CHARLIE'S CARS

 
Cheeky green and white minibuses running
round Bournemouth in the mid-1980s

Then came bus deregulation in October 1986 which brought changes and some new competitive operators to the area. Shamrock revived the name of their subsidiary company Charlie's Cars for a new activity, namely the operation of green and white minibuses on local services in and around Bournemouth.  This started, whilst they were still a National Bus Company subsidiary under the management of James Freeman, with nine vehicles. Neither Bournemouth Transport Yellow Buses nor Wilts & Dorset - the local incumbent bus operators - had yet considered substantive minibus operation, Wilts not starting their Skipper minibuses until September 1987. In the same month new interloper Badgerline started to operate a mix of full size vehicles and minibus routes as a local foray into this area. But this was for just six months until Badgerline's abrupt withdrawal locally in March 1988.

As an aside the new 'hail and ride' mini bus service to Winton by Charlie's Cars was possibly the last licensing battle before the introduction of the changes made by the Transport Act 1985 with deregulation of bus services coming into effect on 26th October 1986. The route licence was granted despite strong opposition from Bournemouth Transport and the Borough of Bournemouth. So the new operation started under the authority of a road service licence on 25th October, exactly one day before the then 'new fangled' deregulation of bus services commenced - with the supreme irony that a licence to run the route would no longer be needed as and from the very next day.

The Charlie's Cars operation expanded considerably in 1987 and grew to a fleet of 46 Ford Transit and Leyland Sherpa minibuses in and around Bournemouth and Poole. The new services gradually encroached upon some of Yellow Buses’ key routes, which eventually resulted in a robust response that would see Charlie’s Cars off in the end. Then as part of the government's sell-off of NBC companies Shamrock & Rambler were purchased by Drawlane, a subsidiary company of Endless Holdings of Salisbury, for £0.7 million pounds. That took place on 6th July 1987 whilst Ray McEnhill was chairman of the company; and this was the company that would eventually become British Bus.

The first Charlie's Cars routes had started on Saturday 25th October 1986 and linked the Hampshire Centre (an important out of town shopping mall subsequently redeveloped and known today as Castlepoint) to Winton by a circular route mainly  through residential roads. Route A ran clockwise and Route B anti-clockwise, with a seven to ten minute frequency and  hail-and-ride operation. The publicity was brash, colourful and cheeky. Routes were lettered and not numbered. As the depot was not far from the Hampshire Centre, the shopping mall was to form the keystone of many of the routes that developed. Nine vehicles were required initially. The operations were to progress through a series of planned extensions of routes, with a key aspect of the operation being to use the minibuses to bring services to residential areas and roads previously unserved.

Charlie’s Cars were to grow from an initial batch of eight Ford Transits through various batches of Freight Rover Sherpas with Dormobile or Carlyle bodies - and also a few Optares - to a  point when here were briefly almost fifty minibuses in the fleet.  Whilst the operations grew quickly they foind it difficult to retain drivers and started to face strong competition from Yellow Buses when they started to expand onto the main routes in Bournemouth. At the start, unlike other towns where minibuses usually replaced big buses with a much greater frequency, Charlie’s Cars services were usually new routes at a twenty minute frequency, meaning that loadings were never going to be huge. Timetable and route changes were frequent timetable changes, however many of their routes had opened up new areas to buses initially.

Five new routes were introduced from 26th January 1987, the B and C from the Hampshire Centre to Bournemouth Square; the D to Christchurch; and the G and H to Boscombe. The original A and B were dropped at this time, although covered in the main by the new routes. Vehicle requirement was doubled to eighteen. Bringing the vehicle out-turn up to twenty-nine, new routes E and F were introduced in April 1987 from Westbourne through Bournemouth and Boscombe to Christchurch and Somerford on a ten minute headway, competing directly with Bournemouth Transport's main routes. This provoked substantive retaliation for the first time with increased frequencies on the corridor by the incumbent operator.