Philadelphia, PA – National Express LLC (NELLC) has donated a school bus to Pennco Tech, a trade school in Blackwood, NJ, to use as a vital training tool for their Diesel Technology Program. The trade school offers diesel, automotive, and collision repair programs, among other trades. The donation, made as part of NELLC’s company-wide Partners Beyond the Bus community outreach program, will allow Pennco Tech students to gain hands-on learning experience working on school buses.
The donation of the school bus comes from NELLC’s Parts Reclamation Center (PRC) location in Philadelphia. PRCs play a crucial role in NELLC’s company-wide sustainability and recycling efforts as an environmental leader by helping reduce waste through reclaiming and recycling parts and other materials from retired vehicles.
NELLC’s PRCs contribute to sustainability by:
- Reclaiming necessary, quality parts from inactive vehicles which would otherwise have been scrapped and contributed to additional waste accumulation.
- Since 2020, over 10,000 parts have been reclaimed.
- Over 1,400 parts have been reclaimed in 2022 thus far.
- Recycling non-salvageable tires, batteries, electronics, and metals to reduce our carbon footprint and additional waste in landfills.
- Properly disposing and recycling fluids such as fuel, oil, coolants, freons, and other fluids to reduce environmental pollution and harm.
Additionally, bus donations such as this one to Pennco Tech helps to repurpose retired, non-electric vehicles from NELLC’s fleets, which further contributes to our transition to alternative fuel-powered and zero-emission buses. National Express plans on transitioning to an all zero-emission fleet by 2040.
“Most of my employees and I are Pennco Tech alumni. While attending, we unfortunately did not have a training school bus to learn from, which meant we had little to no hands-on experience working with school buses,” said Timothy Jameson, Shop Manager at NELLC’s Philadelphia PRC. “While attending Pennco Tech’s career fair, it became apparent that school buses are an essential learning tool for their students, and I thought we could easily help by donating a school bus. It was the perfect way to give back to the community while helping aspiring technicians build a solid foundation for their careers and find an environmentally friendly solution to repurpose these vehicles as we transition to zero-emission fleets.”