Behind The Wheel Profile #1: Bailey Coach

Bailey Coach provides charter services to the South Central PA area colleges, schools, Military, FEMA, senior groups, and other group travelers. Bailey Coach also operates a sedan/van division that provides door to door transportation from the region’s airports, cruise ports, and rail stations.

Founding Story

Bailey Coach was founded by partners John Bailey and Rodney Sechrist in May 1998. Wondering how they got started in the bus business? Hear the origin story directly from John.

My father Fred J. Bailey and uncle Glenn founded and ran “Bailey Travel Service” together from the ’40s through the early 1980’s and I began my training in 1975 at the Red Lion Bus Company, a family friends bus company. I did a range of jobs such as working in the office, in the shop as a mechanic, driving the taxi’s, school buses, and charter buses starting out on Flxible’s (pronounced Flexible) and GMC 4104’s with no power steering!

This picture is from the 1943 yearbook of my Uncle Glenn (pictured) who also in charge of the Civil Air Patrol in York. Glenn Bailey was a teacher at York High in York PA teaching Pre Flight to high school students in their senior year. John’s father, Fred J. Bailey returned home from Europe after serving his country in WWII and founded our family travel business “Bailey Travel Service” along with his older brother Glenn.

In late 1997, my now-partner in Bailey Coach, Rodney knocked on my door at 6 a.m. one morning and introduced himself to me and his idea to start a bus company (I had never met him before). He had previously driven School buses and Charter coaches for Red Lion, which is where I first got my taste of the bus business. The rest is history! We formed Bailey Coach with 2 Vanhool’s; a 1996 and a 1994 49-passenger coach and I bought my first 2 coaches from Roman Cornell In Camden.

I took reservations during the day for the buses and ran the travel agency and it’s 4 locations. My wife Jane and I washed buses at night and we did this for the first 2 years of Bailey Coach, keeping all of our vehicles at a friend from church’s trucking company.

I grew the travel agency to 40 full-time staff and sold it in 2018.

What a story right?!

We asked John a variety of interesting and fun questions ranging from the future of the industry to ways he is getting creative during this pandemic. Check out his responses below!

Industry Perspective

1. What do you believe needs to change about the industry? My father Captain Fred Bailey always told me to be “proactive not reactive and nothing is constant but change.” I had taken the proactive step to buy an electrostatic fogger and fog my coaches for the past 3 years without really telling anyone. I believe it will become an industry standard, with people demanding this service similar to how they demand Wi-Fi and power outlets on coaches.
2. How will technology shape this industry? I am looking at specialized lighting systems that will kill viruses via the light for my HVAC systems and the lighting in my building. I want to work with the transportation industry to drive this effort to the industry. Today, we can use UV lights to kill bacteria in water systems and the technology is in right now the early stages in the lighting industry.
3. If you could sum up the motorcoach industry in one word, what would it be? Confused. We all really don’t know what the next step will be.

Coronavirus & Buses

1. How has COVID-19 affected your business? We were forced to park 30 vehicles and lay off 58 members of our staff
2. What are some creative ways you’re navigating this health and economic crisis?

We’ve used foggers for cleaning our vehicles over the past year, leading us to launch a disinfecting service and have a local supplier for us to access unlimited supply, but the struggle was trying to get the specialized electrostatic sprayers. In the last 3 weeks, we have disinfected well over 2.5 million square feet of space and have serviced about 100 different companies within a 100-mile radius of our town. Currently, we have 7 of them in service and have since ordered 2 more. We’ve done that with 4 crews on the road, 7 days a week. This has given us the ability to recall 13 of our staff to help support this business and leverage our SUV and Van vehicles as they are perfect for this application.

Giving Back

We wanted to also give back to the community with our new business so I asked, “who do we rely on the most in time of crisis?” First Responders was the clear answer, so this past Tuesday we opened our unused wash bay and are now providing free disinfecting services to any First Responder vehicle such as Police, Fire, and Ambulance. This free service is available Monday-Friday, 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. Over the 3 days we’ve been offering this the Bailey team has disinfected over 150 vehicles!

Learn more about this new venture by checking out the Bailey Coach Disinfecting Services Brochure here.

Rapid Fire Questions

1. Assuming social distancing and isolating wasn’t mandatory right now. If you could have dinner with anyone in the world (alive), who would it be and what would you eat? I would have dinner with Richard Landis he was the founder of TAMS 20 Groups in the 1980s this was a peer group of travel agencies and I owe much of my success to him for the financial and management discipline he instilled into me over the last 30 years. I would have a Maine Lobster a 3 pounder!!
2. What are your favorite things to do? My favorite thing to do is spend time with my wife in our home in Bonita Spring FL, I am also a collector of guns and motorcycles from the late 1800s.
3. What’s one food you made sure you stocked up on before this all started? My wife had two freezers full of food so we did not have to stockpile this was a great way to attempt to downsize to one freezer.
4. Who is your favorite actor/actress? I would have to say, Ronald Regan, I respected him as an actor and our President.
5. Favorite U.S. city to visit and why? Guntersville, Alabama. My aunt and uncle had a cabin on the Tennessee river and I spent many summers water skiing and jet skiing on the river.
6. What is your favorite thing to do in your spare time? Doing odd jobs for other people. I am fairly handy building and repairing things; my wife and I had built an addition to our home in 1989 and I did 80% of it myself from laying block, brick framing, roofing, etc. I really enjoy helping to repair and fix things for my neighbors in PA and Florida.

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Bailey Coach Company Info

Employee Count: 60 Employees

Fleet Size: 30 vehicles, 14 buses and a fleet of vans, sedans, and SUVs

About Busie

Busie is the leading software company empowering charter operators to compete in an increasingly digital landscape while helping charter sales teams save over 50% of their time in the quoting process and book more charter business. For COVID-19 we are offering our instant quoting and operator sales platform completely free until the industry begins to return to normal. Want to get started today? Reach out at hello@getbusie.com or fill out our form here.