A Blue Bird Conventional-Style School Bus On The Freightliner FS-65 Chassis & Cowl Located In The City Of Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Blue Bird did not order very many Freightliner FS-65 Chassis & Cowls, and build their Conventional School Bus bodies atop of these Chassis & Cowls, as Freightliner had succeeded Ford and their B-Series Chassis & Cowl as a manufacturer of Conventional-style School Bus Chassis & Cowls (or, in other words; Ford had passed the baton to Freightliner as a manufacturer of Conventional-style School Bus Chassis & Cowls, as Ford had sold their Medium and Heavy-Duty Truck and School Bus Chassis & Cowl business sector to Daimler and Freightliner in 1996; in an agreement resulting of Ford having to cease production of their Class 6-8 Trucks by 1998), as Daimler-Benz had also purchased Thomas Built Buses in 1998; the late 1990’s marked the beginning of the consolidation, reduction, and near-monopolization in and of the School Bus Industry; with General Motors discontinuing their Chassis & Cowl in 2002, International Harvester/Navistar purchasing Ward/AmTran outright in 1991 as Navistar’s proprietary, in-house School Bus Coachbuilder, Wayne going out of business in 1995, Carpenter going out of business in 2000, Thomas discontinuing their Vista School Bus on it’s proprietary International Harvester/Navistar 3600 Chassis & Cowl in 1998, Thomas sequestering the supply and usage of the Freightliner FS-65 Chassis & Cowl as their proprietary, in-house Chassis & Cowl after Daimler-Benz had purchased Thomas in 1998, and by 2003; Blue Bird doing with a Conventional Chassis & Cowl what they had done with a Transit-style Stripped Chassis since 1952, developing and building their own, proprietary Vision Chassis & Cowl.

All in all, and by and large; the consolidation, reduction, and near-monopolization of the School Bus industry meant that the Freightliner FS-65 Chassis & Cowl would no longer be available to School Bus coachbuilders other than Thomas Built Buses, such as Blue Bird; by the year 2000.