The Hall County Board of Education voted unanimously Monday evening to construct a bus washing bay for use by county school bus drivers.
In Monday evening’s regular meeting session the board voted to allocate $230,000 to install bus cleaning equipment in a standing wash bay at the bus depot at 2915 Atlanta Highway, Gainesville. Previously, bus drivers were required to wash their own buses as needed, which could take up to an hour and a half. The new bus wash system will do the job in one minute.
The county has been searching for an effective way to wash school buses for several years now. With a heightened demand to hire new bus drivers, Clay Hobbs, director of transportation, said that making driver’s jobs as smooth as possible will assist in bus driver job retention.
“It will definitely help with morale, and morale is one of the biggest factors that we have in losing bus drivers," Hobbs said. "And so as we bring people on, as we recruit them, train them, and they get started on the job, sometimes we get the message that ‘Well I didn’t know it involved this much.’”
Hobbs and the Hall County Board of Education believe that anything they can do to make the lives of county bus drivers easier is a step in the right direction.
Many bus wash systems used by other school districts utilize a brush mechanism that makes contact with the bus during cleaning. This often leaves buses needing repairs to antennas, stop signs, and mirrors. The new system, to be installed by the company InterClean, will be touchless.
Every bus in the school system is required by law to be inspected once a month. The current plan is to have the inspecting mechanic drive the bus through the wash bay during the monthly inspection. This will provide a clean bus for both drivers and students.
“Many, many of the [bus] drivers that I’ve talked to about this are very excited about the possibility of keeping a clean bus,” Hobbs said.
The new bus washing system is expected to be installed early in 2023.
