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Some school bus drivers being lured away by gas industry

By Steve Ferris sferris@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read
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While some school bus drivers are leaving for higher-paying truck-driving jobs in the natural gas industry, most seem to like their part-time jobs and are staying put.

Rittenhouse Bus Lines Inc. in Smock, a contractor for the Uniontown Area School District, lost one regular driver and a substitute driver to the gas industry during the 2013-14 school year, but has low turnover otherwise, said co-owner Carol Rittenhouse.

“We have very low turnover,” Rittenhouse said.

One of the bus drivers that left is driving a truck and and other is a water truck mechanic, she said.

The majority of Rittenhouse’s 20 drivers are older people who only want to work part time.

“Most of our drivers are older. They are people that probably had another career at one time or they’re semiretired and just want something to do,” Rittenhouse said.

First Student Inc. in Rices Landing has seen a decline in the number of people applying for jobs since the gas boom, but some drivers who left for jobs in the gas field didn’t like the long hours and came back.

“Only a couple quit for that and they came back to us,” said Sharon Udovich, location manager for First Student. “We’ve had a couple quit, but we’ve had a couple come back.”

“Applications are definitely down,” said Dean Cochran, First Student’s location safety manager.

“It’s definitely had an effect on us,” Udovich said.

The wages the company pays are much lower than the pay in the gas industry.

“We can’t compete with the money. We’re not in the same ball park,” Cochran said.

All 70 drivers are part time, working four hours a day and make $70 to $100 a day depending on their position and the types of buses they drive, Udovich said. Some employees are in a union and some are not, she said.

Water truck drivers in the gas industry make an average of $65,000 a year, according to the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

From the Rices Landing garage, First Student provides busing for the Carmichaels Area and Jefferson-Morgan school districts and Intermediate Unit 1. A satellite garage in Washington County serves part of the McGuffey Area School District, she said.

One of the drivers that quit, and then returned, came back because the long hours he worked in the gas industry kept him away from his family and farm for too long, she said.

“They put him on the road and they just worked him and worked him. He wanted to spend time with family and working on the farm. I’m sure he made lots more money,” Udovich said.

Before the gas boom, demand for bus driving jobs was high.

“It used to be you didn’t have to advertise. Moms and other people just wanted part-time jobs.,” Udovich said.

Bus-driving jobs attract many mothers because it allows them to be home when their children are home and retirees who don’t want to work full time.

“It attracts stay-at-home moms with kids because they work while kids in school and they’re off nights and weekends, and school vacations. You’re working the same schedule your children are in school,” said a spokeswoman for First Student’s garage in Smithfield, which transports Albert Area Gallatin School District students. She declined to be identified.

Retirees also like having nights and weekends off and they enjoy working with kids, she said.

There is a little turnover among the garage’s 98 regular drivers, but substitute drivers, who aren’t guaranteed to work any hours, regularly leave for a variety of other jobs that require a commercial driver’s license (CDL) after they go through the company’s free training program, she said.

“It’s the substitute drivers. I’m losing subs constantly. You come in and we train you to get that CDL to drive a school bus for us. It also makes them eligible to drive water trucks, garbage trucks, coal trucks — anything that requires a (CDL). I’ve had them go to CalFrac, garbage companies (and) coal companies. It’s not frequent, but we have that. That’s constant. It’s ongoing throughout the years,” she said.

The company lost five regular drivers last year and two the year before that, she said.

“It’s hard to compete with what they’re making (in the gas industry),” Rittenhouse said. “They work long hours and get paid more. We work four and half hours a day. We don’t offer benefits. Younger drivers, we compete for them.”

“People go because of the money, but they want to come back,” Udovich said. “I’m very proud of our employees. We have very good employees.”

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