🔒DeVivo steers DATTCO, U.S. motor-coach industry through pandemic’s challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for the motor-coach industry.

With more people working from home, school closures, declining tourism and infection risks posed by shared modes of transit, companies like New Britain-based DATTCO Inc., one of the largest private motor-coach carriers in the country, have been in a fight for survival.

“There have been sleepless nights,” said Don DeVivo, president of DATTCO, which employs about 1,850 people.

DATTCO not only provides charter trips, scheduled commuter stops and other varieties of bus travel, but also services 29 school districts in Connecticut and Rhode Island, running 1,400 school buses to transport more than 110,000 students each school day, he said.

Business ground to a halt for nearly six months after the state went into a pandemic-induced lockdown in March 2020. To stay afloat, DeVivo furloughed or laid off staff, including drivers, cut other costs and negotiated with banks to defer loan payments.

“It was a balancing act,” he said. “We tried to keep people employed as much as we could.”

Ever since, DATTCO has been in recovery mode, said DeVivo, the top executive since 1999 when his father Louis, an original founder, stepped aside.

Annual revenues in 2020 were down 40% from the $200 million the company earned the year prior, he said. In 2021, DATTCO saw a rebound with schools back to in-person learning and an uptick in demand for motor-coach services from student and college sports groups, tour companies and other event sponsors.

But the omicron variant has been a new threat. As more countries issued lockdown and travel restrictions, DATTCO has gotten cancellations in bookings from international tour operators.

Help wanted

The pandemic has also exacerbated the school business driver shortage, a long-standing national issue.

Since the pandemic’s start, DATTCO has lost dozens of drivers opting for early retirement or looking for more steady or higher-paying work. Other drivers left over COVID-risk fears, or because they refused to get a vaccine.

The state requires school bus drivers hired after Sept. 26, 2021, to be vaccinated against COVID-19; drivers employed before that date must be vaccinated or tested weekly.

“Staffing is the most important issue that our company and industry face right now,” DeVivo said.

DATTCO is scrambling to fill over 100 bus driver positions throughout the region and has advertised job openings on its Facebook page and website; starting pay is $19 per hour in most central Connecticut locations.

It can take up to four months for new drivers to train and obtain a commercial license, DeVivo said, resulting in a delay in filling seats with new hires. The company is offering experienced licensed bus drivers a $3,000 signing bonus in certain locations where shortages are most acute; pay raises have been implemented to retain employees, some of whom have been with the company for decades, he said.

Some relief

Federal grant money has helped DATTCO meet its payroll, thanks to a grassroots campaign launched last year by the motor-coach industry to champion emergency federal relief after the sector was overlooked in the first $2 trillion COVID rescue package passed by Congress in March 2020.

As chairman of the American Bus Association (ABA), DeVivo, with son Kyle DeVivo, a vice president at DATTCO, actively lobbied lawmakers with other industry members — collaborative efforts that paid off.

The Coronavirus Economic Relief for Transportation Services (CERTS) Act was contained in the second $900 billion COVID-relief package passed in Dec. 2020, and earmarked $2 billion directly to motor-coach operators, school bus companies and passenger vessel operators, requiring 60% of any grant or loan received to go to payroll.

“When the act came through, it was game changing and helped us get back on our feet more quickly,” DeVivo said, though DATTCO didn’t receive any grant money until the fall of 2021.

That time lag was detrimental to the industry as a whole. The ABA estimates 25% of the U.S.’ 3,000 bus companies have closed since the start of the pandemic.

Family business

DATTCO has weathered past economic downturns, with its roots springing from DeVivo’s uncle Ed and father Louis. The two brothers drove school buses part time in the 1940s to supplement income from their family farm, which was started up by their father, an Italian immigrant also named Louis.

The company that would evolve into DATTCO reaches back to 1949, and by the early 1960s, grew into a local transit and school bus operator.

Over the next six decades, the company expanded into more school districts and motor-coach services, purchasing new vehicles and diversifying into new business lines.

Today, those include running training programs for commercial drivers and mechanics, fleet repair services, dealerships for Thermo King, which sells and services refrigeration for trucks and buses, a property management subsidiary and a tool wholesale distributor.

DeVivo, who graduated from the University of Hartford, also holds a master’s degree in public administration and a law degree from the University of Connecticut. After practicing law for a few years, he found the motor-coach industry was in his blood and returned to the family business. To this day, he continues to hold a commercial driver’s license, first earned at age 18.

Married to his college sweetheart Patricia for 32 years, DeVivo has sons, Kyle and Kevin, also at DATTCO, who plan to maintain the third generation family-owned business.

Outside of work and family, DeVivo’s other passion is sports. He’s a big New York Yankees and New York Giants fan, follows hockey and college football and relates his sports knowledge to running a company.

“In business, you always try to make the right decision, but you can’t be afraid to take a risk,” he said. “It’s part of the game.”