Preston Bus Tridents at Cannock

[Ash]

Rotala are genuinely quiet on news of any new buses I remember when the mcv evolutions were brought in there was hardly any knowledge on the order then all of a sudden on the monday 10 brand new purple mcv evolutions for the 404E and the same for the 16. I would think they will invest it's just the case of getting it passed and cleared. In terms of sales diamond advertised to sell all there cadets none were sold and all have been taken off the market. 

[winston]

Diamond need a Dunn in Charge thats why Wessex and Preston have investment, or someone who is as strong as a Dunn and I don't think the Head of Diamond is. I mean the new livery is a joke it looks like a 2 year olds approach to a fleet colour or Biros attempt. Ok the blue is fair enough but if the had imposed the Signature swish on top it would have broken up the blue. Then if you have Diamnd in a white on the front with each area having there own colour diamond shaped O ie Black having a black one Worcestershire Red and birmingham Blue you keep the brands they ve worked so hard to build. Why there Marketing team have failed to see this is beyond me, Ok my marketing has come from Alex Polizzi on BBC 2 but you can work it out with out getting her flash friends involved, its not Rocket Science at the end of the day.

I know its hard to run a team but, when we look at Wessex with Wessex RED and Royal Bath and Preston Buses Livery compaird to Diamond new Livery it looks a complete shambles, but then you look at Diamond Signature and you think what the why the * are you messing around with solid Blue for.

Tank90,

Diamond had a Dunn in charge, Scott Dunn for a number of years, his has since left & took a couple of key people with him..... He setup his own bus business in Nottingham/Derbyshire trading as Yourbus whilst being MD of Diamond initially with 52 reg Dart SLF's, Rotala have since bought his cast off Darts. Have you seen how quickly he has expanded Yourbus in little over 3 years? He has amassed a fleet of 100+ buses & coaches, he is now the biggest contractor to NX with a fleet 55 x Caetano Levantes (43 of them brand new), the majority of buses now entering the fleet are brand new. He has standardized on Mercedes Citaro's for full size single deckers, along with a number of brand new Wright Streetlites, his latest venture has seen him buy 12 brand new Citaros branded as Citylink at a 10 min frequency against Trent's red Arrow between Nottingham & Derby, that is a bold move...... Yourbus has also benefited by the collapse of Premier and has gained the Nottingham Uni shuttles along with the ex Premier buses

It begs the question why he left Diamond in the first place, his proved he knows his stuff with Yourbus, maybe his hands were tied at Diamond due to lack of finance for investment?

http://www.facebook.com/yourbus?ref=ts&fref=ts

[winston]

I thought Diamond seemed an operation in decline... but now theyve gone and expanded

I still think the WM Diamond business is in decline, they are loosing Centro tenders, NEC & possibly NX contracts? and giving up commercial route left right & centre. Steve Minor said the 97 was a profitable route so why give it up? Most say it went down hill when Blue Diamond started allocated Solos

Rotala have only expanded through taking on extra debt with RBS

[winston]

Rotala are genuinely quiet on news of any new buses I remember when the mcv evolutions were brought in there was hardly any knowledge on the order then all of a sudden on the monday 10 brand new purple mcv evolutions for the 404E and the same for the 16. I would think they will invest it's just the case of getting it passed and cleared. In terms of sales diamond advertised to sell all there cadets none were sold and all have been taken off the market.

Rotala need to realise that they need to 'speculate to accumulate' with the Diamond business particularly in the WM region, Rotala have proven that they can fund the purchase of new vehicles with plenty of intakes at both Wessex & Preston as & when necessary. With NX now investing heavily in new vehicles & refreshing the existing fleet, this will be yet another competitive advantage NX have over Diamond.

[richie]

Rotala have only expanded through taking on extra debt with RBS

Two organisations well suited to one another.

[winston]

If NX were ever serious about the Worcestershire area now would be a good time to consider competing with diamond

Richie, I'm not so sure they ever were, I think it may have been more of a case that First approached NX rather than the other way around. NX could have quite easily outbid Rotala if they were that keen, £1.5 million is a drop in the ocean for NX. NX would have been better to buy the larger First business and squeeze out Red Diamond, rather than considering setting up now.

I would think Worcester would be of interest to NX if ever came on the market......?

[Ash]

Rotala are genuinely quiet on news of any new buses I remember when the mcv evolutions were brought in there was hardly any knowledge on the order then all of a sudden on the monday 10 brand new purple mcv evolutions for the 404E and the same for the 16. I would think they will invest it's just the case of getting it passed and cleared. In terms of sales diamond advertised to sell all there cadets none were sold and all have been taken off the market.

