School buses battle rising fuel cost

Lori Glenn

May 09, 2008 10:49 pm

— MOULTRIE — Colquitt County Schools’ recent bus rodeo put drivers through the paces, testing their skills and judgment in friendly competition.
“It’s just good fun. We all tell each other what to do,” said Shirley Thomas, who’s been driving a school bus route for 10 years.
What’s not good fun is record-high diesel prices. Trying to keep those wheels going round and round costs a bundle, local school officials said Friday.
“It’s eating us alive,” said Superintendent Leonard McCoy.
Diesel prices at the start of the school year were $2.30 a gallon. Now, administrators are paying $3.88 a gallon on average, said Assistant Superintendent Mickey Key. The school system budgeted more money than the anticipation of need for the year. Expenditures for diesel are on track to use up $580,000 for fuel.
Colquitt County School runs 70 routes covering 1.2 million miles per school year, Key said. And with the average fuel efficiency of 7 to 9 miles per gallon, school buses aren’t cheap to run. Much of the cost of fuel and transportation expenses are funded locally, Key said. The State of Georgia pays for transporting children who live at least 1.5 miles from a school, he said. The rest is paid by local taxpayers.
“If they live within 1.5-mile radius of a school, we’re not funded for those children at all, but yet we pick them up. So that’s all a huge local contribution,” he said.
To attempt to mitigate the relentless rise in costs, the school system presently is installing its own fueling station that features monitoring and tracking systems to allow Key to recognize if a bus isn’t getting its expected fuel mileage so that it can be pulled off the route and determine whether if the problem is mechanical or with the driver.
Routes are set up to be as efficient in time and fuel consumption as possible.
“We’re constantly monitoring routes to achieve maximum efficiency. During the school year, we’ve already consolidated four routes with minimal additional riding time for the kids,” he said.
To maximize efficiency, the school system beginning next school year will implement a new routing software. Before now, routing has been done mostly by hand.
“Everybody’s just trying to keep their heads above water right now,” Key said.
If the price of diesel gets out of hand, the school system eventually would have to curb class trips and extracurricular activities, McCoy and Key said.
“But we’re not even close to that,” McCoy said.
Alternative means of fueling the fleet have been tried and aren’t an immediate solution. Colquitt County Schools gave a biodiesel blend a try. In the first six months of the school year, Key ran biodiesel in four buses and monitored their performance. He found that the buses performed the same and the cost was about the same as petroleum diesel, but the seals and injectors broke down.
Without realizing savings, the school system had to pull out of the experiment, but that doesn’t mean it will not move to biofuels or other alternative fuel sources as they become more feasible.
“I’m hoping these blends will be perfected and enhanced over the next couple of years so that it’s a viable option for us,” he said. “We wanted to try it to make sure that we weren’t missing out on something.”

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