Blue Bird  PDF Manuals

 Today Blue Bird Corporation is one of the largest North American bus companies. Its production program covers all categories of buses, from the tiny 10-seat A1 school bus to the luxurious 45-foot Class A mobile home. The school bus program alone has five basic variants.

We will only stop at the first school bus of this company, which left the factory gates in 1927.

At the beginning of the century A.L. Lewis was one of the Ford car dealerships in the eastern United States. By then, the school transportation program, in existence since 1869, was already a national law, and the use of public capital to transport school children and subsidies for the purchase of school buses allowed many firms to discover new directions for themselves.

Cheap commercial vehicles were used for the schools, which is why Lewis installed a simple tonneau bus body on a Ford T truck chassis. From that moment, the story of the Blue Bird bus company actually began. The firstborn had a timber frame, sheathed in sheet steel. Only the windows in the carriage part were glazed. In bad weather, the passenger compartment was covered with a canvas canopy.

In order not to complicate the design of the bus and to increase the capacity, entry and exit were traditionally carried out only through the back door. The result is a solid, reliable, and most importantly, a cheap car. The seats were located with a small step (especially for children), they could accommodate up to 20 students.