[HN Gopher] FlixMobility Acquires Greyhound to Expand U.S. Inter...
___________________________________________________________________
FlixMobility Acquires Greyhound to Expand U.S. Intercity Bus
Services
Author : doener
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-10-21 07:31 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (corporate.flixbus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (corporate.flixbus.com)
| Factorium wrote:
| I hope we'll eventually get autonomous minibusses in US cities,
| operated privately. Tesla FSD is already suitable, maybe with
| remote human operator takeover for the 0.1% of exceptional
| conditions.
|
| One of the problems of public transport is that the clientele is
| not exclusive enough, and the routes do not automatically align
| to the pickup and dropoff points of the passengers. A private
| members-only service with an app would solve this.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| So you're proposing a limo service basically?
| mNovak wrote:
| Their vision for attracting new riders in the US reminds me of
| MegaBus. I was a big fan of MegaBus when I was in college--they
| stopped at universities, and had clean buses with wifi
| (supposedly, it never worked), and low fares. I took many a $30
| weekend trip to Chicago.
|
| I don't know what happened to them, I think they cut a lot of
| routes.
| dopamean wrote:
| I live in Austin and took a Megabus to Houston last year. It
| was exactly the experience I had in college 16 years ago which
| was identical to what you described here.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Wifi on buses has never made sense to me. It just can't work.
| It's too technical. Connecting dozens of clients with competing
| streams over a very narrow and lossy channel simply is beyond
| the capabilities of all but a very small subset of network
| engineers, none of whom are working on wifi for buses.
| Tethering your own mobile to your laptop always works better.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Do you doubt the capability of wifi to serve fifty
| passengers, or the capability of the mobile uplink to the
| cell network? Neither of these strikes me as beyond the
| capability of readily available hardware.
|
| Besides which, on the Greyhound buses I've ridden, most
| passengers were too busy sleeping, attempting to stay seated
| given the terrible buffeting of USA-standard interstate
| highways and bouncy Greyhound suspension, or being too poor
| to afford a device, to contribute much congestion to the
| WLAN.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Fairness in the presence of congestion is a difficult
| problem and just slapping some single-board computer with
| two network interfaces in between wifi and cellular isn't
| going to work. I don't doubt the ability of wifi to deal
| with a few dozen stations on the air.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I've been on buses (and trains, and airplanes) where the
| wifi worked, in that I was able to read email and browse
| the web. It's probably OK if not everyone is streaming 8K
| video the whole trip? Like many other engineering tasks,
| the answer may just be to massively over-specify each
| component.
| kgin wrote:
| Anyone know the origin of the name FlixBus? My completely
| uninformed wild guess was that when the company was starting,
| they borrowed the "flix" from Netflix as a shorthand for "tech
| savvy company" without caring too much about the actual English
| slang meaning.
| bossm4n wrote:
| Since it's a German company, it might be one of the "fake"
| English words Germans like to come up with. Another examples:
| "Handy" for a smartphone or "Beamer" for a video projector.
| These are the most used names for these appliances.
|
| Flixbus basically destroyed other competitors by driving the
| prices down to extreme levels. Once their competitors were
| gone, their raised the prices. Example: Postbus.
| gerrit wrote:
| It's a German company and "flix" is local slang for quick
| bossm4n wrote:
| local to where? there is "fix" and "flink" which both mean
| quick, so it could be a portmanteau.
| tpmx wrote:
| The ground transportation version of Ryanair.
| dijit wrote:
| Nah, FlixBus is actually pretty good.
|
| I used them a lot when travelling in the US and EU, though I
| will say that they're a lot better at serving the EU.
|
| I once had a really unfortunate situation between SF and LA
| where I waited for 5hrs for a bus that never showed up. Another
| driver took pity on us so we got there, but I'm not sure
| exactly what happened.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| I think the comparison is not too far off really. You get the
| minimum amount of service while the maximum amount of seats
| is crammed into buses. At least that was my experience with
| FlixBus. I only use their services when I absolutely have to.
| I seem to remember that it was much more pleasant before they
| bought all the competitors.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I agree, Flixbus goes for minimal service at minimal price,
| just like Ryanair. Space is cramped, the on-board toilet
| isn't guaranteed to work, but if you don't have to transfer
| it beats every other method of transport on price.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| More like the bus version of Uber, they don't own the buses
| (well, since they've just bought Greyhound, maybe they do now)
| but instead rely on "partner" companies to own, maintain and
| drive the buses.
