The Beachliners

"I love being part of a champion. We drive speech teams, basketball teams, drama students - all of them champions. You can't help but share the enthusiams of that moment; you can't help but be part of it all." - Bob Beach

In the late 1940s, when they were upperclassmen at Missoula County High School, Bob Beach and other members of the Spartan basketball team traveled to state tournaments either in an "old, old" Greyhound bus, by train or in private cars.

At that, cross-state travel for any high school activites was minimal compared to today. Now, Missoula students frequently travel hundreds of miles for everything from speech and drama meets to track meets to music festivals to Key Club and student government conventions.

The increase in student travel began in the 1950s and still was under way in 1968. By the mid to late 1960s, using school buses, Beach Transportation was carrying MCHS athletic teams as far as Butte and Helena for competitions. For longer trips, MCHS officials had begun chartering more comfortable over-the-road buses from Greyhound, Intermountain, the Whitefish Taxi Co. or Havre's Missouri Valley Trails Inc. . Traveling with the Whitefish and Havre companies posed logistical problems since neither had buses based in Missoula. What's more high school officials were less than satisfied with the service they were receiving for their transportation dollars. In short, with Missoula still growing and its high school students traveling farther and more frequently to compete with students from other major Montana schools, the transportation situation was ripe for change.

A key figure in prompting that change was Frank McElwain, a personable Deer Lodge native who had come to MCHS via Kalispell in 1962 to teach mathematics and serve as assistant football and basketball coach. Appointed as the high school's athletic director in 1964, McElwain had become increasingly involved with Beach Transportation in connection with scheduling buses for athletic trips. By 1968, McElwain was a full time MCHS administrator; by 1970, he was, among other things, transportation supervisor, succeeding Mark Jennings.

Sensing the advantages of having suitable local transportation for the long-distance trips that were occuring more frequently, McElwain approached Bob Beach in 1969 and encouraged him to add a Greyhound-type over-the-road bus to his fleet. Considering that such a bus, new, would cost in the neighborhood of $46,000, Beach was understandably hesitant.

"They (Beach Transportation) had been in the school bus business, and this charter business was something fairly new to them." McElwain said. "But I sat down with them, and we went through the amount of time the bus would be used, and the schedules, and so forth. I think we also talked about the possibility of having the University of Montana getting involved and also having other groups charter the bus."

Beach listened, talked with Harold Keyser and other people, and pondered the risks and potential opportunities.

"We sat down and figured out every trip that possibly could be taken." Beach said. "That was the thing - where to generate enough income. Could such a bus produce enough revenue to pay for the insurance and drivers and upkeep? It was marginal, believe me; it was marginal to begin with. We gave it an awful lot of thought."

Finally, having calculated a figure he thought he would pay the bus' expenses and still earn a profit, Beach approached his bankers at Missoula's Western Montana National Bank (now First Bank Western Montana, Missoula.) He was confident of getting a loan, primarily because of the inherent value of his school bus contracts with District 1 and MCHS. Beach had also signed contract with MCHS for his new transportation services. With the contract was a letter from MCHS business director Mark Jennings, who wrote, "The board has accepted your bid for tranpsortation for student activities and athletic trips, at the rate of 60 cents per mile for the first year of a 5-year contract, with the next four years to be agreed upon by both parties after the first year of operation and with the option of contract renewal after 5 years on terms agreeable to both school and contractor."

Beach Transportation had underbid Greyhound by a nickel a mile. Now it had to perform.

Preparing to buy his first over-the-road bus, Beach flew to Chicago to look at a used General Motors unit.

"I looked at it and drove it, and it was a mess," Beach said. "Somebody turned it in for a reason."

Returning to Missoula, he contacted a representative of Motor Coach Industries (MCI), which builds buses for the Greyhound Corporation. Shown a new 41-passenger Model 5A unit, and assured that MCI had a good warranty, easy-to-get replacement parts and a dependable service representative, Beach agreed to buy the bus.

"They gave me a good sales job and they were able to guarantee that the service representatibe could come here every 90 days," Beach said. "I knew nothing about how to service a bus like that, or even shift one."

The basic MCI bus is built in Winnipeg, Canada, then shipped to Pembina, North Dakota, where interiors, windshields, side windows, wheels, wiring and other componenets are added. Beach went to Pembinal to pick up the new bus.

"It cost me around $48,000," he said. "I thought. 'That's three times more money than when I paid for my house in 1956.' It was a traumatic time in my life."

Harold Keyser also wondered whether the new venture would be successful. Said Keyser in later years, "We went into debt real far to get that first over-the-road bus. It was a worry, and we didn't know if it would ever pan out. We didn't know if we could take in enough money to make those big payments."

