National Express Coach with strange reg.

[martine]

So why would a newish National Express Coach have an L registration (actually L444 SGB)? Saw it yesterday and it's been bugging me (sad I know).

[ExadiNigel]

What route was it on? Is there a route 444?

Also, I think National Express sub contract some of the services, so the registration may make more sense if we could find out who was running the service.

Nigel

[MGF]

Stick the number into google and you might find a lot more sad people who can enlighten you.

[martine]

Well I never - isn't google wonderful...thanks MGF. Bit of poking around and it's has some relation to South Gloucestershire Bus (SGB) whatever that is. So they collect '...SGB' registrations.

Phew...that's a great weight of my mind.

[dmp]

I think you'll find that National Express are just the providers of the service, all of the coaches are owned by different companies and run under National colours. National Express themselves don't own any coaches. Trathens who have a lot of the south west routes often have private numbers, this is because many years ago you weren't supposed to run any coaches over a certain age, so the private number covered up the coaches age.
Dave

[TripleS]

I think you'll find that National Express are just the providers of the service, all of the coaches are owned by different companies and run under National colours. National Express themselves don't own any coaches. Trathens who have a lot of the south west routes often have private numbers, this is because many years ago you weren't supposed to run any coaches over a certain age, so the private number covered up the coaches age.
Dave

That seems an odd situation. Are there no officially conducted inspections/tests of buses and coaches that would detect the true age of the vehicle? What about registration documents? The V5 form records the original registration date of our cars, does it not? It would be strange if the checking of public service vehicles was less effective than the regime applied to cars.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[dmp]

All the vehicles are subject to the normal rules of the road, the private no plates were for the benefit of the inspectors at Victoria etc, I used to drive duplicates, which is where the service coach was overbooked and they hired in a private coach, this could only be so old hence the private plates.
Dave