Badgerline

Badgerline, based in Weston-super-Mare, was a bus company operating in the south west of England during the latter part of the 20th century.

Badgerline originated as the brand, from 1985, of the Bristol country operations of the Bristol Omnibus Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned National Bus Company. [ [http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/rep_pub/reports/1989/fulltext/240c04.pdf Competition Commission report, 1989] para 4.2] The livery featured a friendly Badger cartoon on a green and yellow background. In 1986, the NBC transferred the Badgerline operations to a new company, Badgerline Ltd, which was sold to its management later that year. Badgerline became an expansive group. It acquired several other bus companies, and effectively recreated the Bristol Omnibus Company by buying Midland Red West, which owned Bristol City Line.

All the Group's buses carried the friendly Badger logo. Nine years later Badgerline merged with GRT Group to form First Bus, later renamed FirstGroup, based in Aberdeen. First adopted a common corporate identity, and the Badgerline brand was dropped. FirstGroup has expanded into a major transport company, which incorporates trains, buses, and the famous yellow school buses that take students to school in North America.

The company's original operations are now run by First Somerset & Avon. The companies in the Badgerline group as at the merger with GRT were:

*Badgerline
*Bee-Line
*Bristol Omnibus Company, which traded as City Line
*Eastern National
*Frontline Buses
*Midland Red West (including Midland Red Coaches)
*Potteries Motor Traction (including Pennine Blue, Red Rider and Crosville)
*SWT
*Thamesway
*Wessex Coaches
*Western National
*Yorkshire Rider

References