Back to school.

• Author: Keaton, Joanne
• Position: School-bus maker in Carpenter Manufacturing Inc. - Company Profile

Carpenter Manufacturing in Mitchell is one of only five school-bus makers in the U.S.

Time to catch that yellow bus again. With summer gone, Indiana students are joining millions of children throughout the world who ride school buses. Wrong.

The school bus as we know it serves just North American youngsters. In foreign countries, students may ride buses to school, but their vehicles are shared with other members of the community. Canada and the United States are the only nations which paint buses yellow.

Even the manufacturers of school buses are fairly exclusive--there are only five in the country, with the future of Wayne Corp. in Richmond undecided at the moment. Carpenter Manufacturing, located in Mitchell, is a 70-year-old school-bus manufacturer. The company was honored when its first all-steel bus, a 1936 model, became part of the Smithsonian Institution's collection. Earlier, school buses were made of wood; before that, students rode in horse-drawn conveyances.

School buses are usually simpler and less expensive than other bus styles. School models, then, may be the choice for community use in poorer countries. Dana Dunbar, Carpenter chairman, says his company has been exporting buses to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Columbia, Venezuela and Bolivia.

School buses are yellow but not necessarily yellow all over. White roofs can lower the interior temperature of a bus by seven degrees. Hot-weather states such as Florida and Georgia find white tops an affordable alternative to air conditioning. Those exported to Central and South America also are usually painted white for the same reason, though bright trim colors are popular there.

A regular 66-passenger school...