This is a very rare, if not one of a kind configuration; a new-style Thomas Rear Engine Safe-T-Liner with the Dayton wheels, which were on their “death bed” at time this bus was produced.

The new-style Thomas Rear Engine Safe-T-Liner is still produced to this day, and this particular one that is the subject of this blog post, a 2001 model; was the very first year that the new-style Thomas Rear Engine Safe-T-Liner had gone on sale.

Actually, the new-style Thomas Rear Engine Safe-T-Liner had gone into production in the fall of 2000, and Thomas was building both the new-style Rear Engine Safe-T-Liner and the old-style Rear Engine MVP model (a lower cost transit model that was Thomas’s competitor to the Front & Rear Engine Blue Bird TC/2000s) until 2003.

BUS# 71 THOMAS – Farmington Public Schools (MI) Surplus

Source: Public Surplus: Auction #1671519