First Hampshire & Dorset - Fleet

Fleet

First services in Hampshire, Dorset & South Somerset utilise a mix of single and double deck buses. The double-deck fleet includes several Volvo Olympians with Northern Counties Palatine 1 bodywork. All of these are second hand, the double door vehicles coming from Go-Ahead's London operations and Stagecoach. The company also has Volvo B7TLs with Alexander ALX400 and Wright Eclipse Gemini bodywork. The single deck fleet is composed of Dennis Dart SLFs with Plaxton Pointer 2 and smaller MPD versions, Volvo B10BLE with Wright Renown bodywork and a number of Mercedes-Benz based minibuses.

A small number of American style yellow school buses are also allocated to Southampton Depot for use on school contracts. In Weymouth, open-top vehicles are used on a route to Portland Bill.

First inherited a large number of Leyland Atlanteans from Southampton Citybus along with Leyland Lynxes, Leyland Olympians and gas powered Dennis Darts. All of these have now been withdrawn from the Southampton fleet. An unusual vehicle inherited from the Provincial fleet was the first ACE Cougar, one of just two built, which has also been withdrawn. First introduced a number of bus types that are also no longer in service in Southampton; these include Wright Solar Fusion bendy buses introduced in 2000 but transferred to First Glasgow in 2003 after they proved unsuitable for a number of Southampton roads, former First Capital Dennis Arrows proved unpopular in Southampton and moved onto First Greater Manchester in 2006. First had operated Optare Solos on the free City-link service between Southampton Central Station, West Quay Shopping Centre and Town Quay, these left the Southampton fleet when First lost the City-link contract to Uni-link, which subsequently became franchised to Bluestar in 2008.