PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Small motorcoach carriers are looking for big help from federal regulators in their ongoing squabble with public transit agencies that take away charter business.

Unlike much larger private operators that have more financial resources and transit agencies that are partially funded with tax dollars, small private operators with limited fleets often dont have the money or the clout to carry their fight to public bus operators.

"We dont have the money to do what it takes," says Thomas E. McKean, president of Beach Boy Trolley in Pensacola, Fla., and a possible poster boy for small operators facing the loss of charter business from transit intrusions.

McKean detailed his complaints and concerns in a public plea to the Federal Transit Administration, which is preparing to issue new charter bus rules that could reign in transit agencies bent on offering charter service and make it easier for private carriers to fend them off.

"As a private bus operator and a small business owner, our company is aware of the significant damage done to our business and to the private bus industry due to illegal charter competition by publicly funded transit agencies," McKean wrote in a 14-page pleading filed as part of the FTAs formal charter bus rulemaking process.

He told how Escambia County Area Transit set up temporary routes for annual events, supplied charter service to nonprofit and government organizations, and created an apparent "sham setup" to provide other charter service.

"These and other local issues need to be resolved and will be addressed in a complaint as soon as Beach Boy can raise the $20,000 necessary to pay the retainer for (an) attorney," he said.

Escambia County Transit serves the Pensacola area.

McKean, who has been in the charter business for about 20 years, says his company and ECAT have in some cases been able to work out their differences, but recently there has been an increase in incidents that have gone unresolved and have cost him charter business.

Among them was Escambia County purchasing trolleys and paying ECAT to operate them for beach transportation on summer weekends. "I further resent my taxpayer dollars being spent on trolleys that are only used 2.5 days per week from Memorial Day to Labor Day and have nothing to do with the mass transit goal of helping people get to work," he stresses.

McKean says the "sham" operation involves ECAT renting trolleys to a private festival management company that is not in the transportation business, does not have a U.S. Department of Transportation number and does not carry commercial insurance. He maintains the company has done 15 charters in the past 18 months and has another 11 booked.

Such sham arrangements are a major source of friction with private operators across the country. Transit agencies will buy buses or trolley buses, use them occasionally, often for charter work, and then rent them as McKean says ECAT has done.

He voiced strong objection, too, to efforts by public transit agencies to be allowed to do charter work for major public events. Those events, he contends, are the "cream of the private operators business" and in his case make up more than one-third of his annual revenues.

"Therefore, Beach Boy could lose up to 36 percent of our annual business if the public transit agency was allowed to compete with us," he charges.

McKean says he supports most of the new rules proposed by the FTA and he urged that it move swiftly to adopt them so he and other small operators can better stand up to public transit agencies.

He points specifically to a measure in the FTA proposal that would allow private operators to obtain cease-and-desist orders against a transit agency that would prevent it from carrying out a suspected illegal charter.

"A private operator cannot wait for the long complaint and appeals process now in place with the FTA," he says. "By the time a decision is reached, the pubic transit agency will have six months or more to operate illegal charters."

McKean also points to a provision that sends complaints directly to the FTA rather than first going to FTA regional offices, which he says seldom respond quickly enough and often issue opinions that conflict with those of other regional offices.

He contends that the regional offices usually advise complainants to speak to the public transit agencies, which he says simply adds more weeks or months to the process. "The public transit agency will talk to the private operator and then keep on breaking the regulations," he maintains. "They will not change their ways until they receive something in writing from the FTA."

Meantime, he says he is making plans when his business slows in July to take his story personally to the FTA in Washington D.C., in hopes of getting assurances that the charter bus rules address his complaints and will be helpful to the motorcoach industry.

"All I need is someones ear and I think we can get something done," he says. "Were all being jeopardized by pubic transit and we need to work together because I cant do it alone."