Keyser became the first regular driver of the new bus, which was dubbed a "Beachliner" in the same fashion that officials of the Superior coach company called some of their larger school buses "School Liners." Helen Beach designed the first Beachliner lettering in script; it underwent changes through the years, evolving into the streamlined look that appears on the eight Beachliners that Beach Transportation now owns. ***How many in 2002?

By 1972, thanks to popular demand, the Beach Transportation took delivery of its second new MCI bus, also a 41-passenger unit. The company's third and fourth Beachliners were 47-passentger buses, , while the fifth was another 41-passenger unit. The sixth, seventh, and eighth carried 47 passengers. The 47-passenger buses have restrooms. *** Beach's first over-the-road bus, now 17 years of age, is still in service.

"It (the demand for over-the-road buses) just kind of snow-balled," said Beach. who pointed out that need for vehicles increased as Missoula went from one public high school to three (Hellgate, Sentinel and Big Sky.)

Programs and transportation needs changed dramatically at the high schools through the 1970s and into the 80s: more speech and drama meets, expanded music programs, girls athletics, special education. For Beach Transportation, the miles added up. During the 1980-81 school year, which was shorted to 162 classroom days because of a bitter high school teachers' strike, Beach buses hauled Missoula students a total of 693,943 miles. The 1981-82 school year, 180 days long, saw the buses rolling 731,920 passenger miles. The 1982-83 school year saw Beach drivers logging another 743,405 miles, while 1983-84 mileage totaled 801,417 miles. Today, the Beach fleet - including over-the-road buses - logs more than 800,000 miles each year. ***

Frank McElawain retired as MCHS' director of special services in 1980. Then, in the summer of 1983, he was asked to work at Beach Transportation for a year while Greg Beach earned a master's degree in Business at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. McElwain agreed - and wound up staying at Beach until the spring of 1986, when he retired for a second time.

Said McElwain as he left Beach, "I don't think there's another school district in the state of Montana that has better rapport with its bus company than Missoula County High School. District 1 might be the same way ... Bob Beach just knows every facet of student transportation from the school's standpoint. And he knows the laws concerning transportation ... I always felt that Beach Trasnportation was the outstanding school bus company in the state of Montana - maybe in the whole Northwest. I think that some of the honors that have been bestowed on Bob are a testament. He's innovative ... and he's willing to make changes. There's no one who gives more of his time to young people, and some of the greatest experiences these kids have had has been while traveling throughout the state and nation with Bob Beach and his crew. Kids talk about those trips for years."

As successful as the total school transportation program was, the Beachliners generally weren't producing revenue during summers.

"That's when we started to talk to the travel agencies on how to get involved in some different programs," Beach said. "Of course, the first place we went was the senior citizens. They wanted trips to the Gates of the Mountains, the museums in Helena, the Charlie Russell Museum in Great Falls, and so forth."

The University of Montana also entered the picture. Beach Transportation had been carrying university students on field trips for 20 years; now, with its over-the-road charter buses, the company began to show UM officials that it could move the school's athletic teams safely, efficiently and for fewer dollars than airlines charge. Today, Beach transports Grizzly football, basketball and track teams to games in the western states.

In terms of handling charted tours for senior citizens and other groups, Beach Transportation had ideal equipment, excellent insurance and fully qualified drivers. However, lacking the necessary Interstate Commerce Commission and Montana Railroad Commission (now Public Service Commission) permits, it found itself challenged in 1980 by the fully certified Missouri Valley Trailc, Inc. The result was several PSC hearings in Helena and issuance on May 7, 1980, of a certificate of public convenience and necesity. Represented by Missoula attorney R.H. "Ty" Robinson, Beach at one point buses some 30 Missoula senior citizens to Helena so they could testify about the quality of Beach service.

"They were very vocal in our favor, and that helped." Beach said. "I have very deep feelings for the senior citizens."

Also testifying on behalf of Beach's application were numerous other satisfied customers, including Harley Lewis, UM director of athletics; Bob Kelly, manager of public relations for Champion International; Marion VanCampen, former executive director of the Missoula Senior Citizens; Fredrick Burnell, retired Forest Service regional transportation planner, as well as director of baseball transportation for the American Legion, and Terry Brown, transportation-safety consultant to the Montana Office of Public Instruction.

Today, in addition to its all-important school transportation responsibilities to MCHS and School District 1, Beach continues to provide cost effective transportation for a host of private tours. In addition to transportation services for UM, it also offers school buses and qualified drivers to the Forest Service during busy summer fire seasons. The company transports a variety of business and professional groups when called on, and helps airlines move their customers from the sometimes fogged-in Missoula airport to airports unhampered by bad weather.

In performing these tasks and others, Beach Transportation contributes an annual average $950,000 to Missoula's economy.

This story has been excerpted and edited from Second to None: the story of Beach Transportation Co. and its buses written by former newspaperman Steve Smith and published for Beach Transportation by Pictoral Histories Publishing Company in 1986.