#3 WHAT'S A GILLIG DADDY?
WHAZAMMO & THE GILLIG
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As the oldest surviving bus manufacturer in North America, Gillig was founded in 1890 by Jacob Gillig, the shop was destroyed as part of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the company reopened as the Leo Gillig Automobile Works, which manufactured custom-built vehicle bodies. One of the first bodies built inside the new factory was one for a motor bus, in 1932, Gillig designed its first school bus body, a configuration it would produce for most of the next 60 years.
By 1938, demand for school buses had surpassed the capacity of the San Francisco facility, leading Gillig Brothers to move to Hayward, California, on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay.[In 1940, as a response to the Crown Supercoach, the first Gillig Transit Coach was introduced, as both a coach and school bus. The first mid-engine school bus, the Transit Coach wore an all-steel body and was powered by a Hall-Scott gasoline engine.
A major acquisition was made as Gillig purchased the Pacific bus division of Washington-based Kenworth truck, In 1967, Gillig would introduce the largest school bus ever produced, the tandem-axle DT16. To compete with its corresponding Crown Coach competitor, the DT16 is the only 97-passenger school bus ever produced in the United States
In the mid-1970s, Gillig began plans to enter the transit bus segment. Following the end of the "New Look" near-monopoly of GMC and Flxible, During the 2000s, Gillig would make a number of advances with its vehicles, exploring the uses of alternative fuels and hybrid technologies in both the Low Floor "advantage" and the high floor Phantom. In 2005, the Low Floor also became available in BRT and Trolley Replica body styles (with a distinct front swept looking add-on).
After 28 years of production, the final high floor Gillig Phantom was produced in 2008; by the mid-2000s, the high-floor (step-up Phantom) buses had all largely fallen out of favor with city transit customers, and the 1996-present GILLIG 40 FT Diesel low floor H2000LF design (nicknamed Gillig Advantage) moved into full popularity.
COMPLIANCE: In January 2007, the EPA began their diesel assault with ISL engines, in 2008 they mandated Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) injection tanks for all diesel trucks and busses, 3/4 ton or larger. DEF is used in selective catalytic reduction (SRC) systems to reduce the pollutants in diesel exhaust. Lane Transit District retired twenty Diesel busses, and switched to Hybrid, CNG and Electric, our #2620 bus was one of the retirees. In 2010, the EPA extended the DEF regulation to include all diesel engines, including pickup trucks, and RV’s.
So, by 2008, Diesel fueled engine propulsion was virtually (and legally) discontinued ... but the chassis design carried on as an alternative fuel (CNG diesel or Electric powered) low floor chassis for 2024... same bus, same chassis, just a different power-plant.
(I rode on an electric Gillig last week ... WOW !)
GM bus quit building busses in 1980 (our old H8H Buffalo was one of the very last built- (see "WHAZAMMO & THE BUFFALO " blog,), by 1987, Greyhound widened its operations and switched increasingly from GM to its own in-house products. In 1974 another plant was opened in Roswell, New Mexico, under the title Transportation Manufacturing Corporation (TMC).In December 1986, Greyhound was split, with Greyhound Lines being sold to an investor group, and Greyhound Lines of Canada, MCI and TMC remaining part of The Greyhound Corporation, which was renamed Dial, Inc. in 1991.
In 1987, Greyhound Corporation bought the transit bus manufacturing operations of General Motors Diesel Division (GMC), which was based in Canada. (GM phased out intercity and transit bus construction at the large GMC Coach and Truck plant in Pontiac, Michigan, shifting medium duty school bus chassis production to Janesville, Wisconsin.) In 1987 Greyhound bought both, Trailways and Eagle, then changed the name to Eagle Bus Manufacturing Inc.
In 1993 MCI became an independent corporation, Motor Coach Industries International Inc, then, in June-1990, Greyhound declared bankruptcy, which also included all of its subsidiaries including Eagle Bus Manufacturing Inc.
MCI took over production of GM's RTS model, transferring production to TMC. MCI also purchased the GM bus assembly plant in Saint-Eustache, Quebec, which then produced GM's Canadian transit bus model, the Classic. TMC ceased production of the older MCI vehicles in 1990 to concentrate on manufacturing the RTS, and on the A-Series intercity coaches.
Before 2002, as a 25K option Gillig supplied Monaco, Beaver, Country Coach and American Eagle with chassis up to, or through their 1997 models, after which time Gillig began to focus solely on their core bus business, you can still find Gillig chassis out there (rather than Freightliner "truck". NOTE Anything with a 46GED VIN prefix is a Gillig chassis.
Besides their bus chassis, Gillig was/is a respected and popular RV chassis manufacturer/supplier for expensive, high-end companies (Monaco, Beaver, Country Coach, America Eagle, & Foretravel) until 1997 when Country Coach and Hawkins Motor Coach both went out of business, but the Gillig bus share of the RV chassis market was small, and they gave it up leaving the RV market to focus on their school and city transit busses in 1997 -1998.
The Gillig chassis has always been a bus chassis that was designed for 1,000,000 miles+ use on road coaches, transit (city) bus and school busses...
everything about it is heavy duty, and the only chassis that Prevost, Eagle, and Monaco tried to copy and compete with, now, all of those are gone... and truck chassis are used instead, only GILLIG BUS remains.
In 2015, Gillig Corporation marked the 125th anniversary of its founding, their 1996 "low floor" version (Advantage) chassis/body design modification of the 1980 Phantom "high floor" ceased its production... today, the current model for 2024 is the Low Floor.
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