Gillig

American bus manufacturer

Gillig (formerly Gillig Brothers) is an American designer and manufacturer of buses. The company headquarters, along with its manufacturing operations, is located in Livermore, California (in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area). By volume, Gillig is the second largest transit bus manufacturer in North America (behind New Flyer). As of 2013, Gillig had an approximate 31 percent market share of the combined United States and Canadian heavy duty transit bus manufacturing industry, based on the number of equivalent unit deliveries. While currently a manufacturer of transit buses, from the 1930s to the 1990s, Gillig was a manufacturer of school buses. Alongside the now defunct Crown Coach, the company was one of the largest manufacturers of school buses on the West Coast of the United States. Gillig had been located in Hayward, California, for more than 80 years before moving to Livermore in 2017. The company was founded in San Francisco, by the Gillig brothers.

The oldest surviving bus manufacturer in North America, Gillig was founded in 1890 as Jacob Gillig, trained in carriage building and upholstering, opened his own carriage shop in San Francisco. In 1896, his son Leo Gillig entered the business as a shop foreman, becoming a full partner in the business in 1900.

As a more permanent follow up to the Gillig Neoplan, the Gillig Phantom entered production in 1980. The first dedicated transit bus produced by Gillig, the Phantom would be produced from 1980 to 2008. A State of California tax free subsidy helped early sales. Later sales were buoyed by low bids on contracts, and by specializing in serving smaller transit agencies. This strategy proved successful, as the Phantom became one of the longest lasting transit models. In 1989, Gillig would introduce the Gillig Spirit; similar to the Gillig Neoplan, the Spirit was a shorter, medium duty transit bus. After over 40 years in production, the Transit Coach ended production in 1982. After a temporary hiatus from school bus production, Gillig returned with a Phantom school bus in 1986. While initially successful, the Phantom school bus would be discontinued in 1993 following poor sales (no examples were sold in 1991 or 1992). In 1996, following an expansion of the Hayward facility, Gillig introduced the H2000LF, its first low floor bus. In 2015, Gillig Corporation marked the 125th anniversary of its founding.

In 1992, Gillig began producing an LNG fueled version of the Phantom as a lower emissions option, but discontinued it in 1998. The only remaining LNG Phantoms currently operate shuttle service at Los Angeles International Airport and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. In 1996, Gillig introduced a diesel electric hybrid powered Phantom, which they produced until 2006. The current models continue to be offered in a hybrid powered versions. In September 2011, Gillig introduced an alternative fuel BRT model with CNG propulsion—their first CNG powered bus produced and first production natural gas buses since 1998. Long Beach Transit purchased a pilot bus in 2011, and placed an order for 63 more in 2012. Gillig and Cummins announced a partnership to develop a battery electric bus using Cummins technology on October 9, 2017. On May 16, 2019, the two companies unveiled a new all electric bus. The bus uses the Gillig Low Floor platform and is equipped with a traction motor with a peak power and torque of and ; it is expected to have a range of approximately , based on battery capacity (444 kW hr) and consumption (2.3 kW hr/mi). The first bus was scheduled to be delivered to Big Blue Bus (serving Santa Monica, California) in May 2020, but it was inaugurated into service on August 19, 2019.

Although Gillig has never built a complete electric trolleybus, the company has supplied body chassis shells for others to later equip as trolleybuses. Between 2001 and 2002, Gillig supplied 100 Phantom body chassis shells to King County Metro Transit. Gillig shipped these Phantom buses in fairly complete form, including interior fittings such as seats—lacking only propulsion equipment including trolleypoles. Meanwhile, the Seattle transit agency removed the propulsion system (GE traction motor, Randtronics chopper control, and electronic card cage) from its old fleet of 1979 built AM General trolley coaches which the Gillig vehicles were purchased to replace, and shipped them to Alstom for refurbishment. After Alstom refurbished the propulsion system, Metro installed the equipment into the new Gillig Phantom bodies, along with Kiepe pneumatically operated fiberglass trolley poles. Two of these prototypes were equipped with diesel powered generators to power the traction motors off wire (similar to a hybrid bus) and two use batteries for off wire operations. After successful testing, Dayton ordered 41 production battery electric trolleys from Kiepe and Gillig, and they were delivered in 2019–2020.