Virginia Overland Transportation (VOTC) was an organization in Virginia in the United States which operated new and used bus dealerships and a number of intrastate urban-suburban bus lines for about 30 years in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Beginning as a school bus management consulting service in 1973, beginning in 1976 and throughout the 1980s, Virginia Overland acquired and consolidated a number of other privately owned Virginia public service companies, some dating back to streetcar and interurban operations in the early 20th century. Based primarily in the Richmond-Petersburg region, at one time or another, the company also operated local bus services in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads areas of the state. By 1984, it was operating the second largest privately managed fleet of school buses in Virginia, a school bus contractor second in size only to Laidlaw Transit. The company also represented Wayne Corporation and several other franchised product lines of buses and related products. It sold approximately 3000 new and used buses between 1976 and 2004.
Itself a consolidator of mostly smaller companies and operations, VOTC combined forces with a larger woman-owned business based in Hampton, Virginia in the early 1990s, and the larger company assumed some of the former VOTC subsidiaries and new operations developed jointly after several years. Meanwhile, although Wayne Corporation closed and was liquidated in 1992, VOTC saw its other former franchise manufacturers also acquired by bigger companies. As a result of the dwindling number of bus dealership opportunities among a smaller number of manufacturers, their consolidations forced VOTC and many other bus dealers into what one VOTC principal described wryly as "a corporate version of musical chairs."
As the principals aged, and its dealership opportunities and volume waned, VOTC downsized and ultimately closed its then-sole Richmond location in 2004. However, as of 2010, some of the former VOTC employees and operations in eastern Virginia continued under the ownership of Serco Group, an operator of over 600 contract locations internationally.
Read more about Virginia Overland Transportation: History, Growth Through Acquisitions, Transportation Services, Emergency Services, Bus Dealerships, Employees, Labor Problems, Reverse Privatization, Teaming With JL Associates, Richmond Operations 1993-2004, Founders: Retirements and Deaths, Listing of Virginia Overland's Predecessor Organizations, Dates Formed