A 72-year-old bus company’s sudden shutdown left a college wrestling team temporarily without a ride home.
Muhlenberg Weekly reports Bieber Bus abruptly suspended service on Feb. 8 while the Muhlenberg (Penn.) College was at a meet in New York City. School officials were able to scramble and find a replacement in short order, and the team was able to travel as scheduled.
The Morning Call reports that reduced ridership and mounting expenses were behind the company’s decision to close up shop. Bieber Bus was one of the charter transportation companies that Muhlenberg often used for athletics events, and students at the Allentown, Penn., campus often caught rides to New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia on Bieber Bus.
“Bieber Bus has been serving Muhlenberg College students and the college directly for many years,” school president John Williams told Muhlenberg Weekly. “It has been a stalwart provider of transportation in the Lehigh Valley for a long time and we are of course very disturbed by this news that Bieber has shut down. It’s a great inconvenience for many of our students and our faculty and staff. We have used Bieber for years to transport our athletic teams and career roadtrips, so we will have to find alternatives as a college, and our faculty and staff will need to find alternatives for their personal transportation.”
The wrestling team had been at the Centennial Conference finals, until the school’s chief budgeting and accounting officer Jason Feiertag was able to secure new busses with a different transportation provider. Lynne Tubman, Muhlenberg’s athletic director, commended the improvisation.
“I’m so impressed with the department’s response,” she said. “It was a true team effort! The staff worked together to reach out to multiple bus companies to ensure our teams traveling this weekend and this week had transportation.”
The Bieber bus driver was also commended for his efforts in making sure the team was taken care of properly.
The school’s remaining spring season travel is reportedly still out for bid.
