DRIVING FOR DOLLARS

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Driving School Buses

Country kids need to be hauled to school and back, and every rural community depends on a corps of dedicated bus drivers. Unlike once-a-day paper route drivers, a school bus driver must drive short hauls two or three times a day. Typically, a driver will pick up and deliver high school or grade school students early in the morning, then deliver them home in the afternoon. The P.M. session of half-day kindergarden students must be picked up, and the morning session taken home at mid-day. Drivers operating small feeder vans serving students off the main bus routes may run the same route four or six times a day for students in all grades.

State regulations limit the time kids can be on a bus, so runs average an hour or less. Some school districts or independent bus lines pay drivers from the time they leave home till they get back. Other drivers are paid only for the time they carry students. Most are paid only for three hours or so a day. Still, the job eats up a day. A driver has to get the bus or van warmed up, drive from his/her home to the first pickup, around the route, and back home for each leg. If your other activities fit nicely into a five-hour mid-day time block, a school bus route may serve you well. If you are required to do the mid-day kindergarden run, your free time is reduced to a pair of two-hour time blocks, but your driving pay increases by an hour or so a day.

Unlike independent-contractor route drivers, employee drivers have no responsibility to maintain vehicles.

Pay rates vary around the country—from the $4.50 minimum in the South to $15/hour or more in areas near metropolitan centers in the Northeast. Expect about $7.50/hour on average. That's $15/day for five days a week, or $75/week for the school year.

Drivers aren't paid for school vacation days but get to spend the time with their families. Unless you land a job with summer school or a vacation day-school, there's no work in the summer either. Moms with school age kids, and farmers and their wives are the traditional drivers as they can fit cash-income production into their parenting, milking, or farm chores.

Unlike independent-contractor route drivers, employee-drivers have no responsibility to maintain their vehicle other than routine fluid checks, obtaining gas, keeping tires inflated, assuring that the vehicle and its safety equipment is in operating condition, and bringing the vehicle in for service if it begins to act up.

You'll need off-road parking for your bus or van, and you must be able to negotiate mud and and snow at any hour. Most drivers park right on the road, clearing brush and hardening the ground surface for an all-weather parking spot.

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