Carey Paster tells Michelle Rivera that partnering with clients is a win-win situation for all parties involved.

Transportation company First Student, which contracts with more than 400 school districts in the US and Canada, maintains an incredible 96% customer satisfaction rating and has a contract retention rate of 97%. Carey Paster, president and CEO, attributes the company’s success to a willingness to provide solutions to customers’ needs as partners.

“There can be many issues with transportation, and when you demonstrate an ability to efficiently solve problems, customers develop a trust with you and rely on you for solutions,” said Paster. “Our customers are educators of the world, but they aren’t transportation experts, so they heavily rely on information we give them.”

For instance, school districts’ transportation needs are rapidly growing, and the easiest and quickest solution might seem to be adding equipment, said Paster. But that involves a cost to the customer. First Student’s solution is to reroute, reschedule, and/or change bell times so the current fleet provides the transportation the customer is looking for.

Carey Paster

“We call it asset utilization,” said Paster. “We sit down with the customer and analyze the alternatives—that enables our customers to make decisions that work best for them.”

Safety first
Cincinnati, Ohio-based First Student serves more than 600 school districts in 38 states, with a fleet of more than 22,000 buses. Because student safety is the company’s top priority, it emphasizes preventive maintenance and consistently maintains its vehicles to manufacturer specifications. The company’s proactive programs have a proven track record of helping school districts reduce vehicle downtime, improve reliability, and lower overall running costs.

“Our culture is built around safety for our children and employees. We believe in zero accidents and incidents, which we believe is very obtainable,” Paster said.

First Student performs preventive maintenance inspections at strategic intervals to predict and prevent problems and to schedule repairs for minimum impact on vehicle availability. Using failure analysis, it collects and analyzes data, identifies root causes of a problem, and implements action plans to reach the optimum level of preventive maintenance that can be performed.

Employees are required to take defensive driving training programs and are encouraged to attend monthly safety meetings. “We have developed and implemented the injury prevention process for all our employees in which they carry ID and comment cards so everyone can talk to each other about safety. These measures show our company has responsibility and accountability in regard to safety,” Paster said.

While rising fuel costs have posed a problem for many companies, Paster said First Student has been getting through the ordeal quite well. “We’re working to provide solutions to our customers in terms of pricing, and we’re using the futures market with respect to fuel,” he said. Many of First Student’s contracts don’t have protection for fuel increases, so the company absorbs them. “If we make mistakes, they can be costly,” said Paster. “We understand and work with talented people to provide information so decisions can be made on how and when to purchase fuel.”

Leading the future
First Student has invested in a wide variety of technology to lead it into the future, particularly with Zonar Systems and GPS. These technologies have enabled First Student to provide information and data back to its operation logistics personnel.

“We’re better informed about what our equipment is doing, where it is, and the number of miles that vehicles we run per year,” Paster explained, noting that the company also provides that information to school districts.

“When you have that type of information, you are a lot more effective in making decisions. We recognize that our customers’ priority is the education of children while attending to the issues of budget constraints, time management, and their district’s infrastructure, and First Student is here to give them that,” he concluded.