Fun Tours, Inc. is the latest motorcoach company to be taken out by mounting debt.
The Virginia Beach-based tour bus operator shuttered in early 2019, following lawsuits from the company’s lender and former owner. In recent months, unpaid loans also brought down the Bieber Transportation Group and forced Silverado Stages into bankruptcy.
Fun Tours defaulted on nearly $3 million in loans taken out by Felix Jacob Kushnir, a former business attorney, and his wife, Sharon Kushnir, to buy the business in 2014.
The Kushnirs turned over the majority of Fun Tours’ 25-bus fleet to First National Bank of Pennsylvania, which filed a lawsuit against the business to recover money owed, the couple’s attorney told the Virginian-Pilot. The business, which opened in 1981, offered casino trips and chartered bus trips. The Kushnirs bought Fun Tours from Charles and Gwen Elmore in a stock purchase for $3.9 million in 2014, although the arrangement led to both parties filing lawsuits against each other, the Virginian-Pilot reported. In one filing, Kushnir said Fun Tours was dealing with “cash flow issues.”Mounting expenses and reduced ridership led to the closure of Bieber Transportation Group after a 72-year run, according to Steven G. Haddad, Bieber’s owner and president. He bought the company in 2001 from Carl R. Bieber Jr., whose father started the business in 1946. Based in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, the company operated intercity commuter buses, charter buses and tours.
Bieber closed its doors in early February, the same week Kelley Transit Company shuttered, marking the end of the 159-year-old transportation service that began with horse-drawn carriages. The Connecticut company, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2013, reportedly struggled to find certified drivers to fulfill contracts.
In late 2018, Silverado Stages filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Arizona, reporting debt of more than $60 million. The company previously operated a fleet of more than 300 vehicles throughout California, Nevada and Arizona. That cash-strapped company made headlines after stopping its Hearst Castle tour bus runs in December, leaving client California State Parks to scramble to find a backup transportation contractor to shuttle guests from the Visitor Center to the former hilltop estate of William Randolph Hearst.
