page_title: Carpenter Body Company
section_title: Survivors
hierarchical_section_title: Carpenter Body Company / Survivors
caption_attribution_description: English: 1940s era Dodge school bus seen in the Museum of American History in Washington, DC
context_page_description: Carpenter Body Works was a former American bus manufacturer. Founded in 1918 in Mitchell, Indiana, the company produced a variety of vehicles, with the majority of production consisting of yellow school buses for the United States and Canada.
  After remaining a family-owned company into the late 1980s, Carpenter was sold and relocated in 1995 to the former Wayne Corporation facilities in Richmond, Indiana. In 1998, Carpenter was acquired by specialty vehicle manufacturer Spartan Motors. After struggling to regain lost market share, Carpenter was closed by Spartan in early 2001.
context_section_description: The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC has a thirty-six passenger school bus built by Carpenter Body Works in 1936 on a chassis made by Dodge in 1939.  The bus carried students to the grade school in Martinsburg, Indiana from 1940 to 1946, and was owned and driven by Russell Bishop during that period. It was later used as a traveling grocery store until 1962.
  The bus has a streamlined steel body painted double-deep or "Omaha" orange with black trim. It was restored by Carpenter in the early 1980s under the supervision of Ollie Eager, who was Carpenter's plant manager in 1936, and John Foddrill, who worked in the Carpenter plant in 1936. The bus has replacement seats that do not match the originals exactly. The originals were black upholstery.
caption: A 1939 Carpenter school bus, built on a Dodge chassis, on display at the National Museum of American History.
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