Episode 191: The $400K Mistake Most School Districts Are About to Make #podcast #fleetmanagement

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm Marc Canton, your host for today. and I'm joined by my good friend and colleague Griffin Scott. How you doing, Griffin?

Good. Nice to see you again, man.

Nice to see you, bud. For those who haven't seen the show before, I've been in the fleet industry for almost 30 years, ran a fleet in New York City, got Fordham University— go Rams— for about 20 years, went into consulting for close to 10 years, or still consulting really. So over 10 years and came over to RTA a few years ago. As the VP of Product and Consulting. And my love for fleet data is endless, which is why I love talking to fellow data geeks in the fleet world like Griffin. Griffin, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are right now.

Yeah, sure. So I've been in the fleet industry for about 10 years now. I got hired on at a fleet consultancy called School Bus Consultants. So it's a little on topic today. Worked there for about 3 years, starting as an analyst, moving up to a fleet consultant, to a project manager over those 3 years. And then I jumped to another consultancy called Mercury where I got to meet you and join your data analytics team. Was there, I think, for about 3 and a half years until finally jumped over here, started working at RTA, which has been great.

And right now you kind of, you support the consulting team predominantly, but you also will jump in and help with analytics in the product when necessary and that sort of a thing. So, so let's go back to that. So one of the reasons, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is, well, real quick before I do that, you also have something that most people in the fleet industry don't have, which is you're formally educated, let's say, in the world of data, right? You have a geopositioning or how— what— tell me about that. So tell me a little bit about that.

I got a degree in data science with a concentration in geoinformatics. Which is really just using GIS systems, so geographical information systems, which is like making maps with data, essentially. So you can imagine, you know, one of the big pieces of that is, you know, creating routes and working with that kind of stuff, which is, you know, directly involved with school districts. So that's, that's one of the reasons why I got that job at the, at School Bus Consultants, because I had the analytical background to really kind of analyze what a lot of these school districts were doing. And to help them kind of be more efficient.

So that's why we're here, man. I thought I would have you on because I really believe in my heart you're amongst— you might be the world's greatest school bus transportation system data analyst on the planet, but you're definitely amongst the smartest people I've ever met in the industry as far as knowledgeable about that. And, you know, here we are. We're at the start of a new school year or about to, depending what part of the country you're from. You're about to start. You just started. You're starting this week, you know, that sort of a thing. And I thought we would, you know, kind of talk a little bit about this subsection of, of the fleet industry because school bus fleets are, are interesting to me. You know, the big characteristic that typically jumps out to me is they're rarely— do they exist on their own. There are exceptions, right? Like Loudoun County, you know, kind of jumps out at me over in Virginia. As having a really large fleet management program there. But generally speaking, fleet is just sort of a subgroup of transportation in school districts, right? So they really just exist to make the school buses run. And sometimes some of the white fleet suffers for that. So, you know, that's— it's interesting. And that focus, that focus kind of plays out for our colleagues that are doing the fleet management piece, right? So So talk to me, let's hit a couple of topics here if we could. From a technology perspective, what are you seeing? What do you see in the school bus world? What is kind of missing that you think they would benefit from, you know, like the rest of the fleet industry uses, you know, those sorts of things? What do they maybe they use? Maybe it was something we can learn. I don't know. But what are your thoughts from like a tech perspective?

Yeah. So as far as tech, I mean, the big thing for school districts that I'd say at least 75% of them have is routing software, which makes sense, right? That's their key mission, get kids to school. Then probably the next biggest thing is GPS so they can track the buses, they know where it is, they can get alerts on any kind of issues that might be going on with the buses. Then you start getting into the smaller things like driver behavior technology, parent apps which show, where the bus is for parents, when is their kid getting dropped off, that kind of stuff. The one thing that a lot of them are missing, which they desperately kind of need, is like a true FMIS system. Something that does more than just the routing and just takes note of, hey, we have these buses. A lot of the school districts that I worked with at the time, they didn't really have systems to track what's going on with the bus. you know, as far as maintenance and stuff like that and PM schedules. Um, so, you know, realistically, a lot of their techs were working, you know, 30, 40 years in the past, you know, with paper and stuff.