| blntechie wrote:
| Interesting. In India, there is a similar bus company called
| IntrCity which partners with other bus owning and operating
| companies and just apply their name to the service.
| cheschire wrote:
| In Germany they have buses labeled with flixbus logos. It
| didn't seem like partnerships.
|
| Perhaps partners are how they established a foothold in
| America?
| arrrg wrote:
| As others said, all bus partners. That's also one reason
| why they could survive the pandemic relatively unscathed.
| They could scale down their networks pretty well and pretty
| quickly, for a long time down to zero.
|
| Sucks for the bus partners, but FlixBus didn't even have
| any layoffs, at least not in Germany.
|
| (Inside info, I can tell you that FlixBus has been mighty
| proud of their ability to scale up and down their networks
| during the pandemic and at least the internally
| communicated credo has always been that while this is all
| hard and challenging they might even leave the pandemic
| strengthened and in stronger position than their
| competitors, something this acquisition also hints at.)
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| The buses with the logos are the partners, they are not
| owned by them.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Amazingly there are bus-sized vehicle wraps:
| https://www.wrapstation.it/project/flixbus/
|
| If you have your journeys saved on the mobile app, they
| also say "Operated by [partner name]".
| Symbiote wrote:
| Is this amazing?
|
| It's not unusual to see an all-bus (or all-train) wrap
| with advertising, or the logo of the bus (or train)
| company.
| manderley wrote:
| They're all operated by partners. Flixbus only owns a
| single bus they use for PR purposes.
| hef19898 wrote:
| True, they own one bus and employ one bus driver. Not for
| PR, but to fulfill legal requirements to be allowed to
| run a vast network to transport _people_ (as opposed to
| goods, freight forwarders have no such requirement). Not
| that the owned and employed driver where ever used on an
| actual route, at least not to my knowledge.
|
| That is one of the differences between Uber and FlixBus,
| the latter actually respects regulations. They doing so
| in creative ways, but they don't ignore them.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > In Germany they have buses labeled with flixbus logos. It
| didn't seem like partnerships.
|
| Take a careful look at the front side of the bus, driver
| side, and the front door. There will be the logo of the
| partner operating the route.
|
| Flixbus and the various companies they bought up over the
| years requires the partners to decorate their buses in the
| Flixbus CI (green/orange + logo). Exceptions apply for
| peak-capacity / spare buses, these however have to be
| decorated with a magnetically attachable Flixbus logo if in
| service for Flixbus.
| rjsw wrote:
| The original low-cost airline was Southwest Airlines, their
| business model was copied by EasyJet in Europe, it isn't
| necessary to be an asshole like Ryanair to be successful.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| The original low-cost airline was Laker Airways in the UK.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-feb-11-me-
| laker...
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, other than race to the bottom. My understanding is that
| Southwest is no longer considered especially low cost. And,
| honestly, I only ever flew them because they were convenient
| for a couple short city pairs I flew at one time, not because
| I otherwise liked flying them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Eh, I wouldn't say that. They're similar in that they're low
| cost and were very early to embrace internet booking and such,
| but the quality of the product is quite good IME (whereas
| Ryanair is generally a considerably worse experience than
| legacy carriers, FlixBus is as good as or better than any
| legacy intercity bus networks I've used).
|
| They also seem low on Ryanair arseholery; booking a Ryanair
| flight, you get the strong impression that Ryanair's business
| isn't actually flights, but selling extras and collecting fees
| when the traveler makes mistakes (someone who shows up for
| their 5 euro flight to London with a slightly oversized bag and
| having forgotten to print their boarding pass is likely to be
| paying an extra 50 euro or so, say).
| bserge wrote:
| Funny anecdote, last time I took FlixBus out of London
| (Victoria Coach Station looked like shit btw, wtf happened),
| they charged me and a few other people extra for "overweight"
| bags.
|
| Mine were definitely not overweight, I checked them myself.
| Paid cash in hand - straight into the driver's pocket, I'm
| guessing.
|
| But I see now that the buses are run by independent
| companies, so that explains a few things.
|
| Still very cheap :D
| [deleted]
| rsynnott wrote:
| Huh. Do they even have facilities to weigh the bags?
