Starting A Bus Transport Business: My Story.

Have you ever tried starting and running a bus transport business? Let me share my experience of how I started a bus business a couple of years back. A lot of people run the other way when they hear about starting a bus transport business, especially in a place like Nigeria, simply because at the end of the day, it usually ends up in a bit of skirmish between the bus owner and the driver or manager of the bus, and its usually a bitter one.

When I conceived starting a bus business, I spoke to some of my friends and family members about it, and they told me that it usually doesn’t end well. You end up fighting with the person who drives the bus or who manages the bus they said, but got started I did.

Let me just back up a bit and share with you how I got started. Now this happened when I was still working in the banking industry. There was this customer i had, let’s call his name Waheed. Waheed usually comes to the bank to deposit his sales for the week or for the day. I got inquisitive about the frequency of his deposits as he was a semi-literate person, he could hardly write or fill his deposit slips, in fact that’s how I got to know him. I filled his deposit slips for him, made processes easy for him at the bank and he just liked the way I treated him.

So one of those days I got talking with Waheed, I asked him what he did for a living, Waheed said he runs a truck business. Interesting I said. He explained that he has a lot of trucks and drivers that work for him. When we got to the cost of how much each of those trucks was, I knew within me that I couldn’t afford any on my salary back then. However he told me I could start with a bus, which was how he started. Buy a bus, start a transport business and grow from there he said. That sounded interesting to me and I told him I’ld think about it.

After some time, I moved to another bank, and I informed Waheed about it and he decided to move with me because he really liked the kind of working relationship we had. Now in the new bank, i had a couple of friends that wanted to start some kind of monetary contributions. We call it Esusu in our own part of the country. Heres how it works; We contribute some money together, a designated amount everyone drops each month, and at the end of the month, one person takes the total money contributed, and then we start again for another month until everyone in the group has taken their lump sum of the contributions.

So 10 of us were doing a hundred grand (N100,000) every month, in 10 places that was a million bucks. And when it was my own turn to take my contribution, it was a wonderful feeling. Infact back then in 2008, that was the first time I saw a million naira in my bank account. And guess who I called First? It was Waheed.

I put a call to Waheed and asked him for a meeting to discuss the modalities of getting the bus business started. But since I’m someone who’s risk averse, I didn’t put all the million naira into the business. I split the money into two, I put one half into the bus business while i bought a plot of land with the other half.

We bought a small bus to get started. We did the paper work and signed an agreement. He was going to get me a driver and also going to manage the operations, since I still had my day job and didn’t have the time. We agreed that every week he’ll be giving me returns of N15,000 which sounded fine by me. So N15,000 four times a week was around N60,000 every month. For someone who still had a day job, earning that income from a side business was pretty cool.

First week he delivered,  the second week, third, fourth week, one month, two months, six months into the deal, he was really doing fine. In six months we had made N360,000, to me that was good business and it still didn’t affect my day job. With time I gathered some other savings I had, added it to the already generated money and bought the second bus. So that became double income coming from the business. Sweet deal i must say.

Now there are times when we had one or two delays in payment, but Waheed always called me ahead and explained what the issues were. Maybe the bus was faulty or the drivers were sick,  whatever the case I got notified about it.

With time we decided to expand. Waheed brought the idea to go inter-state. He said we should get a bigger bus, an eighteen passenger bus which would carry more people and go longer distances. Since we were already steady and growing, I agreed and went ahead with the expansion plan.

So we sold the three small buses we had back then, and we bought two new inter-state buses. And for those who know the Southwest area in Nigeria well, we were moving between Ogun state to Lagos State. We were moving passengers going to work in Lagos State from Ogun State, and then in the evening, we would move people who were coming back home to Ogun State from Lagos State. It was a brilliant deal. Income was growing. With time we got the third and fourth inter-state buses. Waheed kept performing, and i was delighted.

Like I said, there were times when we had downtimes, take for instance there was this time I travelled to Port Harcourt, a south south part of Nigeria for an event,  and I got a call from Waheed. He said one of our buses had had an accident. In fact, it tumbled two or three times, but fortunately it wasn’t fatal. When I came back, I went to the mechanic’s workshop to see where the bus was. It was in a bad shape, but Waheed knew the mechanic guy and promised he would do a good job fixing the bus back. Between three to four weeks, the bus was back. So we had some cases like that, but then, the payment still continued.

Then Tragedy struck. Waheed missed payments for the week. At the time, It wasn’t a big deal since I knew he would call to explain what was happening, but a week went by and he didn’t communicate. I was wondering what was happening? Well, I was still patient. The second week passed, he still didn’t call or pay in any money. By the third week I became apprehensive. I was wondering, what’s wrong with this guy? Has he started taking me for granted?

I decided to talk to my wife about it. I told my wife that Waheed, my bus manager had not paid me in three weeks and hasn’t called either. My wife replied and said something that was really chilling, She said “baby, what if he’s dead?” I fired back and asked why she had to think so far bad of the situation? She said I should call him and find out what’s happening. So I picked up the phone and called Waheed. The phone rang and rang and he still didn’t pick. I was livid.

I was wondering what was wrong. Then i remembered I had his younger brother’s number who used to pay money into the bank for him sometimes. I rang him up and when he picked, I went berserk. What’s wrong with your brother? I asked, I haven’t seen him in three weeks, he hasn’t called or paid me, what’s his problem? And he replied camly that … Waheed… had… died.

The silence that followed was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. It was shocking. I said what do you mean died? He said those past weeks that I’d been trying to reach him, he had been sick. By the second week, they had taken him to his village for herbal treatments. By the third week, he couldn’t make it. He had Died. It was shocking, so shocking. And that’s one of the lessons I learned from that business. You must have a system, a structure in place for your business just in case of eventualities such as this.

Waheed was all the system I had in that bus transport business. He was the manager. He was the purchaser. He was the person that made payments. I knew next to nothing about the business, all I did was make the investment, while I watched the returns come in. And because he was just so straightforward and reliable, I didn’t bother to ask questions, and i tell you not so many are like Waheed.

In fact, his Junior brother that took over the business and promised to pay back everything that was outstanding, only paid one week and came up with excuses all through the rest of the month. In the end, I told him to sell all the buses and give the proceeds to Waheed’s wife and child. He had done a good job for me over those years and his family deserved so much more after that terrible loss.

So what are the lessons you can learn from this experience? If you who want to go into a bus transport business, if you can get an honest and straightforward individual like Waheed, go ahead and start your business, however there are not too many like that out there. You’ll probably have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince.

You also need to put a structure, a system in place and understand how the business works. Don’t leave it all to one person who will be the “all in all” in your business. You have to be a part of it and understand how the processes and each parts work.

Another lesson is to start small like I did. Start with one to two initially, and when you see how they perform, you can gradually scale up. Understand your own emotions when handling the drivers, when your buses break down and see if you can manage the pressures that come from the operations. If its all good sailing for you, then scale up and push it to the next level.

You also need to surround yourself with business minded friends who can support you financially, morally and emotionally. As an entrepreneur, you need all the support you can get. The business environment can be sometimes tough and unfriendly. If the only friends you keep currently are those who go clubbing and drinking with you, I suggest you change your circle of friends.

So that’s my story, what did you enjoy about it? Let me hear your feedback and see other areas I could have done things better. Cheers.