So it's like writing in notebooks and stuff like that.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I ran into that a lot too.

It's, uh, it was a pretty major issue in a lot of the, the districts that I, I helped out. So I, I think that's probably the biggest thing that they're missing. They feel like they have enough with the routing software because like, let's be honest, that's the main thing. That's, that's their entire mission.

And also like the routing, dispatching is another tool, right?

You might see dispatching too.

And so a lot of those programs will have like a, like a maintenance light module where maybe you can track PMs or stuff like that, but it's not really letting you track, track inventory, post-labor times. You know, manage against SRTs, manage, you know, what is the four-letter word, the unofficial four-letter word in school bus fleet, probably in all of fleet, is deferred maintenance, you know, which frankly happens a ton in school bus fleet and for good reason. It's not malpractice. It's a good thing. But to actually acknowledge that to any kind of leadership, you know, that freaks them out because they're scared of the public. Twisting the word or misunderstanding it, but it actually makes it worse because you write it in the notebook, change these brakes in 2 weeks, you know.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And tracking that formally, yeah. So there's a lot missing, and then there's all the KPIs kind of associated with that.

Exactly.

That, that get lost.

Yeah, I mean, you just really don't have the tools to identify like where the problems are to help you improve. You kind of just have to, to know, right? And any school district where people are coming in new, you know, they're relying on the history of the people that have been there. So it just makes it rough.

So, so much so, like, I recall a district I worked with where they divvied up the buses amongst the mechanics, right? Where it was like, these are your buses, because God forbid the bus came in and that mechanic wasn't there or wasn't available that day. Had How do they know the history? Nobody knows what's going on because it's literally in a notebook, which is just scary, right? What happens when that person leaves? What happens if that person's out for a prolonged period? So yeah, to my school bus brethren out there, get yourself a good FMIS. Those modules aren't cutting it for a whole bunch of reasons. And, you know, we can get into that more. What are the big issues they're facing, right? Like, you know, everyone— we talk a lot on this show about the technician shortage. But the school bus folks, man, they got like a double whammy going on right now.

They do. They do. Yeah, there's the driver shortage and the technician shortage. You can imagine, you know, most fleets you can get a pretty generalized technician in. In school bus, it's a heavy-duty technician that has some experience with school buses or, you know, is a fast learner. You know, the benefit for them is most school districts have to get the kids to school, so they're They're willing to pay a little bit more for the technicians, but again, it's such a specialized thing. You have to, in most school districts I'll say, you have to have a CDL so you can move the actual buses. So it's another item tacked onto your resume that you have to have to actually even do the work. So you limit that pool even further and further. And unfortunately, a lot of school districts with their drivers as well needing CDLs, Some school districts have had issues with, you know, hiring people, paying for their CDLs, getting them trained up. And then, uh, you know, on the driver's side, there's, there's unfortunately much higher paying jobs that you can do with CDLs. So it's sometimes hard to keep them around after getting them through that. So you'll— they have to go through all these hoops to, to try and keep them there even after giving them their CDLs or training them to get them. So I mean, it's, it's just, it's a double whammy, like you said. You know, you're, you're just desperately trying to get people people to actually do the work. You can be as efficient as you can with the routing software, create all the best routes, but if, if you don't have enough drivers to drive them all, what good are they? Yeah, you're in trouble. You got to reroute the whole system.

Although, although you can use routing to help you with that, which we'll talk about here in a minute. But, um, but what's interesting though is a lot of districts are using one, you know, they're kind of combining the problem. Like, in other words, it's not uncommon at all to have mechanics go out and do runs. Because they're short drivers because they have CDLs, right?

So yeah, I mean, I, I knew like the, um, the superintendent of transportation, you know, having to drive because they just don't have drivers. Everyone in the whole department would have to drive. It's, it's insane.

