$3000
x80% average occupancy
$2400
less wages (driver and assistant on bus, plus others at each end, $600)
$1800
less fuel (400 miles @ 5miles/gal @$3/gal = $250)
$1550
less consumables (food, sheets, drinks, etc, $150)
$1400
Less maintenance ($200, incl replacement tires)
$1200
less other stuff (“permits, taxes, …, insurance, office overhead, etc”, $1000)
$200 profit per trip
x2 (one bus each way)
$400 per day
x 6 x 52 (6 day days per week, 52 weeks per year)
$124,800 profit per year
not enough to go completely hog wild on hookers and blow with, but probably still worth getting out of bed for. Then add another bus each way each day. Then add a route out to Las Vegas. etc.
Nice work. While I wish them luck in their venture, my take is that your numbers reinforce @semiotix point as the “profit” is before accounting for the upfront fixed cost of the buses (?millions each) and the interest on the loans required to buy those buses.
I’m sure the investors did their due diligence but I also find it hard to believe there’s 12,000 person-journeys of need (taking 80% occupancy on 2x 24 berths 6 days a week).
There’s a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?
OMG this is great, this is why I come to Boing Boing. Who knew there was a 1976 comedy parody of then-popular disaster movies featuring a nuclear bus? Well played @SheiffFatman
Even just improving the current track would make faster service than a bus possible. However, while somehow over the last 50 years we seem to have lost the ability to drill tunnels for a finite sum of money, that is still possible at least in theory.
The right solution for this distance is a fast train. That there is only one train from LA to SF, the Coast Starlight, and it takes 12 hours, is criminal.
The State of California is trying to do something about that, but the world’s richest country is so short of money that it won’t be finished until 2029.
