THUNDER BAY — School bus companies are still looking to hire more drivers to flush out their staff roster for this school year.
Craig Murphy is the manager at Student Transportation Services of Thunder Bay and spoke of how the pandemic affected the city's local bus companies to staff the routes properly. "[The driver shortage] has been an issue, and the industry has been going on for probably about 13 years now across North America. We were very fortunate in Thunder Bay that never really affected us until 2020 when the pandemic first hit."
Murphy continued, "And at the time, unfortunately, above the, the, the most susceptible group of people for the pandemic at that time, we're also the, you know, the age group for most of our school bus drivers. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of drivers at that time. Our bus companies have struggled to maintain a number enough drivers on staff to be able to service our routes ever since."
He noted that both local companies have reported that they have enough drivers to cover all routes for the start of the 2023/2024 school year.
There are 168 bus routes in Thunder Bay, and typically companies would have enough drivers to cover all the routes plus about 10 per cent more staff as backups in the event a driver is unavailable.
Murphy reminds parents that it's always a good idea to have a backup plan in the event a driver is not available for this child's bus route.
This also serves as a reminder to families to download the new Bus Status 4 app, which will send notifications on bus cancellations, delays and more. The old app will continue to operate until the end of September only.
