It was 1921 when Jacob Kuzmeskus began transporting children to school in the sleepy little village of Montague Center, Massachusetts.  Before the days of Requests for Proposals, sealed bids, and written transportation contracts, if your team of horses passed the school superintendent’s annual inspection and you had a firm handshake you got the job.

Jacob and his seven horse-drawn wagons and sleighs were reliable, even during an era when there was no such thing as a ‘snow-day’.  During very bad winter weather, Jacob would send a team of his biggest horses out ahead of the school sleighs to break open the road.  Only once, in 1925, did the superintendent worry that Jacob’s horses were to thin and weak to pull the wagons through the spring mud.  But Jacob, and the horses, came through and his company began to show promise of success and longevity.

By 1927 Jacob was ready to modernize, and purchased the company’s first motorized vehicle.  A wooden bodied truck, with wooden seats bolted to the flatbed body and canvas stretched across the open top, it wasn’t the most comfortable form of transportation but it cut travel time on Jacob’s biggest routes by three-quarters of an hour.  During the cold New England winter months, Jacob’s young son Frank M. was charged with heating stones, covering them with cloth and placing them under the seats to keep the children warm.

The early 1930’s saw the first vehicles produced specifically for pupil transportation, enclosed wooden bodied ‘school buses’.  Jacob’s first one was added to his modest fleet in 1932.  Then another, and another.  Frank M., now fresh out of high school, began working side-by-side with Jacob.  Acquiring practical busing experience, he drove his father’s wooden buses for twelve years.  During the Second World War Frank M. purchased all of the company’s assets from his father, and although it would be several more years before incorporation in 1973, F. M. Kuzmeskus, as it would be known from this day on, was born.

During the war, public transportation in the area was all but non-existent.  Sugar, flour, and gasoline were rationed.  People were limited by what they could buy, and where they could go.  Frank saw this as an opportunity and journeyed to Boston to apply for and receive charter and line-run rights for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  With this coveted authority the company filled a void in the community, operating scheduled line-run service that delivered people to work and church until the war’s end.

In the decade that followed Frank weathered some ups and downs.  Certainly the happiest days for this hard-working man from modest roots were his marriage to the former Joyce A. Nadeau in 1955, and the birth of their beloved daughter Darlene A.  At the same time, though, new school bus contractors had appeared and local governments had adopted a competitive bidding process for their student transportation.  The Montague contract that started it all for the company went back and forth between Frank and a new-comer to the busing business a couple of times during the 1950’s.  The future of this second-generation family business looked bleak, to say the least, for several years. 

But by 1964 Frank’s strong conviction and dedication, with support from his young family, started to turn things around.  The Montague contract – now bigger and requiring more buses than ever - was securely back in-hand, and things were looking up.  Three plots of land were bought in the village of Turners Falls, and Frank’s company had a new home.  Buses could be worked-on indoors for the first time!  Even though the garage was simply a converted chicken coop that came with the property, with barely enough room to change tires on one side of a bus before backing it out and turning it around to do the other side, Frank was full of pride for how far he’d taken his father’s dream.  Frank and Joyce’s adjacent house even had room for some office space and a comfortable driver’s lounge in the basement.

Frank was taking care of the maintenance on all of his buses and driving most of the sports trips for all of the schools in his district, while Joyce ran the office and handled all of the paperwork.  As a young girl Darlene would help, too, by cleaning the buses.  She would get 10-cents for sweeping a bus, 50-cents if it was really dirty, and $1 for washing the outside.

By the time Darlene graduated from high school her mother and father’s company was very busy indeed.  The Montague contract alone encompassed all of the public schools in the villages of Montague Center, Turners Falls, Millers Falls, Montague City and Lake Pleasant, as well as the town of Gill, Massachusetts.  Now known as the Gill-Montague Regional School District, it was the largest school district in the area, and required a small army of Frank’s yellow buses to be on the road every day.  Darlene earned her school bus driver’s license as soon as she was of age, and drove for her father’s company all the while attending college and earning a degree in Business Management.

After college Darlene set off on her own.  For a short time she worked for Kentucky Fried Chicken, managing several of their Western Massachusetts outlets.  It wasn’t long, however, before she realized her heart, soul, and dreams belonged to the family company that her grandfather imagined so many years ago.  As Frank, now sixty-five years old, contemplated semi-retirement Darlene returned to the bus company to work beside her mother, Joyce, who had now assumed most of the daily operations.

In 1979 Darlene married, and had a son named Michael E. Doyle.  Also that same year, tragically, she lost her mother to cancer and was thrust into a level of responsibility even she was not sure she was ready for.  At the age of just twenty-two, the fate of F. M. Kuzmeskus, Inc. – its legacy and its future - rested on her shoulders.  But under the watchful eye of her dad, Frank, she took the reins and never looked back.

By September of 1980 Darlene had secured her first contract on her own, that of the Town of Northfield and the Pioneer Valley Regional School District.  This contract alone added seven buses to the company’s fleet, and more would follow.  Throughout the 80’s the company added school busing contracts for the towns of Wendell and Erving, and continued to add buses and staff to meet the obligations of their existing school districts. 

