On The Road Again: Coach Competition Continues As Touring Schedule Stabilizes (Transportation Special)

Observers of international trade often turn to the Baltic Dry Index as an indicator of the health of the broader commodity

Without getting into the nitty-gritty of it, the index measures seaborne freight costs, which serves as proxy for future demand: if exporters feel they need to ship more widgets to meet future demand and there’s only so many ships, the price goes up and vice versa.

If the live industry has a similar measure, it might just be the availability of tour buses. They tend to be booked — at least in pencil — well in advance of a tour announcement so booking pace gives a reliable, back of the napkin overview of how healthy the future of the market is.

“Future bookings are pretty competitive, but we are glad to see equipment already booking up for 2027,” Pioneer Coach general manager Doug Oliver says. “I would say we are returning to a more normal supply and demand balance.”

There may be a sense of relief there. In the years immediately following the pandemic, coach companies faced unforeseen demand for their services running into supply chain issues that roiled the broader economy. In addition, a number of longtime drivers didn’t return to the road after the pandemic and coach companies — and other CDL-dependent industries — struggled to fill the gap.

The National Transportation Institute found that the workforce in for-hire interstate drivers more broadly (which would include commercial bus drivers and semi-truck drivers as well) is aging, with three-quarters of drivers either members of Gen X or the Baby Boomers and younger drivers tend to “churn,” burning out within a year.

Even still, Oliver says, faced with a dearth of drivers when the industry came roaring back in 2021, the tour bus companies did a good enough job at recruiting that new people who came on board then that stayed in the game now have five or six years of experience in the seat and the driver supply has “stabilized.”

There is, of course, an elephant in the garage.

Since the beginning of the bombing campaign in Iran in February and the Islamic Republic’s response that essentially shut the Strait of Hormuz, the price of fuel has skyrocketed. Diesel has been hit even harder than gasoline. The average price of a gallon of diesel in the United States is now $5.67, 18 cents from the all-time high in 2022. That’s up nearly $2 since the conflict with Iran began and up 60% year-over-year. Fuel inputs affect the price of nearly everything but it’s particularly acute when the business itself is driving.

Oliver says there have been “significant increases in touring costs,” not just from fuel but from labor and conversion inputs and it’s difficult to predict how high those costs will go. Trump Administration officials often paint a rosy picture that the end of the conflict will result in a rapid decrease at the pump, while oil industry experts say it’s likely high costs would persist into early 2027 even if the conflict ended tomorrow. So, Oliver says, the coach companies have to have “collaborative conversations” with clients to manage the costs. 

The old reliable point-A-to-point-B nature of the tour bus may seem as tried and true as any part of the industry but, at a Production Live! panel about tour logistics, Pioneer’s Chief Sales Officer Wayne Linder said the next big thing in everything may be the next big thing for tour buses, too.

“I’m hugely interested in how AI can make us more efficient, when it comes to scheduling vehicles, in regard to communicating tours quicker, better,” the 2026 Entertainment Motorcoach Hall of Fame inductee said. 

AI may be the next big change, but what hasn’t changed is the buses still primarily come from Prevost, the Canadian manufacturer now in its 102nd year. The company has made a commitment to being carbon-neutral by 2040 and is in the midst of a five-year plan, which began in 2022, to “develop a new 100 percent electric coach” with a 250-mile range, enough to get a tour from New York to Boston on a single charge. 

Prevost opened a nearly 60,000-square-foot facility at its Goodlettsville, Tennessee, location in April, doubling the size of the previous location. The expanded facility includes a new collision center, expanded office space and parking, and increased service capacity to meet demand, particularly in the entertainer coach market.