Coachbult.com - Beaver Metropolitan Coaches Inc.



Beaver Metropolitan Coaches Inc. - National Coach Manufacturing - 1930s-1960s - Beaver Falls, Ohio

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For 1937 Ford introduced a new bus-specific chassis, the Model 70. It featured a 171" wheelbase and a 85 hp flathead V8, semi-elliptical springs, a 45 gallon fuel tank and heavy-duty air brakes. Beaver produced a box-like 25-passenger forward control school bus body fabricated in sections using an all-steel framework covered by an aluminum skin.

1956 National Coach Mfg

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BEAVER (iii)(US) 1934-1956

(1) Beaver Transit Equipment Co., Beaver Falls, Ohio 1934-1935

(2) Beaver Metropolitan Coaches, Inc., Beaver Falls, Ohio 1935-1953

(3) National Coach & Manufacturing Co., Beaver Falls, Ohio 1955-1956

G.M. Davis, in charge of the Philadelphia sales office of ACF since 1928, went into the bus building business for himself in 1934, a depression year when an economical lightweight bus was demanded by most operators. Using a standard Ford front-engine commercial chassis, Traver Engineering Co. of Beaver Falls, Pa., built a prototype bus which was shown to city transit companies in the area. Response was good enough that a separate manufacturing company was soon organized. After a short time the original 83-inch-wide design was changed to permit installation of double seats on each side of the aisle, while gradual changes were also made in the exterior styling; the front .engine and forward control arrangement were retained. Chevrolet and International power was optional.

The first rear-engine Beaver was announced in 1938, and soon a range of "pushers" was being offered with seating capacities from 20 to 35. An advertised virtue was the ease of replacing all body panels, which were of flat sheet metal except for the four roof comers. Postwar Beavers, basically unchanged, took on a more modem appearance with tilted windshields and optional sliding sash. A flood in 1953 damaged the factory and caused suspension of production, but in 1955 Davis (who had left the company earlier) and some associates acquired the enterprise and attempted to restart it without conspicuous success. Times had changed, and the sort of small-town low-budget bus operator who had formerly constituted Beaver's principal market had turned to second-hand diesel buses or else gone out of business entirely. Incomplete records suggest production and sale of just under 1000 Beaver buses from 1934 to 1956.

For more information please read:

Ed Strauss & Karen Strauss - The Bus World Encyclopedia of Buses

G.N. Georgano & G. Marshall Naul - The Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles

Albert Mroz - Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Trucks & Commercial Vehicles

Donald F. Wood - American Buses

Denis Miller - The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trucks and Buses

Susan Meikle Mandell - A Historical Survey of Transit Buses in the United States

David Jacobs - American Buses, Greyhound, Trailways and Urban Transportation

William A. Luke & Linda L. Metler - Highway Buses of the 20th Century: A Photo Gallery

William A. Luke & Brian Grams - Buses of Motorcoach Industries 1932-2000 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Greyhound Buses 1914-2000 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Prevost Buses 1924-2002 Photo Archive