Longest tenured employee at Lockport Ridge Road Express looks back at career spanning over 50 years
For anyone who was a passenger on a Lockport school bus or on a motor coach going anywhere from New York City to Florida, there's a good chance that Jim Caldwell was in the driver's seat.
For more than 50 school years, the 68-year-old Lockport resident has been at the Student Transportation of America's bus garage in one way or another, whether it be driving, dispatching or maintaining the buses.
"I met a lot of good people. I did a lot of good trips," Caldwell said.
"It just shows kind of the values of what we stand for as a company," AJ Smith, general manager of Ridge Road Express in Lockport added. "We're oriented toward safety and committed to our employees. Jim's the perfect example of it. You can start out as a bus cleaner and you can make a career out of it and service the community."
When Caldwell first started with the company in May 1971, he was riding on the school bus himself as a student of Lockport High School.
At the age of 15 when he was looking for his first job, he decided the first person he would ask was his school bus driver.
"I knew she was out and about a lot ... And a couple days later, she came back and told me that the bus company was looking for somebody part-time," Caldwell said.
It wasn't too long after that Caldwell was brought on board part-time to clean and paint the school buses with Ridge Road Express on weekends, holidays, and over the summer break.
As he was getting ready to graduate from Lockport High School, the company offered him a full-time position.
Caldwell recalled that was an easy decision to stay on and he soon set his sights on getting behind the wheel.
"I got my permit to drive the bus when I was 18 ... and then I started driving with students at 21," Caldwell said.
Over the course of his nearly 50 years on the road, Caldwell has driven an estimated three million miles.
Most of those trips were relatively smooth sailing, except for one particular 1994 trip driving the University at Buffalo football team back from a game in Ithaca.
"On the way back, we ran into heavy rain, and I thought the woods were on fire because you saw the wisps of smoke — but it was actually a tornado," Caldwell recalled.
Unable to move the bus due to a downed tree in the roadway, he and the team personnel ducked for cover on the bus and hoped for the best.
"The tornado passed me on the shoulder of the road, but I mean horror. I got out of the driver's seat and into the stepwell," he said.
Fortunately, Caldwell was able to continue the trip and made it back safely after the storm had passed.
Over the course of his years on the road, Caldwell said the best part of his job was having daily interactions with multiple generations of students.
"Then, of course, over the years, some of the kids, they got married, and then they had kids and I (drove) their kids," Caldwell said.
While some health issues forced Caldwell to step away from the driver's seat in 2014, he still works out of the office as a dispatcher in his 53rd year with the company.
"I do miss driving at times I can't fulfill that anymore, but I'm still very happy working for the company and they've treated me well," Caldwell said.
