A SHORT HISTORY OF PAVLOVICH COACHLINES
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80 YEARS! We have the knowledge and experience, that comes from creating transport solutions for over 80 years. Our outstanding customer service, professional drivers, commitment to safety and modern coaches will ensure your experience is truly memorable. |
Pavlovich Coachlines has a rich history in New Zealand. Like many well-established businesses Pavlovich’s bus operations began by filling a community need.
Around 1938 Marco and Minerva Pavlovich were raising a young family in the rural farming district of Whatawhata, near Hamilton. They, along with several neighbouring families, needed a reliable and safe mode of transport to get their children to and from the school located many kilometres away in Hamilton township. And thus M. Pavlovich & Sons Ltd was born!
From those small beginnings in 1938 grew a widely respected reputation for the safe and expedient transport of many thousands of school children. This solid reputation and expertise gave the family confidence to grow the business and diversify into other markets.
In the 1960’s M.Pavlovich & Sons Ltd were among the first to offer “package tour” holidays to the South Island by deluxe touring coach. The 1970’s and 1980’s became the decades of growth and, with it, a strengthened commitment to provide the best in tourism transportation. In the 1990’s Ivan and Mary Pavlovich prudently re-consolidated the business during a difficult economic period and, staying in the driving seat, drove it forward into the promise-filled 21st Century.
In 1999, Pavlovich won its first City Bus contract, with The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) Since then, the city bus operations have subsequently grown to a substantially larger operation than the coach market.
The business remains family owned giving it the stability and flexibility necessary in the bus and coach industry. Today, management is in the hands of the second and third generations, Ivan Pavlovich (Director) and Bernard Pavlovich (Chief Executive). Staying true to its origins a bus fleet still operates in Hamilton but the principal coach fleet is based in Auckland, with a satellite branch in Christchurch. The Urban Express division provides public bus services in the Auckland region.
Pavlovich Coachlines operates a fleet of approx 70 buses and coaches ranging in size from 21-seat to 53-seat capacity. In transport vernacular, Pavlovich are in business for the long haul!
Around 1938 Marco and Minerva Pavlovich were raising a young family in the rural farming district of Whatawhata, near Hamilton. They, along with several neighbouring families, needed a reliable and safe mode of transport to get their children to and from the school located many kilometres away in Hamilton township. And thus M. Pavlovich & Sons Ltd was born!
From those small beginnings in 1938 grew a widely respected reputation for the safe and expedient transport of many thousands of school children. This solid reputation and expertise gave the family confidence to grow the business and diversify into other markets.
In the 1960’s M.Pavlovich & Sons Ltd were among the first to offer “package tour” holidays to the South Island by deluxe touring coach. The 1970’s and 1980’s became the decades of growth and, with it, a strengthened commitment to provide the best in tourism transportation. In the 1990’s Ivan and Mary Pavlovich prudently re-consolidated the business during a difficult economic period and, staying in the driving seat, drove it forward into the promise-filled 21st Century.
In 1999, Pavlovich won its first City Bus contract, with The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) Since then, the city bus operations have subsequently grown to a substantially larger operation than the coach market.
The business remains family owned giving it the stability and flexibility necessary in the bus and coach industry. Today, management is in the hands of the second and third generations, Ivan Pavlovich (Director) and Bernard Pavlovich (Chief Executive). Staying true to its origins a bus fleet still operates in Hamilton but the principal coach fleet is based in Auckland, with a satellite branch in Christchurch. The Urban Express division provides public bus services in the Auckland region.
Pavlovich Coachlines operates a fleet of approx 70 buses and coaches ranging in size from 21-seat to 53-seat capacity. In transport vernacular, Pavlovich are in business for the long haul!
IN NOVEMBER 2015, WE CELEBRATED 75 YEARS!
Article below courtesy of Bus and Coach Association - November 2015
IN THE BUS AND COACH INDUSTRY. THE FAMILY HAVE PLAYED IMPORTANT ROLES IN BOTH THE INDUSTRY AND THE BCA. GOVERNING DIRECTOR IVAN IS A PAST PRESIDENT AND CEO BERNARD PAVLOVICH IS A FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AND CURRENT COUNCIL MEMBER.
According to Ivan Pavlovich it was probably an accident he had when he was about seven or eight that led his father Marco Pavlovich deciding to get their first school bus. “I must have been about seven or eight, about 1937, I had reached the stage where I was allowed to ride a pushbike. It was a red one and I was going to St Colombo, a Catholic school in Franklin. On the way on this particular morning there was guy who wanted a ride on my bike, I wasn’t going to allow that, he came out onto the footpath and I went out into the road. The bakers van knocked me off my bike and went over the top of me. I can still remember them lifting the van to get me out from underneath.”
