57 years and counting for Carolan Coach Hire
16/10/2024
First established in 1967, Carolan Coach Hire today stands as one of Ireland’s premier coach operators with a superb fleet of 45 vehicles. Irish Trucker touched base with company Managing Director James Carolan to hear all about the Co Meath-based company – from its origins to the state of business today.
When James Carolan took over the reins of his father’s coach hire business back in 1982, he did so with the aim of growing its school transport service tenfold.
Today, Carolan Coach Hire operates with a total of 22 school contracts which are serviced by a team of 27 full-time drivers and fleet of 45 vehicles.
Based in Spiddal, Nobber, Co Meath, the company has grown from providing local services with one mini-bus to being one of the premier coach providers in the country.
Irish Trucker caught up with James Carolan recently to learn more about this thriving venture and its overall hopes moving forward.
“My father Michael started the business is 1967 with an eight-seater Volkswagen mini-bus doing a school contract into St Ultan’s in Flowerhill in Navan and, to this day, we still have two minibuses going into St Ultan’s,” James outlined.
“My father retired in 1981, I really wanted to keep the business alive as I could see great potential, so in 1982 I decided I would concentrate more on the school transport end of it. Currently, we have 22 school contracts and they’re a mix of primary schools, Secondary schools & both combined with various sized coaches, mini- buses & 7 – seater vehicles.”
The team at Carolan Coaches is currently made up of 27 full-time drivers, two admin office staff, one in the accounts Department, two mechanics, one panel beater and one spray painter, as well as 20 part-time drivers.
James’s two sons Ashley and Jason are both drivers which leads to a third-generation family business, with the proprietor’s brother Bernard Carolan who is a mechanic and also looks after ordering of parts. Jason is also a qualified mechanic and Ashley served his time as coach builder. Ashley does a school run every day and looks after the cleaning of all the vehicles, his role also consists of day tours etc. He prides himself in driving a 77- seater double deck luxury coach. Jason’s role in the business would be looking after the maintenance of the fleet, day tours and extended tours etc.
Recent additions to the fleet in Spiddal include a brand-new DAF Turas 37-seater, with plans in place to add two new full size 53-seaters in early 2025.
Those are set to bring the vehicle count at Carolan Coaches up to 47 and, with the way business is nowadays, it’d be no surprise to James adding further to his fleet again next year.
“It’s been absolutely flat to the mat here for the last two years. It’s very, very busy,” he said.
“We do a tremendous amount of day hire, day trips for all different societies to all locations nationwide. We also have a service run called the 191 Balbriggan Express, service commences in Stamullen – Balbriggan into the city centre and return daily.
“We do a lot of extended tours as well, which would be like three to 12 days, we do a lot of sporting events and football clubs too, especially around Dublin City and County.
“We do corporate hire as well and in the summer months we would be carrying foreign students, French, Italian, German and American, and they keep the whole thing running there for the school bus drivers year-round.”
In May, Carolan Coaches had 16 of its coaches on the road for the Europa League final between Atlanta and Bayern Leverkusen at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium. It’s just one of the many major events in this country that the company transports people to and from each year. Looking forward to welcoming Rugby supporters for the Six Nations championship next year where we have 3,000 plus visitors requiring transport from Airport to various Hotels, restaurants, Aviva stadium etc.
For James, big events such as the Europa League final, school runs, football runs, swimming runs, school tours and extended tours are all equally important.
All Carolan Coaches vehicles are routinely inspected and maintained to manufacturer’s specifications by an in-house team of full-qualified, experienced and skilled technicians.
“Next year we are building a new state of the art workshop with our own pretest bays, to include rolling road brake tester – shaker- plate to test suspensions and bushings, and computerised smoke tester. The new premises will be 100ft long x 60ft wide with five entrance doors with three of them drive through.”
The make up for the fleet going in and out of the company’s gates goes from 14-seaters up to 16, 21, 25, 32, 49, 53, 55, 57, 59 and 77-seaters.
So, all of that considered, the burning question is what has been the secret behind the undoubted success of Carolan Coaches to date?
How has a small start-up, which began with a single eight-seater minibus more than five-and-a-half decades ago, grown into what is now one of the Ireland’s premier coach operators, holding an excellent reputation amongst its customers?
The way James sees it, reliability, coupled with top-of-the-line coaches in the fleet, goes a long way when it comes to this line of work.
“The buses are always immaculate clean and anyone that avails of us will always comment on the cleanliness of the vehicles,” the Managing Director stated.
“That’s one of the reasons and that fact that we’re always there on time for them. We never let anyone down and that’s a big factor because we get an awful lot of repeat business from our customers here.”
At Carolan Coaches, they provide executive style and economy coach tours of Ireland and Britain and have built up an extensive knowledge to help make your tour a special experience.
The family company is also a member of Coach Tourism & Transport Council of Ireland & Failte Ireland offering high-quality services for group passenger transport.
Looking at the coming months for his business, James is as optimistic as he’s ever been as Carolan Coaches continues to steadily grow and enhance its excellent reputation along the way.
“Instead of slowing down, fact is, it’s busier and busier that it’s getting and hopefully things will continue to stay that way,” he said.
“Last year was an extremely busy year and this year so far is the same, we are having to turn down new work that we cannot cover, which is a terrible shame as we hate disappointing new clients. If we had more drivers, we’d be able to cover a lot more work.
“Currently we have both male and female drivers but sourcing drivers is a huge problem in the coach and bus industry.”
Carolan Coach Hire,
Spiddal,
Nobber,
Co Meath
Tel: 046 905 2336
Mob: 087 252 7086
Web: carolancoachhire.ie
First published in Irish Trucker magazine September/October 2024, Vol 27-5
