Minibus, Inc.

Tram services for amusement parks were a particularly popular concept for modern theme parks. This was due to the large size of parking lots necessary for such large parks. This is a look at one company that supplied trams for theme parks.

Minibus, Inc., was a transportation company based in southern California. It was founded by Flake E. “Bud” Dardenne around 1962. Originally, the company was named Passenger Truck Equipment Company (PTEC). The company name was formally changed to Minibus, Inc., in 1964.

The young company manufactured the Wiki-Wiki Bus, a minibus fleet, at Honolulu International Airport, designed by Charles F. Wood, vice president of Mercury International’s transportation division. PTEC then designed and manufactured a mail bus for Hughes Aircraft Company in November 1962.

Minibuses are vehicles which are 21 feet long and able to seat 19 people while there was standing room for an additional 11 people. They were sometimes referred as a “Trackless Tramcar.”

Washington, D.C.

The first minibus fleet was tested in Washington, D.C., to add easy-on, easy-off transportation for shoppers. Three to five minibuses were tested on F Street between Seventh and Fourteenth Streets. A second test would operate on a loop on F and G Streets between Seventh and Fourteenth Streets. It began on February 1, 1963. The tests proved popular, and by the fall, a fleet of minibuses were in operation.

The system’s one millionth rider was Mrs. Margaret R. Chapple, of Sunderland Place NW, which occurred on June 10, 1964. Mrs. Chapple, referred as Mrs. Charles Chapple, took the trip to F Street to shop for knitting supplies. The 999,999th passenger was Washington Daily News writer Samuel Stafford. The award for being the one millionth rider was being given a roll of Minibus tokens, and the notoriety of being the millionth rider. Stafford was given special dispensation to be the 999,999th passenger.

[The Minibus] is the best-liked form of urban transportation since the cable car. – Knox Banner, director of Downtown Progress, the DC organization that operated the Minibus system.

The success of the Minibus service in Washington D.C., continued through the rest of the 1960s. In February 1971, the D.C. Transit authority asked the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission, who operated Minibus, to discontinue Minibus service in April 1971 because D.C. Transit wanted to expand their regular bus service throughout the Minibus operating area. On April 19, 1971, it was announced that the Commission agreed to end the Minibus service on June 1, 1971. The argument for ending the Minibus service was that continuing Minibus and regular bus service would cause fares to increase faster, and Minibus also had $70,000 in losses in 1970. They also had unreliability with the fleet of minibuses; the fleet shrunk from 8 minibuses to 4 due to technical issues.

There was public support for Minibus, which allowed the Transit Commission to extend the service until January 8, 1972. The last minibus run ended at 6pm.

Leisure World, Seal Beach

Leisure World at Seal Beach, California is a 55+ community in southern California which opened on June 8, 1962. Around the time it was opened, they purchased a fleet of Minibuses to use in the community.

The drivers listed for the community as of May 19, 1966 were:

Minibus gets musical

Music Corporation of America purchases Minibus, Inc.

The success of Minibus from Washington, D.C., to the Pacific coast led the owner of Universal Studios, MCA (Music Corporation of America), to acquire Minibus, Inc., in June 1969. At the time, Minibus had over 500 minibuses in service.

With the infusion of money from such a large company, Minibus was able to contract Roy Campanella, hall of fame catcher of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to be their spokesperson for a new line of minibuses designed to transport the physically handicapped. Campanella was confined to a wheelchair following a severe car accident in 1958.

In 1976, MCA decided to sell the Minibus company after having repeat years of strong growth for the company. This was the end of the line for Minibus.

Chance Coach

MCA sold the manufacturing rights and some of the assets of Minibus to Chance Manufacturing. Minibus was integrated into Chance Coach, Inc., and the Minibus company name was discontinued. Chance Coach was a sister company to Chance Manufacturing. It would become a subsidiary company of Chance Industries Inc., when the company was reorganized in 1985. Chance had been selling trams of their own for a number of years in their own right; the Minibus sale was advantageous for both Chance and MCA.

While Minibus was sold to Chance in 1976, the company legally continued to exist until its corporate charter was withdrawn by MCA in 1989.

Optima Bus Corporation

In 1998, Chance sold Chance Coach to American Capital Strategies, from Maryland. In 2003, the company was renamed Optima Bus Corporation. In 2006, American Capital sold Optima to North American Bus Industries (NABI), from Alabama. In 2010, NABI discontinued the Optima line of products, ending the histories of Minibus and Chance Coach all at once.

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