There were six of Pavlovich children, three boys and three girls Ivan, Nino, Victor, Olga, Noelene and Rosie. And, says Ivan, after the accident Marco decided he would get a bus to get the kids to school. He approached his Whatawhata farm neighbours to see if they would join with him to get a bus. They weren’t interested but Marco scraped enough money together and bought and converted an ex army chiller van.
One thing led to another and they got a contract with what was in those days the Auckland Education Board. They also started doing secondary school runs; the numbers built up and in 1940 Pavlovich Coachlines was registered as a company. It was, says Ivan, initially not about setting up a business – it was simply a matter of getting the kids to school.
They also started taking on other bus work. They applied for the route license from Te Pahu into Hamilton. Back then license rules were very restrictive, and says Ivan, it did not matter if you didn’t get any passengers. “We were able to do charter work, but then with charter work you were limited to how far you could travel. “We couldn’t go as far as Raglan to pick groups up, we could not even go to Huntly.”
Eventually they were able to get a charter license that enabled them to go further to pick up passengers and that developed into more and more business. They were also starting to do more trips for church groups and the like to places such as Ruapehu.
In early 1960s they bought Brosnan Motors “The reason we bought Jimmy Brosnan was because it allowed us into Auckland.
He had the service for up there, he had hardly any passengers but it carried a lot of booze! Oh he carried some grog back, pallets of it! Packed into the end of the bus!”
That’s where, according Ivan, they could make a bit of money. “It was the freight, not out of people, but again we were having struggles making pickups out of Auckland. It was all right with the service run, but for groups of people you weren’t allowed unless you were ‘depoted’ over night. So if we left a vehicle over night it was all legal, if we didn’t it was illegal, so eventually we started leaving vehicles up there and it was just part of growing a business.”
In 1966 they bought Roberston Motors who had the Raglan to Hamilton service. Ivan remembers that service just got bigger and bigger. He recalls there was a worker service in the morning, but it didn’t cater for school children. “There was a lady out there, Eva Rickard, she decided she wanted her children to go into Frazer High School, specifically for Maori studies, so anyway she started sending her daughter Angela, into Frazer High and that started a build up of lots of other kids who came into Hamilton for secondary school. It got to a stage we were overloaded.
“It got to the stage we just had to buy more vehicles, plus we were getting work out of the government tourist bureau, you had to have decent sized coaches.”
This led to Ivan heading to Sweden in 1971 and investing in two Scanias.
According to Pavlovich Chief Executive Bernard Pavlovich that was an exciting time for the business. “Our company managed to ride the wave of what was a significant growth in the tourism industry.
It was a strong busy productive time, and we invested heavily in what was very good fleet. We led the industry, but they weren’t far behind, so other operators started buying Volvos and Scanias, and more Mercedes.”
It was about this time that the family started doing work with Southern Cross Tours a company who ran successful bus camping tours nationwide. Pavlovich eventually took over Southern Cross, which also had ski lodges at Ruapehu and in Queenstown.
Historically they had always run weekend tours down to Mt Ruapehu and elsewhere that would soak up three or four buses in weekend charters. “That provided,” says Bernard, “a really strong revenue base through the winter, which is normally our down time. But then again the market changed. One of the things I look back on as I keep going, the business has a 75 year plus history now, and it has changed. It is not that you set out to change the business, but you have to respond to the changes. One thing we have done well is keep moving as the markets change.”
They sold the ski side of the business in the 1990s when Ruapehu erupted. “Through the nineties,” says Bernard “we tried to keep Southern Cross and the ski business alive, it was struggling from 95 onwards, but over that period I was developing skills to make sure I could compete in the city bus provision space. It was in that period that I learned more about the business of being in business as opposed to the business of being in buses.”
In 1999 Pavlovich picked up the Auckland contract which became the Urban Express. “From 1999,” says Bernard “the business grew nicely, and from the early nineties our tour fleet grew. In early 2000 we put on more tour coaches on road, coaches with high emission standards. Really good quality tour coaches, which has been a philosophy we have followed since 1972.” In 2003 they picked up a second contract with the Auckland Regional Council, and that meant another 14 buses added to their urban bus operation. In 2006 they picked up another operation with Waikato Regional Council, which saw them take over the Huntly to Hamilton bus services which evolved to be the Northern Connector, which Bernard says is one of the strongest services in the Waikato area in terms of patronage revenue.
In 2008 they won the flagship Hamilton service, the Orbiter and the service commenced in 2009. “That was fantastic for us, because leading up to that our school bus services had been keeping us going in Hamilton. We really got some traction back into our business and it put that fleet over 20 vehicles. It pushed us into a new depot in Tasman Road, a purpose built facility and it certainly changed the nature of our Hamilton depot as well. So over a period of time we moved from a school bus operator and a charter operator to a bus contract to the Regional Council. Our journey in the Waikato now is a different one than it was when we started 75 years ago.”