|
| But yeah, they might well be more regionally variable than
| Ryanair.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Another foreign company buying out a US company
| mst wrote:
| Opinions on FlixBus clearly vary but as a .uk person who used to
| take buses a lot First Group are far from well loved here so this
| is probably at worst still not actually a downgrade in terms of
| ownership.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Ugh. Flixbus is a cancer on European public transit. They ignore
| laws they don't like and compete unfairly.
|
| Flixbus is Uber for busses, and that's not a compliment.
| ornornor wrote:
| That also feels like regression, environmentally.
|
| We have very good train systems in a lot of European countries.
| These trains run on electricity (which is mostly nuclear as I
| understand it), so very low emissions and cost effective.
|
| But instead, let's promote buses which are slow, polluting,
| noisy, add to road congestion... still a step better than the
| individual car but not when trains could be a viable
| alternative.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Still an improvement in USA. We are poorly served by
| passenger trains.
| imjustsaying wrote:
| Booked a bus with them once in Europe, bus never showed up.
| Confirmed this with another driver at the same stop. Contacted
| Flixbus for a refund, they refused.
|
| With Greyhound out of the way, they're going to start acting like
| they do in Europe, which in my experience, is not nicely.
| danans wrote:
| I think the opportunity for these bus services is in the 1.5-3hr
| window, like the SF->Sacramento route [1]. Anything shorter or
| longer than that, people who own a car are likely to drive, or
| fly.
|
| They will also need to upgrade/modernize the Greyhound buses if
| they want to attract the climate-change-concerned crowd.
|
| Unfortunately, intercity buses in the US have been culturally
| stigmatized and associated with poverty. They need to increase
| appeal to a broader swath of the population while still providing
| an economical service for intercity transportation.
|
| Electrification is one way - the novelty of an electric intercity
| bus would get me to take it - but they will need to sell comfort
| and convenience too.
|
| How they will do this without raising prices is the tricky
| question, as it will require a fair amount of capital to make
| these upgrades.
|
| Ironically, in other countries like Germany (Flixbus) and even
| developing countries like Mexico [2], decent and broadly utilized
| intercity bus services exist.
|
| 1.
| https://shop.flixbus.com/search?departureCity=65e6af81-18ec-...
|
| 2. https://www.mexperience.com/bus-travel-in-mexico/
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| tough to write this press release without too much mention of the
| pandemic and its effect on the service (basically killing it in
| places like Canada). They claim in the US it helped during the
| pandemic but it's got to be only by a very thin thread holding on
| UncleEntity wrote:
| My last trip on the greyhound was actually on a flixbus. One
| without AC, in the desert, in the summer. They thought the AC
| would magically start working once they left Vegas and we had
| to wait around for something like 3 hours before a replacement
| bus showed up.
|
| Fun times all around, highly recommend...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Greyhound currently connects approximately 2,400 destinations
| across North America with nearly 16 million passengers each year.
|
| "Across north America" is a stretch considering their recent
| abandonment of about 1/2 of the continent.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/greyhound-canada-1.6025276
|
| "Company will no longer offer domestic service, but U.S.
| affiliate will still offer cross-border routes"
| lqet wrote:
| Given the development of FlixBus / MeinFernbus over the past 10
| years here in Germany, I would expect them to massively expand
| the network very quickly.
|
| There was an interview with one of the founders, Andre
| Schwammlein, in the FAZ a few weeks ago in which he talked
| about his vision for the US to become the biggest market for
| them [0].
|
| Google translate version:
|
| > _FAZ:_ In the US, greyhound has been synonymous with
| intercity buses for a century. Should the Americans think of
| the green Flix logo instead of a greyhound when it comes to bus
| transport?
|
| [...]
|
| > _Schwammlein:_ We are now bringing a lot of young people to
| the bus, for whom traveling by bus was not an option before.
| However, the image of many providers in the USA is not where it
| should be. We want to show people that the bus is an attractive
| alternative to the car. It WILL, of course, take a long time to
| grow in, given the size of the country. But our ambition is to
| see FlixBuses in Hollywood films at some point.
|
| > _FAZ:_ And in the sparsely populated Midwest?
|
| > _Schwammlein:_ There is certainly still potential for the
| future. In the core relations in particular, we already aim to
| be the market leader in the near future.
|
| > _FAZ:_ What do you do differently than the established
| providers?
