Arriva Midlands North
Formerly part of Midland Red and latterly Midland Red North until being rebranded as Arriva in late 1997. This part of the business operates from depots at Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Wellington, Burton, Cannock, Stafford and Tamworth. A garage at Shifnal closed in January 2009 whilst Bridgnorth reopened to commence operations on 5 January 2009. Swadlincote Garage closed on 24 December 2007. All operations have now moved to Burton Depot.
In early 2003, three Arriva Midlands North garages in Cheshire passed to Arriva North West. The remaining part of Arriva Midlands North were combined with Arriva Fox County, forming Arriva Midlands. Buses still operate with Arriva Midlands North legal name (except Burton which uses Stevensons of Uttoxeter) but the headquarters changed from Cannock to 852 Melton Road, Thurmaston (Leicester), the headquarters of Arriva Fox County.
Services cover Shropshire, Staffordshire around parts of the West Midlands county, most notably Walsall and Wolverhampton although several services stretch as far west as over the Welsh border into Powys and Wrexham and far south as Birmingham. 2008 saw Worcestershire reached after successfully gaining a Shropshire County Council tender for route 297 from Bridgnorth to Kidderminster.
In 2007, a new Town Linx brand was introduced to services in South Derbyshire and East Staffordshire, similar to the schemes in Leicester.
On 25 February 2007 Chase Coaches Limited sold out to Arriva Midlands. Its operations were merged into Cannock from 28 April 2007.
In late 2007 a new ChaseLinx brand (similar to the Leicester Linx brand below) was introduced, reflecting the purchase of Chase Coaches.
April 2008 saw the first of a new fleet of 10 Scania OmniLinks delivered for the Tamworth to Birmingham service. A number of Volvo B9TL/Wright Eclipse Gemini are also due.
14 February 2009 saw the company hold a final 'enthusiast' running day for the last three Dennis Falcons (3084/8/9 - K214/8/9 UHA) allocated to the Wellington depot to coincide with the planned withdrawal of this rare type in the fleet. Despite this, the Falcons continued in service at Wellington until Monday 16 February 2009 and were withdrawn at the end of service that day. However 3088 K218 UHA was briefly reallocated to Oswestry to act as a spare bus for a short period but was withdrawn on 13 March 2009 and thus ending the operation of this rare type in the fleet.
The operations of Staffordshire independent Wardle Transport were acquired by Arriva in December 2010 with 64 vehicles. Wardle will retain its identity. Further expansion in August 2011 saw the Staffordshire operations of D&G Bus been purchased and merged into the Wardle fleet.
In Mid 2012 20 new Mercedes Benz Citaros will be delivered to Tamworth to commence work upon the town services. Also Cannock depot received delivery of 11 Wright VDL 200 were delivered to Cannock to commence work upon the integrated services of 60 (Cannock to Lichfield) and the 825 (Lichfield to Stafford Hospital) extending to Staffordshire University on evenings, Sundays and Bank Holiday Monday's.
In August 2012, Arriva announced that they were acquiring the West Midlands company of Midland, Wednesfield (A D&G Bus sister company). This deal was completed on 23rd September 2012. The fleet of 61 buses will be incorporated into the main Arriva Midlands fleet and operated under the Arriva brand. This is expected to strengthen Arriva's presence in the West Midlands.
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