In August of 1987 Frank sold F. M. Kuzmeskus, Inc. to his daughter, Darlene. By fall, construction had begun on a full-fledged bus garage on the company’s property in Turners Falls. For the first time the garage, office, and driver’s lounge would all be under the same roof.  And, a new chapter was afoot.

The company’s first venture into the chartered motorcoach business occurred in 1988 when Darlene acquired a used GMC coach.  Coming up with a catchy name for this new charter business was proving to be difficult.  An employee contest was announced, and local minister and part-time school bus driver Charles Allen’s suggestion of ‘Travel Kuz’ was chosen.  For a few years the company chartered their motorcoach to local school groups, churches, and social organizations interested in traveling further than what would have been comfortable in a regular school bus.  But it was decided that now was not the best time for their motorcoach endeavor – that would come later.

Continuing a family tradition nearly fifty-five years old at this point, the next generation of Kuzmeskus children had started learning the ins-and-outs of the bus business at a young age.  By the end of the 1980’s son Michael had begun cleaning the buses just as his mother had when she was a girl, and step-daughter Pamala was driving a van route in between classes at college.  And during the next ten years the company would truly blossom. 

The 90’s ushered in new school district contracts for the City of Greenfield, and the towns of Leverett and Shutesbury, almost doubling the company’s fleet.  In fact, a satellite office and bus lot in Greenfield had to be opened just to accommodate the dozens of yellow school buses needed to cover all of the routes.  In 1994 – reminiscent of Jacob’s wartime line-runs in the absence of public transportation – F. M. Kuzmeskus, Inc. became the managing operator for the Franklin Regional Transit Authority.  Holding this contract for fourteen years, the company serviced, staffed and operated the public transit buses that would provide meaningful scheduled route and demand response service to thousands of Franklin County residents.

A successful bid for the Northampton (Mass.) Public School transportation in 1998 meant twenty-three buses would be added to the stable, and represented the first time that the company explored business opportunities outside of their neighboring communities.  That same year, Michael began pursuing a Business degree of his own at Nichols College, and Darlene purchased twelve acres of land in Gill, Massachusetts, that would soon become the new, larger, home that her company desperately needed.

Ground was broken and construction began. This beautiful new building would feature five full-size garage bays with twenty-foot ceilings, four offices, a reception area, driver’s lounge, and plenty of room for parking buses and cars.  The property would be engineered to be both safe and friendly to the environment, exceeding new construction codes and requirements for years to come.  And just over a year later F M. Kuzmeskus, Inc. moved into their new, state-of-the-art facility at 52 Main Road.

One of the company’s biggest challenges, and opportunities, presented itself in August of 2000. 

Laidlaw Transit, Inc. – one of the country’s biggest school transportation firms – agreed to relinquish their Amherst Pelham Regional School District contract to F. M. Kuzmeskus, Inc.  With just twenty days before the start of school, Darlene and her staff needed to scour the United States in search of thirty new school buses that would fit the needs of the District and conform to Massachusetts regulations, hire twenty experienced school bus drivers, add additional office people, and secure a location in Amherst where all of the buses for this new contract could be garaged.  With hard work, and very long hours, the last of the new buses passed inspection and was delivered to the new College Street bus yard at 6pm the night before school opened for the year.

In the meantime, Pamala gained valuable personnel management, marketing, and operations experience as a merchandising manager for J.C. Penney.  She would also realize her lifelong dream of owning her own dance studio.  Still, while balancing the responsibility of running her own business, and starting her own family, she could also be found behind the wheel of a Kuzmeskus bus almost every day.  Gradually, she would invest more time learning about the business, eventually spending her mornings at the bus garage and her evenings at the studio.  Like Darlene, and her father before her, soon Pamala decided that the bus business was the direction she wanted her life to take, and joined the family business full-time in May of 2001.

Pamala’s first milestone with the company came the following spring when she was given the responsibility of preparing a competitive bid for the Town of Petersham’s school transportation.  To her delight, and credit, the company was awarded yet another successful contract.

Michael, too, joined the company full-time in May of 2002, just one day after graduating from college.  Side-by-side with Darlene, the firm’s fourth generation was now solidly in place and managing the company’s daily operations, growth, and future.

By 2003 the timing seemed right to get back into the chartered motorcoach business.  Leisure travel was starting to rebound from the negative effects of September 11th, yet there were fewer coach companies to service the marketplace.  Travel Kuz was reborn in January when the company purchased three brand-new fifty-seven passenger Van Hool motorcoaches and one twenty-nine passenger mini coach, and right away it was obvious that now was the time.  The motorcoach operation, like the rest of the company, would continue to grow and be successful for years to come.

Today, F. M. Kuzmeskus, Inc. operates over 130 school buses and 12 luxury coaches.  The company employs nearly 140 people, and honors 16 school district contracts.  The Montague contract, by the way, continuously since 1964.  The company is still family owned and operated, while enjoying the reputation of being one of the premier bus operators in New England.