Western Bus Sales Hosts Regional Bus Training
ROUSH CleanTech’s new regional training is off to a great start. In May, team members from our field operations team traveled to Western Bus Sales in Boring, Oregon. But, we couldn’t pull this off by ourselves. Both Mollie Blagg, president of Western Bus Sales, and her team were vital to the success of this two-day program.
From the outset of planning, Mollie coordinated all of the agenda items with our training coordinator Lance Shuttle. Western Bus Sales is no stranger to hosting these types of events, as they have held service training for its customers for years. The difference this time was the more extensive two-day agenda that would attract folks from across the region.
With the agenda and date set, Western Bus Sales reached out to their propane customers to invite them to training. They sent email blasts and posted details of the event on the company’s website. Customer-service representatives followed up by reminding customers of the event during phone calls.
The training was held at Western Bus Sales’ newly upgraded facility. The expansion boasts a 10-bay service shop where technicians handle all warranty service. ROUSH CleanTech’s Jess Henderson was blown away by the building. “This place is huge, and looks like a 5-Star BMW repair facility, only bigger,” said Jess. “They have a new, automated bus wash, like the one you drive a car through. Mollie says it eliminates their worst delivery bottleneck.”
The first day of training was mostly Western Bus Sales’ staff, including field service techs, external service techs, other Blue Bird dealer techs, fleet account techs, and folks from two school bus providers. The company is located in the northwest corner of the state, so people traveled quite a distance to attend training. The agenda focused on warranty and other areas that school district customers don’t necessarily need to know.
The technicians were excited about the training. They have been working on propane buses for some time, but hadn’t had the chance to talk face to face with ROUSH CleanTech and Ford experts.
The second day focused on fleet service training. This customer group had a mix of people — with some having operated propane buses for years, others who have just started operating, and some who are about to get propane buses. It was a great turnout of 21 attendees from 15 school districts. At the end of the day, all of the attendees shared their experiences with propane buses, which helped to solidify their choice to go with propane.
Once school district’s lead technician left saying, “I don’t know why we haven’t ordered more of these! There’s no reason we have to be cautious.”
All in all, the training was a huge success and Mollie is hopeful it will lead to more propane buses sales.
For a schedule of upcoming regional training, click here, or call 800.59.ROUSH for more information.