Yeah, it's, it's challenging because they, they do a couple hours in the morning, they do a couple hours in the afternoon, and other than some chartered trips So it's often, in most places, it's not a full-time gig, although you're seeing districts kind of, they're starting to make it full-time jobs just to make the job more attractive. Um, you know, so traditionally they're trying to hire like retirees, people who used to drive transit buses or other CDLs. If they need a new endorsement, they get, they help them get one. Um, you know, and they're doing all kinds of things, you see, you know, and it's great stuff, get them trained. But then you get them trained and then they go get something more lucrative where they can work more hours. So you're a little bit between a rock and a hard place, um, on the driver front. Um, and it's, it's, it's also one of the reasons you're seeing more and more and more outsourced, uh, to the, to the large school bus transportation companies because it's just hard to keep up. Um, and yeah, and, and, you know, frankly, those organizations can oftentimes generate efficiencies because they are using FMISs. Right. They do have the means of attracting and getting more drivers and that sort of a thing. So I know, I know in New York City, for example, the school bus drivers are full-time employees and they find other work for them to do between shifts. But, but let's try to help some folks out. So we kind of just alluded to it. I mean, well, you know, let's get into it. Like, tell me about some of the work and some of the analysis that you do. You know, obviously you just mentioned the routing, right? You could have the best routes in the world, but how does, how can routing help address the driver shortage?

You know, yeah, I mean, well, you know, the more efficient routes you have, the less buses you need essentially, right?

One of the big ones, therefore the less drivers you need if you need less buses, generally speaking. Exactly. In the world of school bus, those go hand in hand, right?

Yeah, it's the same thing.

Right.

You know, some of the ways that kind of, it never really was the purpose for these studies, but they kind of came around to it. One of the big things we did a lot of was bell time studies. At the time, it was really kind of driven by these sleep studies that kind of basically proved out that the circadian rhythm of high schoolers was basically causing issues with them waking up early. The older you get, the later you wake up, and in a lot of school districts, the high school's first. So, they're getting kids to show up at like 6 AM when their circadian rhythm is like they should be waking up at 8 AM to get an actual full night's rest. Their scoring is lower because they're having to go to school earlier because they're so tired and all that kind of stuff. So, that was the big push for taking a look at changing bell times around. But then a lot of districts realized, hey, if we change the bell times around, we have to change the routing and the buses. So, you know, what's the impact of that? Because these buses cost, you know, $150,000. If you're doing electric these days, $400,000. So if you've got to add a couple of buses, it could be millions of dollars. So they realized the big issue there was actually 'Oh man, this could cost us millions of dollars.' And so, not to mention they got athletics breathing down their neck, like, 'You can't start later.

When am I going to play my football game? When am I going to do practice?' You know, that kind of a thing.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, a lot of parents like having high school first because then their older child's home to watch the younger kids.

That's true.

So that was always a big complaint.

I'm guilty.

For parents. So, uh, okay, there, you know, there's reasons why the high school started first in a lot of places, right? That, that was a big push there. But, uh, as far as like the routing piece of that, you know, um, the way bell times work, and you can think about it, is it's almost, uh, like tiers. So the more tiers of times you have— so let's say high school at 7 AM, middle school at 8 AM, elementary school starts at 9 AM, you know, that would be a 3-tier system. You have time for one bus to basically do a route for each of those schools and you're reusing that bus, you know, two extra times. Whereas if all the bell times are at the same time or a one-tier system, they all start at 8:00 AM, you need three buses all of a sudden to, to go to all of those schools. So it was a way that ended up being like, hey, you know, if you have more bell times, you can reuse these buses more, you need less drivers. You need less buses overall. So, uh, it could be a huge, you know, savings there and really help address kind of the driver shortage at the same time.

That's interesting. And, and it also goes to what we were talking about, because not only do you— if you have one less route and you need one less driver, but the way those tiers work, you're also able to give that driver more hours fundamentally, right? Which makes the position much more attractive. So the takeaway for school bus, uh, this— or for districts in general, school districts, is go create a bunch of tiers in your bell times because you can save a lot of money on buses, uh, and you would actually probably help retention and/or recruiting of your bus drivers because you can, you can give more hours, especially if you're still on that part-time system or Maybe this even gives you the impetus to go full-time for at least some of the drivers and create sort of a career path for some of the folks there that, hey, this is out there for you. I mean, you're always going to have to supplement with part-time, but anyway, yeah, what were you going to say?

