Ward Body Works
 |
|
| Family-owned | |
| Industry | Transportation |
| Fate | Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Re-organized as American Transportation Corporation |
| Successor | American Transportation Corporation (AmTran) |
| Founded | 1933 |
| Founder | D.H. Ward |
| Defunct | 1980, (company) 1992, (brand by successor AmTran from 1980-1992) |
| Headquarters | Conway, Arkansas |
|
Number of locations
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2 (Conway, Arkansas and Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania) |
|
Area served
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North America |
| Products | School Buses Commercial Buses |
Ward Body Works (also known as Ward Industries and Ward School Bus Manufacturing, Inc.) was a manufacturer specializing in school buses based in Conway, Arkansas. Ward filed for bankruptcy in 1980, and its successor, AmTran, continued the use of the Ward brand on its school buses until 1992. In 1991, AmTran was also acquired by Navistar International.
D. H. "Dave" Ward founded Ward Body Works in Conway, Arkansas in 1933 when he "lowered the roof of a wooden bus for Mr. Carl Brady of the Southside Schools". Southside Schools were located about 15 miles north of Conway. A blacksmith by trade, Ward grew his business primarily on body repair of bus bodies in the area. In 1936, he built his first complete school bus body. One of the first manufacturers of the time to use all-metal construction, the first school bus made by Ward Body Works featured removable safety-glass windows and perimeter and center-mounted seating.
In 1939, the company opened a 10,000 square-foot factory in Conway, Arkansas. During World War II, along with supplying buses for the military, Ward built over 1000 different bodies of various types for the GMC CCKW cargo truck. Following the war, the company became one of the first bus manufacturers to expand outside of the United States, opening a facility in Mexico City in 1947; bus bodies from Conway would be shipped to Mexico to be placed on chassis for use internationally. To expand capacity inside the United States, a second facility was opened in Austin, Texas in 1951.
Despite expanding to 100,000 square feet, the original Ward factory in Conway was too small to keep up with demand; the company built an even larger factory outside of the city in 1954; at any given time, 45 bus bodies could be on the 1500 foot-long assembly line, producing up to 100 complete buses weekly. Later in the 1950s, the company moved beyond its school bus roots, adding mass-transit and sightseeing buses to its product lineup. Due to importation issues, the Ward factory in Mexico was closed in 1954.
In 1956, Ward became both a body manufacturer and an industry supplier, as the company created a subsidiary, C.S. Sash Company, which became a major aluminum window frame manufacturer for school buses.
In the 1960s, Ward School Bus Manufacturing, Inc. began a series of updates that would modernize manufacturing and production. To catalog the various state and local regulations affecting school bus specifications, in 1964, company owner Charles Ward set up a computer mainframe (using IBM 360s). In the same year, Ward performed the first independent rollover test on a school bus, discovering issues related to structural integrity. During 1967, the assembly line in the Conway facility was upgraded to a moving assembly line, a first in the bus industry. In 1969, the recommendations from the crash test were published, finding that an inconsistent number of fasteners among manufacturers could lead to poor joint strength. The findings would be used in part to government recommendations for school bus joint strength. Following the 1968 retirement of Dave Ward, Ward Body Works remained a family-owned company, with son Charles Ward handling operations.
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