Frank W. Cyr - U.S. School Bus Standards

U.S. School Bus Standards

In the 1930s, Cyr made a study of school transportation. He learned that students were riding in all kinds of vehicles, including kid hacks, trucks and buses of every imaginable color and condition. One district's buses sported red, white & blue decor, perhaps hoping to instill patriotism in its passengers. A Kansas district transported its students in horse-drawn wheat wagons. School bus manufacturers complained that because there were no national standards, they could not mass-produce the buses, nor make a profit and keep costs down.

In April 1939, Cyr organized a conference at Teachers College, funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for transportation officials from each of the then 48 states, as well as specialists from school bus manufacturing and paint companies.

Engineers from Blue Bird Body Co., Chevrolet, International Harvester, Dodge, and Ford Motor Company, as well as paint experts from DuPont and Pittsburgh Paint showed up. Together with the transportation administrators, they met for 7 days and agreed on 44 standards, including the color and some mechanical specs such as body length, ceiling height, and aisle width.

It was at this meeting that yellow with black lettering was determined as easiest to see in the light of early morning & late afternoon. The distinctive yellow became known officially as “National School Bus Chrome.” Its formula is on file with the National Bureau of Standards, now known as National Glossy School Bus Yellow.

While most of those standards have long since changed, the yellow color stuck. In time 35 U.S. states adopted the color with Minnesota as the last holdout, only changing in 1974, from ‘Minnesota Golden Orange’ to National School Bus Chrome.

Following the conference, Cyr, who is recorded as having always thought the choice more orange than yellow, became widely regarded as the "Father of the Yellow School Bus."

Cyr continued to be interested in school buses. In 1942, he chaired a federal conference that set school transportation policy during wartime.

In April 1989, he was honored at a luncheon at Teachers College marking the 50th anniversary of the original conference. The luncheon was held in the Grace Dodge Room at the College, where the original conference had been held.

At the luncheon, Cyr recalled that strips of different colors were hung from the wall and the participants in the 1939 conference talked until they narrowed the color down to three slightly different shades of yellow. The variation in shades was allowed, Cyr explained, because the color of the paint could not always be mixed exactly.

Cyr also said that he and the other attendees at the conference always used safety as the first criteria for the school-bus standards. "The most often asked question was 'Will this standard improve safety?'" he recalled at the 1989 luncheon.