I'd also say, even if you're in a three-tier system, sometimes a 10-minute shift can make the difference of letting a bus make it from this school to another one, just depending on how big your district is. So, you know, those, those tiny 5-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute changes can actually make a really big difference.

So that's interesting. Yeah, so bell time study. So how often would you say school districts should be doing this stuff?

Um, I mean, realistically, you know, maybe every, uh, every decade or so. It just depends on like—

really? But I know you, you're putting in the money factor in your head. I can already— I can see your wheels turning going Man, you know, there's a cost to it and the school districts don't have a lot of money.

It's a lot of political change too if you're changing bell times all the time.

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.

Okay, I think it's one of those things where if you're in a bad situation right now, you definitely need to look at it. If you've already done it though, you know, redoing it again, that might be a nightmare.

So if you've done one recently and you couldn't impact change the way you wanted to, Unless you have new leadership, maybe it's not worth it. But if you can get— if you can move the needle— but it is— I don't want to put words in your mouth. I know, like, from talking to some of our, our old colleagues over at School Bus Consultants there, you know, like the Tom Platts and the Tim Ammons of the world, that, you know, their opinion was you could make a dramatic impact on the transportation system's efficiency with these belt time studies combined with a good routing study because That's another, another— so just stick with the bell time for a second. You know, again, to your point, 10 minutes here, 5 minutes there, adding a tier, you know, changing a tier around, and you, you cut, you know, because to your point, even if you cut, you know, 2 buses out, you've saved yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital costs plus all the M&R for it, plus you've added time that you can now give to a driver, generally speaking. Um, But then you combine that with the routing studies and, um, so you're much nicer than me, but let me, let me, let me ask it. I mean, there are routers pretty much everywhere, right? Like somebody, somebody at the district is doing the routers, right? The routing, the routing, right? Um, but I'll say this so that you don't have to. They're not all very good at it. Uh, so So, so, so having a true expert, someone like yourself who's literally trained in this, who then on top of that has experience looking at school bus data, transportation data, as well as fleet management data, you know, once in a while, that's probably a really good practice to do, to have someone come on in and kind of audit that and make sure that that's going as smoothly as you can. And certainly when you do the bell time study, you're going to have to, um, you know, readjust your routing there. And you can make some pretty significant efficiency gains.

Because no one goes to school for fleet management, chances are you were never formally trained on how to successfully lead a fleet. That's where the Fleet Success Playbook comes in. The Fleet Success Playbook is your guide to building a safe, reliable, and efficient fleet that provides exceptional service. Learn all about the 4 pillars of fleet success, stakeholder satisfaction, intentional culture, resource efficiency, and risk management. Get nearly 100 years of combined advice on common challenges, practical solutions, actionable tips, and real examples from fleet industry experts who have been there and done that. Visit www.fleetsuccessplaybook.com to request your free copy today. Yeah, I'd say one of the biggest things is, you know, investing in some of these newer routing softwares that are kind of taking advantage of AI to kind of match up the routes and build them itself. It's huge. They've come leaps and bounds. So if, if you're not using some of these new routing softwares, it can help your routers out a ton and save you a bunch of time and actually make these efficient routes. So investing in new routing software and then investing in the training of your routers. I think that that was one of the, like, big reasons why a lot of current routers aren't really as good as they could be, is because they, they didn't, you know, get the training sent to them, like, out to them. So it's— it can make a huge difference when you can actually utilize the software. You know, I say it all the time, even with our FMIS customers, you know, if you don't know how to use the system, you're basically using pen and paper. You know, a lot of the systems are great, they have all these tools, but it's complicated and you need to be trained in it. Otherwise, you're not taking full advantage of what you have and, you know, not really getting all the benefits that you could out of them. So training, training is a big thing.