According to both Bernard and Ivan the recognition of the family name is an important and integral part of the business. “When you have been in the business over 75 years,” says Bernard, “one of the most rewarding things both socially and in business is that people come up to me and tell me they rode on our buses back in the day. They often look at me in amusement and say ‘I don’t know whether it was you or your father’ – but in seriousness they often refer back to the fact that Marco, my grandfather drove them to school, or they will refer to Ivan or Victor or Nino who drove through the 50s and 60s and 70s. I still find it staggering that I connect with people on a regular basis who I don’t know but who absolutely know us.” That, he says, is one of the great things around a family business. “I think it means respect, and I think it means reliability.
People think that, yes they are still doing what they did fifty years ago, and they know what they are doing, and it is fantastic for the brand.”
Bernard says it’s great to celebrate and reflect on the history but as they go through that 75 years he is now thinking more about the future. “The future will inevitably be quite different. Exciting times are ahead and the business is well positioned with the tourism market reaching towards 3 million visitors. We are absolutely committed to this market and that is part of the fabric of the business. We see significant growth and we see fantastic opportunities to market the unique strengths of New Zealand. And of course the company will continue to grow in the city bus contracting market.”
“It’s that city bus that I start to wonder about and what does a bus in the future look like and what might public transport look like. I get quite excited when I see the technological changes that are encompassing the world and I start looking at alternatives. So one thing I am determined to do is to not lock this company into only being a provider of bus services, because our future is providing public transport solutions. Down the pipeline we have lots of opportunities to start offering people different and more efficient ways to move around the city. Now within those concepts you can interpret all sorts of opportunities. But it really is the thoughts and prospects of the future that keeps me excited about coming into work on a Monday morning.”
IN THE BUS AND COACH INDUSTRY. THE FAMILY HAVE PLAYED IMPORTANT ROLES IN BOTH THE INDUSTRY AND THE BCA. GOVERNING DIRECTOR IVAN IS A PAST PRESIDENT AND CEO BERNARD PAVLOVICH IS A FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AND CURRENT COUNCIL MEMBER.
According to Ivan Pavlovich it was probably an accident he had when he was about seven or eight that led his father Marco Pavlovich deciding to get their first school bus. “I must have been about seven or eight, about 1937, I had reached the stage where I was allowed to ride a pushbike. It was a red one and I was going to St Colombo, a Catholic school in Franklin. On the way on this particular morning there was guy who wanted a ride on my bike, I wasn’t going to allow that, he came out onto the footpath and I went out into the road. The bakers van knocked me off my bike and went over the top of me. I can still remember them lifting the van to get me out from underneath.”
There were six of Pavlovich children, three boys and three girls Ivan, Nino, Victor, Olga, Noelene and Rosie. And, says Ivan, after the accident Marco decided he would get a bus to get the kids to school. He approached his Whatawhata farm neighbours to see if they would join with him to get a bus. They weren’t interested but Marco scraped enough money together and bought and converted an ex army chiller van.
One thing led to another and they got a contract with what was in those days the Auckland Education Board. They also started doing secondary school runs; the numbers built up and in 1940 Pavlovich Coachlines was registered as a company. It was, says Ivan, initially not about setting up a business – it was simply a matter of getting the kids to school.
They also started taking on other bus work. They applied for the route license from Te Pahu into Hamilton. Back then license rules were very restrictive, and says Ivan, it did not matter if you didn’t get any passengers. “We were able to do charter work, but then with charter work you were limited to how far you could travel. “We couldn’t go as far as Raglan to pick groups up, we could not even go to Huntly.”
Eventually they were able to get a charter license that enabled them to go further to pick up passengers and that developed into more and more business. They were also starting to do more trips for church groups and the like to places such as Ruapehu.
In early 1960s they bought Brosnan Motors “The reason we bought Jimmy Brosnan was because it allowed us into Auckland.
He had the service for up there, he had hardly any passengers but it carried a lot of booze! Oh he carried some grog back, pallets of it! Packed into the end of the bus!”
That’s where, according Ivan, they could make a bit of money. “It was the freight, not out of people, but again we were having struggles making pickups out of Auckland. It was all right with the service run, but for groups of people you weren’t allowed unless you were ‘depoted’ over night. So if we left a vehicle over night it was all legal, if we didn’t it was illegal, so eventually we started leaving vehicles up there and it was just part of growing a business.”
