Beyond the Charter: Where Motorcoach Operators Are Finding Contract Work in 2026

Government contracts are only part of it. Universities, construction projects, employee shuttles, airports, conventions and cruise operations are buying transportation too. The opportunity may be knowing who is actually buying it — and what they're calling it.

By Dhinel “Danny” Biyanwela

A few weeks ago I wrote about how motorcoach operators can find government bus contracts. Since then, I've kept looking at what is actually being bid, what has been awarded and, more importantly, who is getting the work.

The more I looked, the more I realized we may be thinking about the opportunity too narrowly. If you search for “charter bus contracts,” you'll definitely find work. But you won't find all of it. Transportation is being purchased as passenger motor charter, campus shuttle service, athletic transportation, employee transportation, workforce transportation, airport shuttle operations and transportation support. Sometimes the company buying the service isn't even the company whose employees or passengers will eventually be riding the bus.

That's where this started getting interesting to me. The same 56-passenger motorcoach that runs a weekend charter can spend Monday morning moving construction workers, Tuesday carrying a university team, Wednesday working an employee shuttle and Thursday moving a convention group between hotels and a convention center. Same coach, completely different customer.

WHO IS ACTUALLY WINNING THIS WORK?

I wanted to get beyond talking about potential opportunities and see who's actually getting paid.

One company that kept showing up was Charter Bus Pros. In April, NIST awarded the company a five-year shuttle contract for its Gaithersburg, Maryland campus worth up to approximately $2.84 million. Ten bids were received. Then in September, Charter Bus Pros received another federal order worth approximately $2.06 million for shuttle service at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

The second award caught my attention because it was placed through the company's existing GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract. In other words, getting into the purchasing system can sometimes be just as important as winning the individual trip. Once that relationship and contracting vehicle exist, there's a path for additional government business.

There are smaller examples too. The Coast Guard awarded American Coach & Limousine approximately $174,000 for athletic-team transportation at the Coast Guard Academy. Seven offers were submitted and the procurement was set aside for small businesses.

At the local level, Stout's Charter Service won Monmouth County Park System's 2026 on-call charter contract. What I liked about this one is that the county published the actual pricing, which gives us a rare look at the economics behind a winning public charter bid.

Service	Awarded Rate
One-day trip — 10 hours / 100 miles	$1,895
Additional mileage	$6.00/mile
Additional time	$100/hour
Deadhead	$75/hour
Multi-day service	$1,750/day
Additional multi-day mileage	$4.25/mile

I'm not saying those rates are good or bad. An operator in New Jersey may look at them very differently than somebody running coaches in Texas or Illinois. Equipment, wages, insurance, deadhead and overhead all change the math. But it's useful to actually see what a winning bid looks like instead of just talking about contracts in general.

Some institutional agreements are considerably larger. Eastern Illinois University's current charter arrangement with Bales Unlimited is estimated at approximately $800,000 through June 2028. Northern Illinois University's transportation agreement includes multiple vendors, including Van Galder/Coach USA and Windstar Lines. Texas Woman's University took a similar approach this year and awarded its charter-bus contract to three transportation companies.

That was another thing that stood out to me. Winning institutional transportation doesn't always mean knocking out the incumbent and taking the entire account. Sometimes the opportunity is simply becoming one of the approved companies they can call.

UNIVERSITIES ARE A MUCH BIGGER CUSTOMER THAN ATHLETICS

When most of us think about university transportation, football teams probably come to mind first. But once I started going through these contracts, athletics was only part of it.

Universities move athletic teams, marching bands, student organizations, academic groups, employees, admissions groups and conference attendees. They need airport transfers. Some operate daily campus transportation. Others establish master agreements that individual departments can use throughout the year.

LSU's 2026 transportation solicitation gives us an idea of the scale. Its estimated requirements included approximately 55,000 full-size motorcoach miles and 800 coach-days, along with midsize coaches, Sprinters, airport transfers and relief-driver requirements. That's not an occasional football trip. That's a transportation account.

The University of Michigan currently identifies Dean Trailways as its university-wide contracted charter provider. Instead of every department shopping for transportation every time it needs a bus, departments can use the established contract. The University of Illinois has a similar arrangement with Peoria Charter Coach.

That's what makes the approved-vendor relationship interesting to me. The first trip may not be where the value is. The value can be getting your company into a purchasing system where multiple departments now have a way to buy transportation from you.

SOME OF THE BIGGEST OPPORTUNITIES DON'T LOOK LIKE CHARTERS

This is where I think the story gets more interesting.

A traditional charter customer might call and say, “I need a bus Saturday from Chicago to Indianapolis.”

An employee or workforce transportation customer might say, “I need four buses every weekday for the next three years.”

Those two customers are buying completely different things even though they're using the same equipment.

We're seeing this in government employee transportation, healthcare, construction and major industrial projects. The construction side especially caught my attention because we've already been looking into transportation around data centers and other large projects.

CharterUP publicly describes providing workforce transportation for Fluor on Intel's semiconductor expansion in Oregon. According to CharterUP, the operation has exceeded 1,250 cumulative bus-days and transports approximately 400 tradespeople per day. CharterUP also says Hoffman Construction selected it following an RFI/RFP process to provide transportation for an Applied Materials project in Northern California, with 13 motorcoaches deployed.