|
| > _Schwammlein:_ It 's about customer orientation in
| connections and stops. In L.A., most providers have one, two,
| or three stops - we have ten and we stop at universities, for
| example. Or in Vegas on the Strip and again in Downtown. We
| think of networks differently - not in terms of operation, but
| rather on the basis of the customer. If people want to drive
| from L.A. to Vegas on Friday afternoons to party, then the
| timetable has to map that with more trips instead of driving
| every hour all week when demand is significantly lower. The
| passenger determines the timetable.
|
| > _FAZ:_ Will America one day become the biggest market for
| FlixBus?
|
| > _Schwammlein:_ It is very clear that this will happen within
| the next few years. In terms of potential, it can even be
| expected that it will be as big as all of Europe.
|
| [0]
| https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/flixbus-c...
| dkarl wrote:
| I think he's on to something. Lots of young people in the
| U.S. don't want to drive. They are less motivated than my
| generation was, because more of their social life can be
| remote, and cars now carry a lot of stigma as well. Their
| generation are going to spend a lot less on personally owned
| automobiles and a lot more on other forms of transportation.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| It's not that they don't want to drive. Tesla as a brand
| has plenty of cachet with the Millennial and Gen Z
| demographics. It's that cars are expensive to obtain and
| drive. In both and nominal and real dollars, cars and car
| insurance have gotten expensive (even pre-pandemic) to the
| point that buying one is no longer a good deal unless you
| have no other mode of transportation.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Not to mention that in places like SF they're kind of a
| liability. Protected parking is expensive, on the street
| they're likely to get broken into. In some parts of San
| Jose, you would also just have a hard time finding street
| parking that's not a half-mile away from your home.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| i wish they do to public transportion what t-mobile did to
| cell carriers in the US!!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The big problem with public transit is that since customers
| are sharing the same space, an excessively high ratio of
| customers that drive other customers away will make the
| business go into a downward spiral.
|
| It is particularly rough because there is almost no reason
| (outside a few large, dense cities) to take a bus if you
| already have a car in the US. The marginal cost of driving
| a mile is so low and the convenience of having your own
| vehicle so high, that buses are relegated mostly to people
| that do not have access to cars.
| [deleted]
| panzagl wrote:
| It can even be hard flying on weekends when the planes
| are full of non-business passengers- things move much
| more smoothly when everyone is just used to the grind.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > for an enterprise value on a debt-free / cash-free basis of
| c.$46m plus unconditional deferred consideration of $32m with an
| interest rate of 5% per annum
|
| In SV terms that's what? A round B series?
|
| Sure, maybe the debts are substantial, but that seems like it was
| cheap.
| ISL wrote:
| It probably _is_ cheap, but one would have to sustain the
| network until the pandemic eases.
|
| Greyhound seems like the kind of iconic US company that would
| pique the interest of Berkshire Hathaway -- it is telling that
| BH didn't pick it up.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| Greyhound absolutely fails most of Berkshire's criteria, and
| the size of the deal ($78 million) is well under the deal
| size Berkshire is looking for.
|
| As for being "iconic", I'm not sure "iconic" is the word I'd
| use to describe Greyhound. It has a reputation for sure, but
| not a good one.
| quesera wrote:
| FWIW, my instantaneous reaction on seeing the title of this
| post was "wait, isn't Greyhound a special entity designated
| by US govt, like Amtrak or the USPS?".
|
| I knew it couldn't be correct after half a second of
| reflection, but it's a measure of how "iconic" Greyhound
| is.
|
| Also, they have big real estate (often in beautiful old
| buildings) in the center of the big cities, and their
| branding is red white & blue.
|
| It seems likely that they don't _own_ the real estate, and
| maybe the cities own the bus stations which only appear to
| be operated by Greyhound. I have only been inside about
| half a dozen bus stations though.
| brummm wrote:
| Hasn't been American in a while, though. It's been British
| owned for at least a decade before this recent purchase.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Unlike a railroad, there isn't much in terms of assets in a bus
| service sans the paper value of the brand itself and (where
| applicable) route licenses. Old buses are long-since written
| off, new buses are usually leased.
|
| Further driving down the value (which _does_ seem to be cheap
| given that GH made 54M profit out of 914M revenue) are long-
| term obligations: lease agreements that may be expensive to
| break, employment contracts for the drivers and operating costs
| (fuel, road tolls) that have to be paid even if a bus line isn
| 't operating at capacity (or, as with corona crisis, at all).
