Stagecoach Manchester and Wigan

[gilesbus1]

RE: Stagecoach Manchester
There was a good indication in last weeks Coach & Bus Week as to why FirstGroup sold Wigan to Stagecoach, in an interview with its chief executive, Wigan wasn't losing money and had the margins it wanted, however teh fleet age was too high and in order to replace the fleet with modern stock which appears to be what they wanted to do would have required the Margins dropping so it was either just profitable or unprofitable. It was unique amongst the depots FirstGRoup is selling and thats the only reason why it was sold.

Makes me thing when those B10BLE's where moved by FirstGroup to Aberdeen and older ones cascaded in from Bolton that was the start of the mistake regarding Wigan, Aberdeen should have taken all the older B10BLE's as obviously it now will have teh same issue everything at about teh same age becoming time expired. In terms of Wigan it would have bought it 5 more years in terms of newer B10BLE's to instigate a replacement programme.

It appears the programe of concentrating Volvo's at Wigan and Scania's at Bolton at that time didn't help.

I will put more findings from the interviews with both him and Giles Fearnley ona general FirstGroup post in the general section.