Another shady bus company has been shut down by the Feds after dumping its passengers at a Virginia truck stop and leaving them there for 24 hours. Weirdly, a company with the exact same everything including owners, drivers, and buses was already shut down by the Feds last year. Weeeirrrd.
Granted, this isn't as bad as the Chinatown bus company that was running busses with holes in the floor, but All Nations Coach wasn't great either, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates bus companies. The straw that broke the camel's back occurred on July 16, when an All Nations bus was traveling from New York to Charlotte, North Carolina. The bus was driving down I-95 when it broke down around midnight, which is exactly the time you want to be stranded some place and not be chainsawed by a serial killer.
Local authorities picked up the 53 passengers and dumped them at the nearby truck stop, and All Nations didn't send anybody to pick them up until almost a full day later.
The road to bad bus companies is of course paved with good intentions, though. All Nations Coach owner Aryana Dilla is totally not the bad guy, according to what she told the AP:
All Nations owner Aryana Dilla said in a phone interview Saturday that she did everything she could to help the stranded passengers, and only balked at sending another bus from her fleet because she initially thought it would be quicker to fix the broken-down vehicle on the road.
"I'm not the villain they make me out to be," she said.
Okay, so maybe you're not the serial killer with the chainsaw, but you do provide great horror movie setups.
Aryana should've learned the first time, when the FMCSA shut down another company, Tichy Express, that was different in that it was called "Tichy Express" but in every other regard it was exactly the same:
Dilla also denied that she or her husband, Isa Nebi, who had run Tichy Express, had engaged in any subterfuge regarding the company's ownership.
Tichy, she said, "was my husband's company. I'm entitled to have my own company."
Of course you are. But when that excuse is clearly crap?
“Bus or truck companies cannot dismiss federal safety obligations, including civil penalties, by simply ‘reinventing’ themselves and operating under a new name,” said FMCSA Administrator Anne S. Ferro.
Come on Aryana. If the whole "I'll just change my name and life will be different" thing didn't work for Beezow Doo-doo Zopittybop-bop-bop, then it's not going to work for you.
This is the 16th bus company that the FMCSA has shut down since April, in addition to revoking the operating authority of 10 additional bus companies for having an "unsatisfactory" safety rating.
Photo credit: Shawn Nystrand