| fabioborellini wrote:
| I need to add that virtually no railroad operating companies
| own any railroads in Europe - even the private operators use
| public infrastructure. That is the case for Flixmobility's
| Flixtrain as well.
| hef19898 wrote:
| DB is owning all German railroads. They operate the vast
| majority of trains. They do share their network with
| competitors, e.g. FlixTrain. Not sure, but I do think SNCF
| in France is also owning French railroads.
| SilasX wrote:
| Fuel and road tolls don't have to be paid if the bus line
| isn't operating at all.
| [deleted]
| allendoerfer wrote:
| So apparently what Germany is great does not seem to be
| engineering but logistics, when you look at its successful
| startups: Zalando, HelloFresh, Delivery Hero, FlixBus.
| hef19898 wrote:
| As German, professional logistician this is the first time I
| hear someone say that!
|
| On a serious note, so, German organizations seem to be not too
| bad at it. Once the organization actually treats logistics
| seriously and not some necessary evil at best.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That makes sense. and fits FlixBus history of growing through
| acquisitions. Not working for them anymore, but I still route for
| them. They treat employees well, as well as any large employer,
| treat their partners (those companies operating the buses)
| reasonably well and actually do add value through their way
| better booking system.
|
| Fun fact, the actual operations come from one of their earlier
| acquisitions, MeinFernbus, and are still based in Berlin (last
| time I checked) and not the Headquarters in Munich.
| flak48 wrote:
| They might be great for employees, but have a terrible
| reputation among customers atleast in Europe.
|
| Most common issues seems to be staff often not
| enforcing/honouring seat reservations, the company refusing to
| implement a tag/validation system for hold luggage (allowing
| rampant theft) as well as bad on time performance + frequent
| last minute cancellations
| solarkraft wrote:
| You kinda get what you pay for, or more, actually. It may be
| crammed and slow, but there are some overnight routes just
| not comparable with train offerings.
| brnt wrote:
| Took them regularly here in NL for a few months pre-Covid and
| I thought they were pretty great. Much better and faster than
| the national railway (even their intercity trains stop every
| 25km).
| phreeza wrote:
| > Most common issues seems to be staff often not
| enforcing/honouring seat reservations
|
| My understanding is they don't actually have any staff on the
| bus, they are a booking system and branding provider for
| smaller bus operators. There are some small exceptions where
| providing bus services requires actually operating a bus in a
| given country but they only do the bare minimum there.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Shitty customer service might have flown in Germany (I live
| in Berlin now, ask me how garbage most retailers at
| treating their customers, it's bad) but it won't win them
| much in teh way of goodwill or customers in the US which
| typically has a better track when it comes to customer
| service. So there's hope that this might change in the
| future.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Have you ever been in a Greyhound terminal, never mind
| having traveled via Greyhound bus? The worst customer
| service on the continent of Europe would be a vast
| improvement on the squalid unhygienic condition of
| literally everything owned or leased by Greyhound, not to
| mention the eagerness to cancel trips so that passengers
| unexpectedly have to layover 13 hours in e.g. downtown
| Indianapolis in such condition.
| phreeza wrote:
| Not sure greyhound was/is the paragon of customer service
| though either.
| lolpython wrote:
| Greyhound has terrible customer service [0]. I've heard
| many reports of lost baggage, the bus being delayed by up
| to 12 hours, and staff not answering questions.
|
| [0]: https://www.bbb.org/us/tx/dallas/profile/bus-
| lines/greyhound...
| trillic wrote:
| Jerry: I don't understand. Do you have my reservation?
|
| Rental Car Agent: We have your reservation, we just ran out
| of cars.
|
| Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why
| you have the reservation.
|
| Rental Car Agent: I think I know why we have reservations.
|
| Jerry: I don't think you do. You see, you know how to
| _take_ the reservation, you just don 't know how to _hold_
| the reservation. And that 's really the most important part
| of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take
| them.
| bayouborne wrote:
| U-Haul does this too, maybe it's sector-wide.
| Anecdotally, they appear to have no equipment reserve.
| If, at crunch time at the end of the month, a rental
| customer does not return the vehicle at a scheduled time
| then that means a previously issued 'reservation' isn't
| going to be honored, at least not at that place and time.
