Monday was the first day of school following the Christmas break. Interestingly enough, not all of the busses made it out of the parking lots holding the busses.
As I do every morning, I turn on my radio scanner to listen to the activity on the school bus frequency—mainly because that is all that is going on at that time of day and it proves to be rather interesting.
Today was particularly interesting. I was amazed that there was so much activity following a two week break. “What problems could they have?” I thought to myself. “What changed during those two weeks to make everything go awry?” After listening, I discovered that there several issues of mechanical issues.
The mechanical issues are understandable—the weather definitely changed during the last two weeks and for the busses to sit for all that time some of the batteries would surely have died.
What is not understandable is the fact that the drivers didn’t realize this until 6AM on Monday morning?
Why didn’t the supervisor check with each driver to make sure the vehicles started Sunday…or even the Thursday or Friday prior. Why did the problem show up at the last minute?
In the Army, we call these kinds of checks PCC (Pre-Combat Checks) and PCI (Pre-combat Inspections). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there were going to be mechanical issues with the busses after sitting idle—in cold, snowy weather for two weeks. So, the checks should have been done.
Maybe next year they will think about this before they start the new year off with a dud.