Think about who the customer is in those examples. It isn't necessarily Intel or Applied Materials calling a local charter company looking for buses. The relationship can run from the project owner to a general contractor, then through workforce or logistics management before the transportation company gets involved.

That's important for operators trying to find this kind of business. A billion-dollar data center, semiconductor plant or other major construction project can bring hundreds or thousands of workers onto a site. Eventually somebody has to figure out parking, shift changes, security, traffic and how workers physically get from where they're parking to where they're working.

At that point the motorcoach isn't really being sold as a charter anymore. It's being sold as part of the solution to an operational problem.

And the person buying that solution might be the general contractor or project manager rather than the company whose name is eventually going on the building.

AIRPORTS, CONVENTIONS AND CRUISE OPERATIONS

There are other places where this demand is hiding in plain sight.

The City of Chicago currently has an active solicitation for shuttle-bus services at O'Hare International Airport. Around the country, airport transportation contracts cover employee parking, remote parking, terminal movement and other shuttle operations. Healthcare systems purchase employee and patient transportation. Convention organizers buy hotel-to-convention-center shuttle systems.

One current San Antonio convention-related transportation procurement involves moving attendees between a convention center and approximately 14 downtown hotels. That's a very different sale from somebody calling for a Saturday wedding shuttle, even though many of the same buses could do the work.

Cruise transportation is another interesting channel. Royal Caribbean's ground-handling documentation specifically contemplates motorcoach transportation between airports, hotels and cruise ports. Again, the operator may not be selling directly to the passenger or even directly to the cruise line. There can be a ground handler in between managing the movement.

The tour business works in a similar way. A tour operator sells the package, somebody else handles the destination, hotels and attractions are involved, and somewhere in that chain somebody still needs the coach.

ABA's 2026 Marketplace Business Impact Report estimated approximately $124.9 million in transaction activity associated with Marketplace participants, including reported business booked at Marketplace and projected future business tied to meetings held there. That's a good reminder that not every transportation opportunity comes with an RFP number. Sometimes the opportunity comes from being the transportation company that another business already holding the customer relationship calls first.

SO HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY FIND IT?

This was probably my biggest takeaway from researching all of this: there isn't one website.

For federal work, SAM.gov is still important. State and local governments have their own procurement systems. Universities and school districts often have separate purchasing portals. Airports may procure through the airport authority, municipality or another operating contractor.

But once you get into construction, data centers, corporate shuttles, conventions and cruise transportation, simply searching bid websites isn't enough.

You have to start following the customer backwards.

If a major data center is being built, who is the general contractor? Who is managing the workforce? Who controls parking and site logistics? If a large convention is coming to town, who is the event organizer or destination-management company? If a cruise line is moving thousands of passengers through a port, who handles the ground transportation? If a company already has a national transportation contract, who are they using when they need equipment in your market?

That's also where subcontracting starts to become interesting.

An operator doesn't necessarily have to win a $20 million contract to participate in one. The prime contractor might need six buses in Chicago, four in Atlanta or ten coaches for three months while a project ramps up.

A $500,000 piece of somebody else's $20 million contract is still a $500,000 customer.

For a smaller independent operator, that may actually be the more realistic way into some of these accounts.

FROM SELLING TRIPS TO SELLING CAPACITY

The financial side of this is probably what interests me most.

A normal charter customer buys a trip. A contract customer may be buying capacity.

There is obvious value in having utilization already on the books. If you know four coaches are working Monday through Friday for the next year, that changes the revenue picture compared with waiting for the phone to ring every week.

But contracted revenue doesn't automatically mean profitable revenue.

If four coaches are committed to one customer five days a week, they're unavailable for something else. Drivers have to be available. The contract may require backup equipment. Maintenance still has to happen. Insurance, wages, fuel and parts can all change during a multi-year agreement.

So when I see a $2 million transportation contract, the number by itself doesn't tell me whether it's attractive.

I'd want to know the revenue per coach day, service hours, deadhead, driver cost, who pays for fuel, backup requirements, insurance limits, payment terms, annual increases and how much equipment has to stay committed to that customer.

Every operator will look at those numbers differently based on their own fleet, market and customers.

But after going through all these contracts, there's one question I keep coming back to:

How much of your fleet's next 12 months is already spoken for before the phone rings?

The traditional charter business isn't going anywhere. Tours, schools, athletics, weddings, conventions and group travel are still the foundation for a lot of companies.

What I'm seeing is another layer sitting alongside it: universities, employee transportation, construction projects, data centers, airports, healthcare, government, military, cruise operations, conventions and subcontract work for larger primes.

The buses are already doing this work.

The opportunity is figuring out who is buying it, what they're calling it and how your company gets into the conversation before the contract is awarded.

Not every one of these contracts will make sense for every operator. But if the only thing we're searching for is “charter bus,” there's a good chance we're never even seeing some of the work that's out there.

About the Author

Dhinel “Danny” Biyanwela works in motorcoach and ground transportation with experience in operations, vehicle sales, finance and fleet management. Through The Motorcoach Insider, he writes about the business behind transportation and the economic changes affecting independent operators.