Any current/former motor coach drivers here?

I did it for a few years. If you don't mind babysitting adults and being a personal taxi, it's not too bad. Gotta be a people person though definitely. At times the tips are great, other times not so much. Most times you eat free though.

 

Go for it. I have a friend who trucked a few years before returning to motor coach. The job is someone who can tolerate human beings at close range. Generally well compensated for your time plus benefits.

 

Can be very uncomfortable on long trips. You can't sit back and recline like you can in a truck. You can get your knees banged up pretty good if you're very tall.

If you drive for Greyhound or Jefferson Lines prepare to deal with a lot of malcontents and mentally ill people. They wander around the country on these buses. You also get a lot of young, angry people of any particular race. Prepare to be made fun of and treated like an absolute dotard because you're a bus driver. And you mostly have to put up with it, customer service.

I didn't do very much bus driving. But from the little I did, I think the best way to do it is part time, when you're retired, driving charter buses. I worked for a charter company for a little while and the part time guys got all the best trips. The full time drivers were forced dispatch and got a lot of crap. In order to do some runs legally, you would have a car with additional drivers driving behind the bus so drivers could be switched out. Oh, and you're not on duty while riding in that car.

 

Oh yes you are, counts toward your tour of duty.

 

It's been 10 years so I'm sure they have cracked down on that practice.

I think we tried to do it all legit. Now I remember. You would have the drivers out ahead in a motel somewhere. But it wasn't that simple. I can remember 3 of us in a car following the bus and switching out and we did stay off duty for that. But we were paid.

It was a bad situation all around either way.

When I got into bus driving, one of the reasons was to get to stay in a motel instead of sleeping in the truck. But at Jefferson Lines, and probably Greyhound, the hotel/rooms are like slip-seating, or slip-sleeping. You get to the motel and the clerk gives you the key. You got to the room and it was not uncommon for the previous driver's trash and crap to be all over the place. A lot of the time I would have to carry the sheets up to the desk to get replacements. And you don't get much rest. This was back in the 8 hour break days, but that 8 hours started when you finished your trip. You might wait a half hour for the motel shuttle and spend another half hour in traffic. You're lucky if you get 5-6 hours of sleep before you have to be back down at the bus station loading passengers.

 

Out of 55 years in the transportation business, 20 years were spent in the bus business. Would I go back to driving buses, NO WAY! And the reasons are too numerous to go into. Basically it is the people and the stupid remarks and requests from the ignorant passengers. Plus I did a bunch of tours of Washington, DC. Security has gotten so tight and parking is a big, big problem, No way again.
5 years were spent driving a million dollar bus for a private individual. You want to be a "slave", get a job doing this. Got fired in Quebec, Canada. The man and me got into a "heated discussion", after it was over, I was jobless. LOL He did me a favor.

 

There is no more troublesome freight that what cargo pilots call "self loading freight" SLF. Passengers range from easy & cooperative to argumentative & impossible to make happy. The driver is held responsible for some passenger complaints because you are on the scene. My dad was Transportation Manager & driver at a major convention resort/hotel in Nashville. Companies & vehicles range from 1st class to OMG.

I'm not a people person. I'd colllect welfare before I switched from hauling freight to SLF.