One of the key reasons on why Stansted Transit have gone bust is that they lost quite a few ECC contracts. This led to some of the newer vehicles been returned to dealers, for example the enviro 200's
Another vehicle noted on stansted transit work was Dart Caetano Nimbus KX04HRE. This was on loan to Arriva for some months, so maybe this has passed onto Excel. Both this and Dart R137RLY only had paper based destingation blinds and no ticket machines.
That's not quite what happened, the ECC contracts were taken back after the owners had informed the council, that the company had serious cash flow problems, and a leagally questionable suggestion had been made by the owners, which ECC refused, quite rightly.
This situation was caused mainly by the costs associated with new Braintree depot.
Which was operationally a huge improvement, but was really acquired to house a subsidiary inhouse engineering business.
They were contracted to do work for Dawson's Rentals, but after the initial 'inspections' had been carried out, Dawson's wouldn't authorise work to be undertaken, so were used by them as free storage!
There had also been 'promised' private restoration work that the engineering manager had said he would get, which never materialized.
Plus the proposed purchase by First Essex was no longer going ahead.
Basically, they overstretched, no-one (other than the owners) had any prior knowledge, the Managers & all other staff were told at 8pm the day operating ceased, that they were not to come in the next day & they were redundant.
No staff including managers recieved their last weeks pay, Excel were contacted by someone, they sent managers down to invite the drivers to work for them.