In 1966 they bought Roberston Motors who had the Raglan to Hamilton service. Ivan remembers that service just got bigger and bigger. He recalls there was a worker service in the morning, but it didn’t cater for school children. “There was a lady out there, Eva Rickard, she decided she wanted her children to go into Frazer High School, specifically for Maori studies, so anyway she started sending her daughter Angela, into Frazer High and that started a build up of lots of other kids who came into Hamilton for secondary school. It got to a stage we were overloaded.
“It got to the stage we just had to buy more vehicles, plus we were getting work out of the government tourist bureau, you had to have decent sized coaches.”
This led to Ivan heading to Sweden in 1971 and investing in two Scanias.
According to Pavlovich Chief Executive Bernard Pavlovich that was an exciting time for the business. “Our company managed to ride the wave of what was a significant growth in the tourism industry.
It was a strong busy productive time, and we invested heavily in what was very good fleet. We led the industry, but they weren’t far behind, so other operators started buying Volvos and Scanias, and more Mercedes.”
It was about this time that the family started doing work with Southern Cross Tours a company who ran successful bus camping tours nationwide. Pavlovich eventually took over Southern Cross, which also had ski lodges at Ruapehu and in Queenstown.
Historically they had always run weekend tours down to Mt Ruapehu and elsewhere that would soak up three or four buses in weekend charters. “That provided,” says Bernard, “a really strong revenue base through the winter, which is normally our down time. But then again the market changed. One of the things I look back on as I keep going, the business has a 75 year plus history now, and it has changed. It is not that you set out to change the business, but you have to respond to the changes. One thing we have done well is keep moving as the markets change.”
They sold the ski side of the business in the 1990s when Ruapehu erupted. “Through the nineties,” says Bernard “we tried to keep Southern Cross and the ski business alive, it was struggling from 95 onwards, but over that period I was developing skills to make sure I could compete in the city bus provision space. It was in that period that I learned more about the business of being in business as opposed to the business of being in buses.”
In 1999 Pavlovich picked up the Auckland contract which became the Urban Express. “From 1999,” says Bernard “the business grew nicely, and from the early nineties our tour fleet grew. In early 2000 we put on more tour coaches on road, coaches with high emission standards. Really good quality tour coaches, which has been a philosophy we have followed since 1972.” In 2003 they picked up a second contract with the Auckland Regional Council, and that meant another 14 buses added to their urban bus operation. In 2006 they picked up another operation with Waikato Regional Council, which saw them take over the Huntly to Hamilton bus services which evolved to be the Northern Connector, which Bernard says is one of the strongest services in the Waikato area in terms of patronage revenue.
In 2008 they won the flagship Hamilton service, the Orbiter and the service commenced in 2009. “That was fantastic for us, because leading up to that our school bus services had been keeping us going in Hamilton. We really got some traction back into our business and it put that fleet over 20 vehicles. It pushed us into a new depot in Tasman Road, a purpose built facility and it certainly changed the nature of our Hamilton depot as well. So over a period of time we moved from a school bus operator and a charter operator to a bus contract to the Regional Council. Our journey in the Waikato now is a different one than it was when we started 75 years ago.”
According to both Bernard and Ivan the recognition of the family name is an important and integral part of the business. “When you have been in the business over 75 years,” says Bernard, “one of the most rewarding things both socially and in business is that people come up to me and tell me they rode on our buses back in the day. They often look at me in amusement and say ‘I don’t know whether it was you or your father’ – but in seriousness they often refer back to the fact that Marco, my grandfather drove them to school, or they will refer to Ivan or Victor or Nino who drove through the 50s and 60s and 70s. I still find it staggering that I connect with people on a regular basis who I don’t know but who absolutely know us.” That, he says, is one of the great things around a family business. “I think it means respect, and I think it means reliability.
People think that, yes they are still doing what they did fifty years ago, and they know what they are doing, and it is fantastic for the brand.”
Bernard says it’s great to celebrate and reflect on the history but as they go through that 75 years he is now thinking more about the future. “The future will inevitably be quite different. Exciting times are ahead and the business is well positioned with the tourism market reaching towards 3 million visitors. We are absolutely committed to this market and that is part of the fabric of the business. We see significant growth and we see fantastic opportunities to market the unique strengths of New Zealand. And of course the company will continue to grow in the city bus contracting market.”
“It’s that city bus that I start to wonder about and what does a bus in the future look like and what might public transport look like. I get quite excited when I see the technological changes that are encompassing the world and I start looking at alternatives. So one thing I am determined to do is to not lock this company into only being a provider of bus services, because our future is providing public transport solutions. Down the pipeline we have lots of opportunities to start offering people different and more efficient ways to move around the city. Now within those concepts you can interpret all sorts of opportunities. But it really is the thoughts and prospects of the future that keeps me excited about coming into work on a Monday morning.”