(14 Oct 2017, 1:04 pm)Jimmi wrote About how long do the current contracts last? I fear that if the answer is a short duration, the operators won't bother spending as much effort in vehicle presentation, especially if they are mostly only going to do scholar's and Nexus misc boards, when Phoenix aquired a fair amount of Nexus contracts last year, they put pretty much all of the vehicles they aquired out in their previous operators liveries and sure enough they lost most of these services when the contracts came to a end about 8 months later, who would spend fortunes on making buses look smart and well presented when you only end up having to sell them after 8 months, which is a shame really.
(14 Oct 2017, 3:28 pm)S813 FVK wrote As far as I am aware, Stanley Travel currently have no plans of repainting the Geminis. Understandable if the contract is short but they could at least tidy the bodywork up.
All of the scholars/Miscellaneous Works contracts come up for renewal every year - and I agree with the comments that this is the reason why the independent operators don't bother making the buses looking all that pretty.
The North East market for operating these contracts is so competitive that all operators bid low and on the most part probably don't take into account the cost of having to repaint a bus too.