From streetcars to school buses: Thomas Built Buses marks 110 years of success, innovation

The Triad has a legacy of furniture, textile and tobacco jobs.

Add school bus maker to the list.

Thomas Built Buses began in 1916 in High Point when founder Perley A. Thomas lost his job as the chief engineer for Southern Car Works when the company closed.

A few weeks later, the Southern Public Utilities Company asked Thomas to consider putting together a crew to renovate several streetcars he had designed for his former employer.

Within weeks, Thomas purchased a building in downtown High Point and opened Perley A. Thomas Car Works with a group of his former co-workers.

Chris Foster, marketing and communications strategist for Thomas Built Buses, said Thomas Car Works would become one of the top streetcar manufacturers at the time and wouldn't begin building buses until 20 years later.

"When the company started in 1916, they exclusively built street cars up until 1936 when the state of North Carolina put out a bid to build public school buses," Foster said. "He decided to give it a shot."

In 1936, the buses were built from wood.

"They put out a bid for 500 all wooden school buses, which is kind of crazy," Foster said. "And we won the bid for 200 of them. So, 200 out of 500 of them we got to build."

From that point on, Thomas would continue building buses and gradually phase out streetcar production. As the company pioneered early bus building, they quickly worked to improve their design.

"It only took them two years to realize that they (buses) needed to be made of steel and not wood," Foster said. "So, by 1938, they were already making them in a similar vein as of today as far as the shell."

Thomas died in 1958. He was at 84. His children took over Thomas Car Works and continued to refine the school bus design.

By the 1960s, the buses had begun to take on a modern look, and the company was one of the leading school bus manufacturers in the United States.

In 1972, the company officially changed its name to Thomas Built Buses. In 1998, the company would become a subsidiary of Freightliner, a Daimler company.

Thomas Built Buses, based in Archdale, produces three types of buses.

"We have the flat front, which is called type D. And then you have type C, which is a conventional style with a hood," Foster said. "Then we also make a Minotour, which is called a type A school bus." He said the Type A bus is popular in rural areas with smaller school populations. "They don't need to pay for an 80-passenger vehicle," Foster said.

The first thing you see in the production plant is robot welders working on the shell of the bus.

"So, the metal comes in. We're framing the flooring, the rail, and then the shell itself, and the side panels of the actual shell," Foster said. "Those are being made right here."

The robot welders arrived in January 2025.

After robot welders assemble the shell, it moves down the line, where human welders add flooring sheets and build out the bus floor.

The next step is for human welders to attach the roof rails to the floor sheet.

From there, the bus continues down the assembly line until the entire shell is complete.

"Now you have enough of a shell that it's already kind of in one piece," Foster said. "As it goes down the line, pieces are just being added to it, side sheets, the headers, everything's being fastened and riveted together."

From the assembly line, the bus shell moves to a section of the plant where it receives its glossy coat of yellow paint.

It takes two gallons of paint to cover the bus shell. The painting is done by an automated robot under human control.

Foster said the buses are painted school bus yellow. He added that there are no state or federal regulations requiring buses to be a certain color.

Foster said early bus builders started painting buses yellow in the 1930s. The color became the industry standard.

"I think probably somewhere in maybe the 1920s, 1930s somebody made one yellow, and they just thought, 'It's easy to see,'" Foster said. "It's recognizable, it's unique, when you see it. Everybody knows it's a school bus, and everybody just kind of got on board with that."

After painting, the bus returns to the assembly floor, where a stop sign is attached. Workers then add insulation, install lights, and rivet the seats in place.

The final step is an inspection.

"That's where they're doing their quality checks, testing the windshield wiper, testing the horn, everything," Foster said. "Then once it goes out that door, if everything is good and correct, it gets a green sticker. The green sticker means it's customer-ready."

Foster said on a good day, the plant can produce up to 40 buses. The plants in Archdale and High Point produce roughly 10,000 buses a year.

At the Thomas plant in Archdale, the company builds electric school buses.

Foster said he believes the plant could start producing more electric buses in the future if demand grows.

"A school bus is a great use for an EV because it's a defined route. You drive a set amount of time in the morning. You don't use it during the day. You drive a set time in the afternoon. You don't use it at night," Foster said. "You run the morning route, you're not at risk of the bus dying because the range is 150 miles, and the average school bus route in the U.S. is like 80 miles, right? So, you run it in the morning, and you hook it up during the day."

Foster said the Thomas logo is blue, rather than the traditional red, on electric buses.

"If you pass a bus in Guilford County and it has the blue badge, you know that's an EV."

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