Yeah, it's interesting because like in our software's case, we're actively trying to make it as intuitive as possible and to give you all the help tools and all that stuff. Built in. And I think we've done a pretty good job of that, especially for the basics. But, but yeah, but, and yet at the same time, we advocate all the training in the world, so much so we give away free training every month. So you make a good point. There's always another, you know, thing that you haven't played with yet that you can learn, maybe another way to use something that you're already using in a, you know, a better— I mean, listen, I've been using Microsoft Excel for, I don't know, 35 years, something like that, you know. and I still learn something every, like, every once in a while about, oh, that's cool, you can do that. Um, and then I'm like, wow, that must be a new feature. And then someone like you will make me feel like an idiot and say, no, Mark, that's been there for years. Okay. And I consider myself pretty darn good in Excel, so, um, even have some formal training in it. So yeah, you can always learn a little bit more. You can always make a little bit better use of it, which is, which is also interesting. Um, okay, so, and then there's another— there's one more that you find can make a really big impact from an efficiency standpoint. Is that fair?

Um, yeah, it's, it's a surprising one. Uh, walk zone studies, which, you know, not a lot of people get into, but it happens, um, again, more often for political reasons. Um, but, uh, what I'm talking about is, you know, A lot of schools have a walk zone around their school. It's basically like a mile up to 3 miles in some places if it's very walkable, where students basically are ineligible to get transportation. If you're close to the school, you can't get a ride on the school bus.

Got it. Hey, you should be able to walk. You go ahead. Yeah. Go ahead and walk, bud. Maybe there's exceptions for— folks who maybe need accessible transportation or something like that. Yeah, of course. But the idea is, if you're capable, you know, get there.

I got you. Yeah.

Okay.

So a lot of school districts, again, it was more political or, hey, you know, we're adding in this new school, you know, we need to create a walk zone around it. Can you help us out with that? What does this look like? That can make a big difference. If you're lowering your walk zones, you know, from 2 miles to 1 mile, you know, that could be a lot of new kids that you have to route all of a sudden.

Right.

And that can have a big impact. So, right. Yeah. And then if you're extending it, which happened in some cases, it's, you know, okay, how can we readjust all the routes now that we don't have to pick up all these kids? You know, can we lower the routes? You know, what, what happens to everything? So it can be a pretty big, um, you know, change in the system just, uh, looking at those walk zones.

Well, I mean, so if you're a school district who really needs to save money, right, can you just make your walk zone from 1 mile to 20 miles?

And yeah, yeah, you could. Uh, again, that's, that's another clinical That's, uh, if you can get that through, good luck.

All right. But certainly something worth looking at because sometimes I don't want, again, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but in your experience, you've run into some like silly walk zones before you guys came in and corrected it. So, you know, if that's something that, um, you know, you're at a school district, you're looking at this and you're like, this, this doesn't make sense to me. We always talk about telling your story with data, right? And so you haven't been able to say, hey, can't we just get the math done? Show the impact of changing it. And that's usually where you might be able to get a little movement on, you know, having some changes around that, that walk zone. And for everything else we talked about, for that matter, too, bell times and so forth. All right. So that's interesting. That's interesting. All right. There's one last topic that I wanted to hit on. This is a little bit more, a little bit less of right now and things you can do to help yourself right now. But Kind of like, you know, the hot topic in our— in the fleet management industry for a while now has been EVs, EV transitions. It's cooling off a little bit now, but it's still— it's still there. And if we're all being honest, it'll heat up again pretty soon. School bus is interesting, right? Like the EV school bus world is really interesting. On the one hand, it's the perfect use case, right? It's because you go out for a few hours, It's a fixed route in a fixed geographical area. And then you come back and you have time between trips to charge or supplement charge and that sort of a thing. So in that regard, it's like perfect. This is what EVs were intended— well, not intended for, but ideal for, let's say, you know, and no emissions in the neighborhood, in the, in the neighborhoods, which is great, right? That's exactly where you want to reduce toxic gases and that sort of a thing, reduce noise. I mean, like there's just so many benefits. On the other hand, you got these massive trucks essentially that need tons of battery power, which just create all kinds of logistical and other issues for transitioning to EVs within school bus, right? Now, I know you've done some work in this area. Tell me a little bit about what you've seen, what the issues are, what's working, what's not working, et cetera, et cetera. Just talk to me about your experiences in this area?

