Kent Coach Tours ceases trading

[SeveerYeliab]

Kent Coach Tours in Ashford ceased trading from last week due to the retirement of the directors, with routes 113 and 125 already having moved to Stagecoach and their school run to Homewood in the hands of a (at the moment unknown - but most likely Chalkwell Coaches) new operator.

However, it is intriguing to find that in this Route One article, the directors reveal that they very nearly sold out to Go Ahead a few years prior, but could not agree on final terms. This is very interesting as, although Go Ahead have been on a shopping spree lately, it has seemingly been very much in already covered territory - which Kent is very much not ( apart from some involvement of rail replacement using the Crosskeys Yard in Folkestone, although I am unaware if this arrangement still exists).

Overall however, Kent Coach Tours was a quality operator and will certainly be missed.

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 ingoing costs.

Expanding on the motivation for shutting down, Brian tell routeone: “We’ve never lost focus on 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.”