Lately, sustainability has become a popular buzz phrase, and I've been pondering the concept as it applies to the private motorcoach industry.

With the cost of new coaches, demands by customers for more and newer exotic features, driver availability, wages and training requirements, insurance and market pressures, has anyone done any industry modeling to illustrate when coach operators are working only for practice, and when we are charging rates that will allow for reinvestment in the company and for maintaining a footing in the industry?

What I'm witnessing is an increasingly accelerating race to the bottom for the lowest price only. With some reliable academic modeling, making some reasonable assumptions, adjusting those assumptions for various parts of the country, the industry can demonstrate to its customers what it actually costs to operate buses.

If the price the customer is being quoted is significantly less than the research shows, something has to be lacking. Either the company is in financial trouble, or maintenance or safety are being compromised to give a strikingly lower rate.

Unlike airlines, the FMCSA isn't looking over the shoulders of coach operators like the FAA watches air carriers to be sure wire ties are one inch a apart, not 1.25 inches. The FMCSA reacts to complaints or crashes, neither of which benefits current passengers, and have a long lag time for benefiting future passengers.

But legitimate, academically-controlled economic modeling would allow coach operators to both understand their real costs of operation and demonstrate to customers why it costs this price to provide safe, reliable service.

Pep talks from industry spokespeople and motivational speakers notwithstanding, without such real and objectively useful information, the industry will consume itself and provide an increasingly apparent vacuum for publicly-funded agencies to participate in charter service.

I'm convinced this type of information, together with a company's safety rating, would provide a believable explanation to customers of why coach-hire costs are what they are.

Otherwise, it appears we're pulling numbers out of our butts in hopes we've chosen a rate lower than the competition so we can run the bus. After which, if everything (EVERYTHING) goes perfectly, we can make a small profit.

If anything goes wrong, we either have egg on our faces, or we pay handsomely for the privilege of taking the group to its destination and back.

Name Withheld by Request