Yeah, so I've done quite a few of these studies. I mean, let's be honest, the big issue is, is money. These EV buses are, you know, upwards of like $400,000 right now, compared to your diesel bus, which is like $150,000. So it's, it's over double the cost. So in, in the world of school districts where they don't really get that much funding, you know, they're very reliant, or they have been in the past up until this year, on grants from the government. South Carolina was getting up to $66 million a year to get new school— electric school buses. And so South Carolina was kind of handing these out to school districts because they were applying to those funds and actually getting them up until this year where it unfortunately has been paused. So a lot of school districts are trying to get the money that they've already spent, unfortunately. So that's a big issue for them right now. They're kind of in this weird limbo.

Well, explain that a little bit. Break that apart, right? What do you mean by getting the money they've already spent?

Yeah, well, you know, the way sometimes grants work is you're ordering these things because they're several years out. And, you know, you'd be applying to the grants that the federal government put out, and they get approved. Like, you're approved for the money, so you make those orders, right? You're expecting it to come in. And this year, it unfortunately—

So if you don't get the money now, how do you pay for the thing? Right.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's an entire nightmare that's going on right now for school districts, unfortunately.

Or you have to cancel the order or whatever else, which would, you know, yeah, considering what OEMs have done to fleets in recent years. Sorry, OEMs, don't hate me. The fleet folks know what I mean. Um, but okay, so, but so let's, let's unpack that too a little bit because one of the mistakes that we see across the industry in every segment is people go electric before they have the infrastructure to go to electric.

Yeah, that too. That's another big thing.

So if they've made that mistake, in some ways they may be getting saved from it inadvertently.

Yeah.

If they haven't, well, now they've invested all this infrastructure in theory, right? Yeah. You know, to be able to charge it because in my experience doing the EV transitions around the school bus districts is that's really the biggest nightmare is it's not even— it's not building the charging, it's not getting the charging stations up and running. It's getting the electricity to the facilities. And it's ironic, but I find that it's either, you know, it's in the city and it's like if the power is not already there and there's not something nearby that is accessible to which some folks have gotten lucky and it's there. But if it's not there, the amount of work, you know, and let's say destruction you'd have to do to get the power there in an area that can kind of— it's tough to absorb, right? Because it's— what's the word I'm looking for? Very populous, very dense, you know, area. On the other hand, then you get, you know, I remember doing a study out in Pennsylvania where it was a district that was, you know, it was suburban, but it was in the center of, let's say, an agricultural area. And it was just like, yeah, there's no power there and it's going to take us forever to get power to you. All the room, all the land, all the, you know, in the world. But it just was going to take a bit because there was nothing getting there. So getting the power there seems to be a real big piece because you're talking, you know, you're talking a ton of power. You're talking about like, you know, like professional football stadium amount of power to be used every night to charge some of these districts. So that's, that's a major challenge that maybe other fleets don't have quite as big as getting the power there and getting the infrastructure in place.

Is—

I mean, is that what you've experienced as well?

100%. Yeah. You know, really building up the infrastructure, having to almost tear everything up to put lines in because, you know, why, why would you have the resources to get power to these places where you didn't before? So building all that up, um, you know, getting in charging stations, you know, choosing between a Type 2 versus Type 3 charging station, which is, you know, maybe $30,000-$40,000 difference, you know, making the logistical decisions between whether you can get away with a Type 2 versus a Type 3, where Type 3s charge things super fast, they're superchargers they call them. That's a whole nother equation you have to think of. And then the other one too is your maintenance facility.

Well, let's pause on that quick though, because when you say you got to think of, you mean like, okay, well, I can start charging at this time. I have to be finished charging by this time.

I got to roll out.

I can supplemental charge this. These are how many I have. These are how many chargers I need. Like, it's math. It's a lot of math. Yeah, it's actually not that complicated, but it's convoluted, let's say. Right. In that regard. And so it's math that a lot of people struggle to do or do properly. And then they've put in the infrastructure and they're short on their charging or they haven't planned, for example, for growth where, hey, in 10 years you're going to need 5 more buses and now how do you charge those? So it's the kind of thing that you should probably get help on, even if you're great at— at least get another set of eyes, because if you underspec for charging again, now you have this $400,000 bus that's useless to you or you can't meet your commitment. So that's, that's really super important. And then you were going to make the point— go ahead.