Rotala need to realise that they need to 'speculate to accumulate' with the Diamond business particularly in the WM region, Rotala have proven that they can fund the purchase of new vehicles with plenty of intakes at both Wessex & Preston as & when necessary. With NX now investing heavily in new vehicles & refreshing the existing fleet, this will be yet another competitive advantage NX have over Diamond. With the investment of NX in new vehicles on a lot of services its still the first bus that turns up get the passengers for example diamond's 16 has 12 reg versa's but people still get GRS's darts. Also the investment NX 

It will be interesting to see where the signature buses end up now some services have been or could be lost. If you look at the diamond fleetlist it's not that bad, the problem is they have too many mpd and solo's which have been cascaded from Wessex. Surely they make a decent enough profit out of their black diamond commercial services for them to have some sort of upgrade the cadets are OK but there 12 years old now and the 55 one they acquired seems to be the most unreliable out the lot of them. With the investment of NX in new vehicles on a lot of services its still the first bus that turns up get the passengers for example diamond's 16 has 12 reg versa's but people still get GRS's darts. Also the investment NX have made in West Bromwich none of the services the enviro200 have been for complete with diamond both the 40 42/3 still see's the mercs and b6le's.

[tank90]

NX did have a good sniff at Redditch, it could have been Kidder that put them off and not being able to buy Worcester and Hereford.

I have sent a message to Diamond saying I think it would be unwise to sell off the Enviro 300's and 10 DDs, because at the end of the day a E300 is a longer heavy weight Dart (all new E200s E300s E400s and E500 have the same cab layout and other features that are the same according to ADL) and the Presidents are again useful too. What would make sense is for Redditch to have the ex Preston Presidents to get rid of the two K reg DDs (even tho they are slightly more comfortable than a E300 going from Redditch to Evesham and back (I had a e300 out and City Kreg coming back  in to Redditch)) this would then standardise more of the fleet. I would then put the 3 e300s at Kidder for the 3 and X3 the 3 54 reg ex FMR darts on the 303 newer Diamond full length darts shared between both Redditch and Kidder. As for the solos the 60/63 50/64 in Redditch could use them. But then again looking at the Redditch Standard this evenong there is more change on the way from Diamond. route changes are afoot or something that was hinted to me by the same spokeswomen when i had a breif chat with her, Signature and Royal brands are going to merge and all the buses currently in both brands are staying in the Diamond fleet.

The other problem is Rotala have gone to the same school of thinking as Calmac ferries, buying new ferries or rotala case buses in small or single units which make things slightly more expensive. Because Im sure Rotala and Yourbus could have both gone to Merc and said can we buy a batch of say 60 buses and would have had it cheaper than Yourbus going to buy 12 and Preston going to buy how ever many. And as for the MVCs well Rotala should never of bought them they should have looked at Centros or long E200's but then again that would have been a wee bit to simple.

[Ash]

So this would mean all the buses in the signature branding and the 8 royale centros would merge to create another brand maybe with the leather hybrids.

[winston]

Rotala have only expanded through taking on extra debt with RBS

Two organisations well suited to one another.

Now, now Richie...

[Ash]

Rotala have only expanded through taking on extra debt with RBS

Two organisations well suited to one another.

Now, now Richie...

There's alot worse operators than diamond/rotala. At least diamond provide some sort of competition as well as genuinely lower fares.

[winston]

NX did have a good sniff at Redditch, it could have been Kidder that put them off and not being able to buy Worcester and Hereford.

I have sent a message to Diamond saying I think it would be unwise to sell off the Enviro 300's and 10 DDs, because at the end of the day a E300 is a longer heavy weight Dart (all new E200s E300s E400s and E500 have the same cab layout and other features that are the same according to ADL) and the Presidents are again useful too. What would make sense is for Redditch to have the ex Preston Presidents to get rid of the two K reg DDs (even tho they are slightly more comfortable than a E300 going from Redditch to Evesham and back (I had a e300 out and City Kreg coming back  in to Redditch)) this would then standardise more of the fleet. I would then put the 3 e300s at Kidder for the 3 and X3 the 3 54 reg ex FMR darts on the 303 newer Diamond full length darts shared between both Redditch and Kidder. As for the solos the 60/63 50/64 in Redditch could use them. But then again looking at the Redditch Standard this evenong there is more change on the way from Diamond. route changes are afoot or something that was hinted to me by the same spokeswomen when i had a breif chat with her, Signature and Royal brands are going to merge and all the buses currently in both brands are staying in the Diamond fleet.

