When a coach fails, passengers are stuck.
A school bus that won't start at 6:40 am means kids waiting at their stops. Tensor Planet sends a breakdown alert weeks ahead, with the fix for your technician.
Get your free fleet diagnostic
- …and more
What a breakdown costs when people are on board
A breakdown means a second coach
A coach that quits 200 miles out needs a tow, plus a second coach and driver sent from the yard. The group waits on the roadside until they get there, which takes hours.
Each spare bus covers a breakdown
FTA guidance lets a transit fleet keep up to 20% of its buses as spares, and school fleets hold a reserve too. Knowing weeks ahead which units need a bay lets a fleet carry fewer of them.
Split shifts load the DPF faster
Morning and afternoon runs, each on a cold engine, load a DPF faster than the odometer suggests. The soot and pressure trend shows weeks before the dash lamp, in time to book a bay.
Transit failure rates are public
Transit agencies report every major mechanical failure to the National Transit Database. One large agency logged 2,115 miles between failures in May 2026 against a 7,500 target.
What we watch on a coach or bus
Aftertreatment, engine and charging systems, read from your telematics and your maintenance records. No hardware, no driver workflow changes.
- DPF soot load and inlet-pressure decay on short-cycle routes
- DEF dosing and quality faults
- EGR degradation across duty cycles
- NOx sensor drift
- Engine coolant temperature and level behavior under passenger HVAC load
- Battery and cranking voltage decline, especially on seasonal and spare units
- ...and many other systems
Measured at Brakebush Transportation, Inc., first seven weeks
repair cost and downtime avoided, first seven weeks
total downtime hours saved
alerts shared to act on
Source: Brakebush Transportation, Inc., Wisconsin
On a Brakebush Transportation, Inc. tractor
- The breakdown alert An inefficient EGR cooler, with a possible coolant leak.
- The recommendation Inspect the cooler and check the full coolant system.
- The outcome The shop confirmed it and closed the repair on schedule.
You can buy us through Sourcewell, no RFP required.
Tensor Planet is available through the RTA contract number 102924-RTA, a Sourcewell cooperative contract. Buying through it means pre-approved pricing and no separate RFP process.
One week, your own data, no buy commitment.
We read your telematics and six months of work orders, then hand back the vehicles at risk and what they would cost you. Your team does nothing while it runs.
The questions on your mind.
Does this work on school buses and shuttles that run short routes?
Yes. Short stop-and-go routes are where aftertreatment problems build fastest, and the soot and regen data shows it weeks ahead. An Iowa city fleet of 50 vehicles on stop-and-go routes avoided $21,346 across ten weeks.
Can you tell which coach will quit on a charter?
Yes, typically two to three weeks before it would fail, so it gets fixed between trips. The breakdown alert names the likely cause and what to check first. At Brakebush Transportation, Inc., one caught a faulty NOx sensor on a brand-new tractor.
Can you check buses that sat all summer before the first day of school?
Yes. Book the free diagnostic for late July, before the first routes. It reads your telematics and six months of work orders and hands back a ranked list of the buses likely to break down next, the problem building in each, and what it would cost.
Which makes of motorcoach, school bus and transit bus do you work with?
Any make that reports engine data through your telematics, including MCI, Prevost, Van Hool, Temsa, Blue Bird, Thomas Built, IC Bus, Collins, Gillig, New Flyer and many more. We have already run diagnostics on many of these.