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Virginia Overland Transportation (VOTC) was an organization in Virginia in the United States which operated new and used bus dealerships and a number of intrastate urban-suburban bus lines for about 30 years in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Beginning as a school bus management consulting service in 1973, beginning in 1976 and throughout the 1980s, Virginia Overland acquired and consolidated a number of other privately owned Virginia public service companies, some dating back to streetcar and interurban operations in the early 20th century. Based primarily in the Richmond-Petersburg region, at one time or another, the company also operated local bus services in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads areas of the state. By 1984, it was operating the second largest privately managed fleet of school buses in Virginia, a school bus contractor second in size only to Laidlaw Transit. The company also represented Wayne Corporation and several other franchised product lines of buses and related products. It sold approximately 3000 new and used buses between 1976 and 2004. Itself a consolidator of mostly smaller companies and operations, VOTC combined forces with a larger woman-owned business based in Hampton, Virginia in the early 1990s, and the larger company assumed some of the former VOTC subsidiaries and new operations developed jointly after several years. Meanwhile, although Wayne Corporation closed and was liquidated in 1992, VOTC saw its other former franchise manufacturers also acquired by bigger companies. As a result of the dwindling number of bus dealership opportunities among a smaller number of manufacturers, their consolidations forced VOTC and many other bus dealers into what one VOTC principal described wryly as "a corporate version of musical chairs." As the principals aged, and its dealership opportunities and volume waned, VOTC downsized and ultimately closed its then-sole Richmond location in 2004. However, as of 2010, some of the former VOTC employees and operations in eastern Virginia continued under the ownership of Serco, an operator of over 600 contract locations internationally. ==History, growth through acquisitions== Virginia Overland's parent company was formed in 1973 as a small school bus management and consulting company. In 1975, it expanded into operating a cooperative school bus system serving 5 independent schools in the Richmond area. The following year, the service had grown to 13 schools and the company began to acquire all or controlling portions of a number of other older Virginia public service transportation companies, some with roots back to interurban streetcar operations as early as 1915, and urban-suburban bus line bus operations dating from 1928. (Under Virginia law, an "urban-suburban bus line" is defined as a bus service "the majority of whose passengers use the buses for traveling a distance no more than forty miles, measured one way, on the same day, between their residences and their places of employment, stores, or schools.") 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Virginia Overland Transportation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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