Coach USA aims to sell off Van Galder Bus as part of federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy sale

| By Big Radio News Staff |
Coach USA, the transit bus parent company that owns Van Galder Bus in Janesville, has announced it intends to sell off its holdings in bankruptcy.
It’s not yet clear how the move would affect operations of the interstate charter bus agency and local school bus operations that Van Galder runs here as a subsidiary of Coach USA.
Coach USA says in a written statement released Tuesday that a federal chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is aimed at allowing Coach USA to sell off its many busing divisions to an interested buyer as a means “to preserve jobs, ensure continued service and maximize the value of its businesses.”
Van Galder is one of 13 subsidiary bus companies Coach USA owns that it now aims to sell to New York-based holding company the Renco Group in a court-supervised bankruptcy sale. Renco operates various mineral and metals mining operations, among other enterprises.
WCLO could not immediately reach a Van Galder company executive with questions about the potential local impact of Coach USA’s bankruptcy sale. WCLO also reached out with questions to a third-party spokesperson for Coach USA’s corporate offices, but the company declined comment other.
The group sent WCLO a copy of an official notice of Coach USA’s proposed sale and purchase agreement naming Renco as one of the prospective buyers in a set of bankruptcy deals that Coach USA says it approaches as “value-maximizing, going-concern sales.”
It’s not clear what Renco’s future plans could be for the Coach USA holdings it’s slated to buy.
As recently as 2020, Van Galder Bus reported it employed about 300 people out of Janesville. Van Galder was founded in 1947, and ran more than 50 years before Coach USA bought it out in 1999.
In recent years, Van Galder has weathered major downturns including the Great Recession and closure of the Janesville General Motors assembly plant, and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic, which brought the entire U.S. travel industry to a halt for months.
— Big Radio anchor/reporter Neil Johnson gathered information for this report.