| They'll try to upgrade to a larger truck if available, or
| try to send you 50 miles away chasing another truck of
| the same size (which often isn't actually there) or
| they'll try to incent you via a heavy discount to rent
| the same truck 1-2 days later when it's finally available
| - just know that a reservation is an entirely notional
| construct to them.
| AaronM wrote:
| How would you build a better system in an industry with
| tight margins? They are at the whim of the person with
| the vehicle to return it on time.
| addicted wrote:
| Outside of regulation which requires companies to
| actually hold the reservations, and keep a certain number
| of reserve vehicles on standby it's not gonna happen
| because customers will not pay the increased prices that
| such a company would need to charge. Effectively, the
| entire system is stuck in a local maximum that is much
| lower than the global maximum.
|
| One possibility is to simply charge an optional premium
| price to actually hold a reservation, but I suspect the
| premium would probably be too high for anyone to really
| take up and would simply lead to a lot of bad press.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Those are all implementation details that a passenger
| doesn't care about. Seat reservations aren't honoured. That
| has little to do with the ownership structure. You're
| getting on a big green bus with a huge Flixbus logo on the
| side, of course it's Flixbus's fault if things are wrong.
| phreeza wrote:
| True to a degree but in the end you get what you pay for.
| If you want a more standardized experience, take an IC
| bus, or the train. Just like an Uber. Compared to Uber I
| agree the aggressive branding of the busses is misleading
| though.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Who do I give my money to? If I give my money to <company
| X> for something, and that something is wrong in some
| way, then it is the responsibility of <company X> to
| resolve the problem. Period, full stop. If <company Y> is
| actually at fault, then <company X> is responsible for
| dealing with <company Y> to resolve the situation.
| phreeza wrote:
| Do you have the same opinion when you buy a flight on
| Expedia?
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| If I buy a flight on Expedia (I wouldn't but that's
| beside the point), do I get on a plane that says
| "Expedia" on the side of it? I've never heard of FlixBus,
| but it seems like the answer would be yes in their case,
| which is a very relevant difference IMO.
| Macha wrote:
| A price comparison website is different to a company
| subcontracting services. Expedia don't represent
| themselves as the supplier, Flixbus apparently does.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I don't use Expedia, but if I paid my money to them, then
| yes. If you, as a company, take my money in exchange for
| something, then that something is your responsibility to
| make right.
| ornornor wrote:
| I had to use flixbus once when I was traveling to france and
| the train system was on strike (again)
|
| I had such a shitty experience. A "direct" bus making
| stopover in every major city in between at rush hour, giving
| us completely different seats than what we booked, bus was
| late to arrive at pickup point, no indications about where to
| actually wait for the bus, late to arrive... never ever again
| will I take a flixbus.
| f6v wrote:
| > They might be great for employees, but have a terrible
| reputation among customers atleast in Europe.
|
| This is the first time I hear about it. My personal
| experience was that it got a bit worse over the years, but
| still not as bad as Deutsche Bahn and the likes.
| Animats wrote:
| _treat their partners (those companies operating the buses)_
|
| So this is just Uber for buses.
|
| In Greyhound's good years, they not only owned the buses, they
| had them custom-designed and built.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/greyhound-
| scenicrui...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, FlixBus is not using freelancers or ignoring existing
| regulations around their business. So not the traditional gig
| economy pseudo-tech company.
| [deleted]
| solarkraft wrote:
| > They treat employees well
|
| Are you including drivers in that?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Honestly, from what I've seen, I would go out on a limb and
| say yes. At least not any worse than other bus or truck
| companies. After all, the buses are operated by third parties
| and those are employing the drivers. Back the day FlixBus had
| a policy of having two drivers on long rides and those over
| night, even when that wasn't a legal requirement. Not sure if
| that is still the case or not.
| mynegation wrote:
| Do you root for them or route for them? Not trying to fix
| potential typo, I am just curious what does it mean to "route"
| for a bus company.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Even when I worked there I didn't do the routing. Now I still
| root for them. Auto-Correct is a blessing sometimes!
| JimiofEden wrote:
| From context, I'd say the GP is specifically rooting for this
| company (to do well.)
|
| For the sake of the scenario, though, I'd imagine routing for
| a (transportation) company would involve logistics and
| timetables over a map.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-21 23:03 UTC)