Well, even on top of that, you know, the, the routing makes a big difference there too. You know, if, if your bus is, you know, going 70, 80 miles on a single route, um, and you don't have enough time to recharge it for the second route, you know, you have to kind of rethink your routes almost. You got to shorten them so there's enough time to recharge it, you know, from the morning routes for the afternoon routes. So you really have to take a look at that and see if the, uh, you know, the distance these buses can go can get recharged in enough time to do it again, right?

Or is it, is it I need a Level 3 instead of a Level 2 because that's the only way I do have enough time? Or do I need another bus, which is another $400 grand? You really have to build a model and you have to iterate on that model. That's ultimately, I think, the message that we're giving. And that's not what we find most districts doing, 'cause they, either because of political reasons or other reasons, they're under pressure to just get started. Let's just get an EV bus, let's pilot it. And then it kind of falls on itself and the challenges are there. But okay, so, and then you were gonna talk about the facilities, the maintenance facilities, which is interesting. Yeah, go for that.

Yeah, well, a lot of the regulations for working on EVs require, you know, a certain space around the bus to make sure that no electrical accidents happen. So a lot of the current facilities that people have don't have that space right now. You know, their bays are crammed in because they don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. And so, you know, I've seen some school districts having to work on buses like outside, not in bays, because otherwise they're going to be breaking these, uh, these regulations.

Guidelines. Yeah. So, which is interesting because most people are crammed for space. Yeah, exactly. Then you have the lift issue too, right? These, these buses are freaking heavy. They are already heavy and now they're really, really heavy. And you, you have some of the older, you know, shops where their current lifts can't handle these buses and they need to put in new lifts, um, which is also interesting. Um, and then, and then you also have space around, um, you know, in the, in the facility and the lot around it, let's say, right? Because if you've had a bus that's been in an accident, it needs like, uh, I think Tony, uh, Yankovich calls it like, um, a quarantine zone is the word, you know, where it's like, okay, you can't have another vehicle around it for a certain amount of space. And I don't pretend to know all those regulations, but I know it's had a pretty massive impact on the space requirements for the lots that these buses are parked in. So Yeah, that's a great point, right? So there's a lot to consider. On the one hand, we had this perfect use case, and yet getting to that use case is challenging, you know? So that's an interesting thought. And there's no such thing as plug-in hybrids for school buses, folks. So sorry, that's not a— I wish. That's not a route out. All right, man, we're coming up on the end here. What are your tips? What would you— what's your message out to school bus districts on you know, what they can do to maybe help their operations get, you know, more efficient or in any way help them out?

Yeah, I mean, I think the easiest ones that you can do is really, you know, invest in your software, invest in training your people. I think that's the biggest one. And you said something in a previous podcast that really jived with me where it's like, School districts are constantly putting out fires all the time, so they're going to feel like they don't have the time to, you know, maybe implement a better software or send people out to train. But, you know, there's never going to not be a time where you're not putting out fires. You know, you, you need to do this stuff, you know, as soon as you can because you're, you know, the opportunity cost you're losing is, is pretty big. So investing in these things, you know, now is the best thing you can do for yourself.

All right. Well, with that— and get an FMIS, right? Like you said. Yeah, do that. All right. With that, you know, we want to thank everybody for listening and for watching. If you have any questions or comments or you want some advice around, you know, how one of these studies could help you, we can definitely route that to Griffin or get our consulting team involved. They do these kinds of studies and all the time, as well as the traditional things that consultants do— right-sizing, replacement planning, and best practices. So if there's some help or if you just have a question, you know, shoot us an email, podcast@rtafleet.com. If you have other podcast ideas or topics you'd like us to hit, you know, by all means, let us know. We'd be happy to hit them. Yeah, go to our website, www.rtafleet.com. And Griffin, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for the insights you've given us, man. And I, I can't wait to get on here with you again.

Yeah, thanks for having me, man.

All right, bud, have a great day. Take care, everybody. We hope you enjoyed the show.

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