Ventura Bus Lines - Bus Fleet

Bus Fleet

Ventura bought many Leyland buses between the 1950s and the 1980s. These were Leyland Leopards and Royal Tiger Cubs, then later on the company purchased many Leyland Tigers. . Ventura also purchased a substantial number of ex-Adelaide Leyland Worldmasters.

The purchases of Bentleigh Bus Lines/Hawthorn Bus Service saw the fleet expand further. Many non-Leyland buses joined the fleet including Mercedes-Benz, PMC Elwoods, Volvo B10M's, Leyland Leopards, Isuzu ECR and Bedfords. Most of these buses were sold off by the early 1990s but the Elwoods survived in the fleet until 2001 (although a small number were sold off in 1993) and the B10M's were withdrawn in early 2012.

Ventura purchased a batch of 10 Mercedes-Benz O305's from the STA in Sydney in 1991. These were withdrawn between 1999 and 2001.

When Ventura needed some new buses in 1992, Leyland had stopped producing chassis. Finding another supplier, Ventura purchased two Scania L113's and a Volvo B10M with Volgren bodies for evaluation. They decided to purchase more Scanias after the evaluation period. Scania has since been the main chassis used in the Ventura fleet. L113 chassis were bought in high and low floor format with both Volgren (delivered from 1992 to 1998) and North Coast bodies (1998–99) and L94UBs with North Coast and Custom Coaches bodies entered the fleet between 1999 and 2006.

Ventura purchased a pair of Mercedes-Benz O500 chassis with North Coast bodies in 2003 for evaluation.

There is also a batch of Designline MAN's delivered to South Oakleigh depot by end of December 2006, and have been in service since 2 January 2007. 4 of them are in blue Ventura livery and the rest wear a SmartBus livery, similar to that adorning the Grendas and Eastrans Smartbuses used on Route 900. Subsequently all of this batch were repainted in Smartbus Livery. Another batch of these buses arrived late in 2007, these were all in Ventura's standard livery at first, but all but 4 were repainted into Smartbus livery when the 903 Smartbus service started. Leyland Tigers were all but retired from late 2007, although there are still a small number of them in the fleet as school and local charter buses.

Also late in 2007, a batch of new Scania K230UB's were delivered and allocated to the Doncaster (NationalBus) depot. These are the first K230UB's for the Ventura group. 2008 sees another batch of Designline MANS. now based on the 16.240 chassis. This new batch has a very distinctive body design, similar to the trolley buses operating in New Zealand, where these Designline buses are built, there will be a large batch of these, plus another batch of Scania K230UB's with Custom Coaches bodies. Deliveries of the distinctive Designline MAN's continued into 2009, with the last of these entering service in September 2009. After this more Scania/Custom CB60 EvoII units were delivered throughout 2010, mainly to the National bus section of the fleet, but two of these went to the Oakleigh depot and one to Croydon, these units are similar to the earlier K230UB units previously delivered in 2007-08, but with small changes such as a darker tint on the windows. Ventura placed an order with Designline for more units, this time based on Scania K230UB chassis, but this order was cancelled when an earthquake in 2010 caused severe damage to the Designline factory, therefore halting production, this order was transferred to Custom Coaches and these units were delivered in the first half of 2011.

In 2011, Ventura entered into a contract with Volgren for 38 new buses, this time based on Scania K280UB chassis as the K230UB is no longer available. This is the first time since 1997/98 Ventura have purchased buses with Volgren bodywork. These will be delivered from late 2011 and will replace the earlier 1992-94 Volgren bodied Volvo B10M MkIII and Scania L113CRB units from regular route service, these will move into the school/rail bus/local charter section of the fleet. The 23-year-old ex Quince's 0405's, the 25-year-old ex Rennie Volvo B10M MkII's and the remaining Leyland Tigers will be sold off.