Blue Bird Corporation
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| Public | |
| Traded as | NASDAQ: BLBD |
| Industry | Bus manufacturing |
| Founded | 1932 |
| Founder | Albert L. Luce, Sr. |
| Headquarters | 402 Blue Bird Blvd P.O. Box 937 Fort Valley, GA 31030 |
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Area served
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Key people
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Phil Horlock, President and CEO |
| Products |
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| Revenue |
 US$932 million (2016) |
 US$26.6 million (2016) |
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US$6.9 million (2016) |
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Number of employees
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2,160 (2016) |
| Parent |
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| Website | Blue-Bird.com |
The Blue Bird Corporation (originally known as the Blue Bird Body Company) is an American bus manufacturer headquartered in Fort Valley, Georgia. Best known for as a manufacturer of school buses, the company has also manufactured a wide variety of other bus types, including transit buses, motorhomes, and specialty vehicles such as mobile libraries and mobile police command centers. Currently, Blue Bird concentrates its product lineup on school and activity buses and specialty vehicle derivatives.
After company founder A.L. Luce produced a steel-panel school bus in his auto dealership in 1927, he started production of bus bodies exclusively in 1932, founding Blue Bird Body Company in Fort Valley, Georgia. Remaining under family control into the early 1990s, the company changed hands several times in the 2000s and became publicly owned in February 2015, with previous owner Cerberus Capital Management holding a 58% share of the company.
As the second quarter of the 20th century began, Albert Luce Sr. was one of the entrepreneurs of the period who transitioned from building wagons to developing some of the earliest purpose-built school buses. What is now Blue Bird Corporation began life as a side project in a Ford Motor Company dealership in Perry, Georgia. Along with the dealership in Perry, Luce owned the Ford franchise in Fort Valley, Georgia, a rural farming community south of Macon.
In 1925, Luce had sold a customer a Ford Model T with a wooden bus body; the customer sought to use the bus to transport his workers. Due to a combination of unsatisfactory construction quality of the bus body and the rough conditions of the rural Georgia roads, the wooden bus body started to disintegrate before the customer had finished paying for the vehicle. Driven to produce an improved design to sell to his customers, Luce sought input to develop a stronger bus body capable of surviving unimproved roads. In place of wood, Luce constructed his bus body from steel and sheetmetal; wood was used as a secondary material. Completed in 1927, the bus was put into use as a school bus.
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Wikipedia