The other problem is Rotala have gone to the same school of thinking as Calmac ferries, buying new ferries or rotala case buses in small or single units which make things slightly more expensive. Because Im sure Rotala and Yourbus could have both gone to Merc and said can we buy a batch of say 60 buses and would have had it cheaper than Yourbus going to buy 12 and Preston going to buy how ever many. And as for the MVCs well Rotala should never of bought them they should have looked at Centros or long E200's but then again that would have been a wee bit to simple.

Did NX though? Or was it all rumour.... If KR was the problem, they could have bought & quickly sold it on to Whittle's or simply closed it down.

Rotala & Yourbus are completely seperate businesses, the only link is the Dunn Family. Can't see Rotala buying Citaro's in any quantitiy

The MCV's were a stock built batch that were built some time ago & nobody else wanted, hence they were going cheap. Need I say more.......

[Ash]

With black diamond not sure on the 4/4H/4M PVR could be 15/16 with diamond and the 301 is 6 so these for me would be the two key services that operate 7 days a week and 6 evenings (301) 7 evenings (7) that need to see some sort of investment so around 25 new buses, then put the cadets on the 226/40/42/43 along with the 52 reg darts from yourbus then I would sell all the red and white diamond darts and any older black diamond darts off or at least send some to redditch to provide extra capacity on the services that need it there.

[tank90]

NX did have a good sniff at Redditch, it could have been Kidder that put them off and not being able to buy Worcester and Hereford.

I have sent a message to Diamond saying I think it would be unwise to sell off the Enviro 300's and 10 DDs, because at the end of the day a E300 is a longer heavy weight Dart (all new E200s E300s E400s and E500 have the same cab layout and other features that are the same according to ADL) and the Presidents are again useful too. What would make sense is for Redditch to have the ex Preston Presidents to get rid of the two K reg DDs (even tho they are slightly more comfortable than a E300 going from Redditch to Evesham and back (I had a e300 out and City Kreg coming back  in to Redditch)) this would then standardise more of the fleet. I would then put the 3 e300s at Kidder for the 3 and X3 the 3 54 reg ex FMR darts on the 303 newer Diamond full length darts shared between both Redditch and Kidder. As for the solos the 60/63 50/64 in Redditch could use them. But then again looking at the Redditch Standard this evenong there is more change on the way from Diamond. route changes are afoot or something that was hinted to me by the same spokeswomen when i had a breif chat with her, Signature and Royal brands are going to merge and all the buses currently in both brands are staying in the Diamond fleet.

The other problem is Rotala have gone to the same school of thinking as Calmac ferries, buying new ferries or rotala case buses in small or single units which make things slightly more expensive. Because Im sure Rotala and Yourbus could have both gone to Merc and said can we buy a batch of say 60 buses and would have had it cheaper than Yourbus going to buy 12 and Preston going to buy how ever many. And as for the MVCs well Rotala should never of bought them they should have looked at Centros or long E200's but then again that would have been a wee bit to simple.

Did NX though? Or was it all rumour.... If KR was the problem, they could have bought & quickly sold it on to Whittle's or simply closed it down.

Rotala & Yourbus are completely seperate businesses, the only link is the Dunn Family. Can't see Rotala buying Citaro's in any quantitiy

The MCV's were a stock built batch that were built some time ago & nobody else wanted, hence they were going cheap. Need I say more.......

Well I was told that in good faith by a driver.
Yes Rotala and Yourbus are both seperate but it doesnt stop small compnaies buying stock together to drive down the price tho.
And that would explain alot about the MCVs then.

[winston]

Rotala have only expanded through taking on extra debt with RBS

Two organisations well suited to one another.

Now, now Richie...

There's alot worse operators than diamond/rotala. At least diamond provide some sort of competition as well as genuinely lower fares.

Rotala's Wessex & Preston operations seem pretty high quality/well run, but I would guess even those businesses aren't earning fantastic profit margins. Preston Bus were loss making when first acquired from Stagecoach. Rotala group turnover was £56.1 million at the year end result (up to 30th Nov 2012), while pre tax profit was under £2.1 Million, a margin of 3.7%, the bigger bus group want minimum of 10% margin. Rotala should really be earning more around the £5-6 million profit mark. Rotala do carry quite high levels of debt for a small group & have recently increased it further to purchase Wessex's Avonmouth depot & First's KR & RH business. Its high levels of debt that are currently causing First Group at lot of their problems.....