Kent Coach Tours has announced that, after around 50 years in operation, it is closing the business due to the retirement of its Directors.
The Ashford-based operator, which will work its final school run on Wednesday, was founded by David Farmer, who has since retired.
His wife, Ann, along with sons Brian and Andrew, are now Directors.
A key deciding factor was that David is now in a care home with dementia and the family need money to pay for the ongoing costs.
Expanding on the motivation for shutting down, Brian tells routeone: “We’ve never lost focus of the fact that, for some reason, most coach operators work until they’re old and die on the job. We just didn’t want to do that.
“I’ve been involved in the business with my dad since I was eight years old and I’m now nearly 60.”
He adds that the decision was influenced by other reasons, including the retirement of another staff member, difficulty replacing drivers and the low reimbursement of bus service contracts.
Brian adds: “Our bus services were coming up for tender and we didn’t want to do them for the sake of doing them, not being able to operate and be able to replace those vehicles every three or four years because there wasn’t enough money in it. And that’s how it was getting. ”
He explains the business, which now has around 13 vehicles, nearly sold out to Go-Ahead a few years ago, but the Directors ultimately could not agree with certain clauses in the agreement.
“We found with all these big organisations, one of the things is they want you to carry on working for them for a couple of years,” he says. “We’ve done it for so long how we’ve done it. We’ve always maintained the vehicles to a high standard and we didn’t want that to change.”
A Facebook post from Andrew and Brian concludes: “I’d just like to pay tribute to my dad ,David Farmer, who started the company up who now sadly is in a care home with dementia. Thanks, Dad – I hope we made you proud.”
