Which school bus manufacturer was founded in 1916?

The school bus manufacturer founded in 1916 is Thomas Built Buses.

Thomas Built Buses traces its origins to the founding of Perley A. Thomas Car Works in 1916. Perley A. Thomas established the company in High Point, North Carolina, after acquiring equipment from the former Southern Car Works. The business initially concentrated on streetcars rather than school buses.

In 1918, Thomas Car Works began building new streetcars and adopted all-steel bodies, helping establish its reputation as a transportation manufacturer. The company later shifted strongly toward bus bodies, and it has produced school buses in High Point since 1936. It was renamed Thomas Built Buses in 1972.

Today, Thomas is best known for the Saf-T-Liner family, including the conventional C2 and transit-style E-series buses. Since 1998, Thomas Built Buses has been a subsidiary of Daimler Trucks North America, the parent organization associated with Freightliner. That ownership history does not change the company’s 1916 founding date.

The distractors belong to different eras: Collins began in 1967, IC’s modern bus company emerged around 2000, and Blue Bird’s corporate roots date to the late 1920s or early 1930s.