I can't see the issue as framed.

Even at £20/hr for the driver and £100 for diesel (3 hours at 50mph at 8mpg and £1.40/ltr), that's still only a cost of £160 to apparently make £450 in fares. That's a very healthy pre-tax profit of £97 per hour just for one coach.

NatEx has hundreds of them working day and night, from which they then only need to cover taxes, dead mileage, insurance, leasing/servicing, rent/utilities, and all the other crap that comes with running the business (uniforms, marketing, employee benefits, etc).

And a lot of those costs are already covered or shared in those cases where the coach is actually run by a contractor, and NatEx (I assume) simply pays them an agreed hourly rate for in service mileage and then only has to pay for marketing, insurance and their website/online ticketing.

So either running NatEx coaches is mighty lucrative, or yes indeed, many (most?) of the fares were less than £15, bought weeks in advance.

 

[Eyersey468]

Out of interest what sort of MPG does your average coach get?

Our NX coaches average about 10mpg according to the computers on them, that is doing a lot of motorway driving though

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Dec 2024 ==

I can't see the issue as framed.

Even at £20/hr for the driver and £100 for diesel (3 hours at 50mph at 8mpg and £1.40/ltr), that's still only a cost of £160 to apparently make £450 in fares. That's a very healthy pre-tax profit of £97 per hour just for one coach.

NatEx has hundreds of them working day and night, from which they then only need to cover taxes, dead mileage, insurance, leasing/servicing, rent/utilities, and all the other crap that comes with running the business (uniforms, marketing, employee benefits, etc).

And a lot of those costs are already covered or shared in those cases where the coach is actually run by a contractor, and NatEx (I assume) simply pays them an agreed hourly rate for in service mileage and then only has to pay for marketing, insurance and their website/online ticketing.

So either running NatEx coaches is mighty lucrative, or yes indeed, many (most?) of the fares were less than £15, bought weeks in advance.

NX pays by the mile not the hour

 

[Thames99]

The costs though are a lot more than the driver's wages and diesel aren't they? There are fixed costs of office and management staff, web site work, depreciation, insurance, repairs, maintenance, etc. which need to be apportioned and included.

 

[Towers]

The costs though are a lot more than the driver's wages and diesel aren't they? There are fixed costs of office and management staff, web site work, depreciation, insurance, repairs, maintenance, etc. which need to be apportioned and included.

Don’t they say the total cost of a member of staff is about 3x their wages, once you’ve covered all taxes and pension contributions, a bit of paid sick leave here and there, uniforms and all the other benefits that come with many jobs these days?

 

[Cesarcollie]

Don’t they say the total cost of a member of staff is about 3x their wages, once you’ve covered all taxes and pension contributions, a bit of paid sick leave here and there, uniforms and all the other benefits that come with many jobs these days?

No. On costs are between 30% and 35% generally, unless there is (for example) a particularly generous pension scheme. Note however that this is per member of staff. Factors like scheduling inefficiency are a different and additional set of extra costs.