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Our favorite finder of rusted metal, Joe Rooney, acquires some of the most interesting and original vintage vehicles. Working out of Billings, Montana, Joe finds and repairs these old hulks and either trades, sells, barters, or drives the crap out of them. He’s one of those guys that people go to when they are looking for a project car. At any given time, he probably has more than fifty or sixty cars worthy of being restored or restomodded. Joe still does business the old fashioned way too – he wants to talk to you. “You gotta call. That is the ONLY was to reach me, and the ONLY way I do business,” he says. By the way, his number is (406) 591-9090.
Almost everyone has thought about converting an old bus into something cool at some point.
Joe puts a bargain price on most of his cars, but every once in a while, he gets one that he considers too special and prices them accordingly. Those select acquisitions get a more personal touch. Fortunately for us, he sends a text and lets us know what he has found when these special vehicles are available. His latest is a 1948 White Super Power Bus.
A School Bus?
Yep, you heard us correctly, a school bus. Who hasn’t dreamt of taking an old school bus and converting it into a motorhome, swap meet parts hauler, or even a racecar hauler? Joe has found the perfect one for any of those conversions, and… it has a cool history that goes with it.
Here’s the story according to Joe:
“The Gentleman I got the bus from said it was used during the late ’40s and into the ’50s to haul the children of the employees of Glacier National Park. The workers had housing on the park land, and the kids were hauled to nearby incorporated cities like West Glacier, Browning, and maybe as far as Columbia Falls, in Montana. There were probably many other tours and trips that the bus was probably used for,” said Joe.
It took 69 years to get this bus to look like this. – Joe Rooney
Joe claimed that he has been aware of the bus for that past twenty years, because he could see the top of it behind a six foot fence on a property nearby. “Because I could only see it from a couple hundred yards away, I couldn’t tell exactly what it was,” said Joe. “The front looked like a mid-’30s Ford.”
How He Found It
Eventually, Joe was put in touch with the owner of the bus through the man’s wife. “She was my Pharmacy tech for a few years,” he claims. “In one of our conversations at the counter, she asked what I worked on after seeing my Joe’s Garage shirt . I told her of my addiction to rust and my love of cars that were produced before the introduction of unleaded gas (my cutoff is 1972 for my personal preference). She said her Husband had an old bus, and I told her exactly where it was. ’Yup, that’s the place’ was her reply.”
“What else could I do? I gave her my card, and hand wrote my interests on the back. The next morning , I got a call from her husband, Leon. He wanted to get together for coffee, and talk about the bus. During our conversation, he asked if I was interested in a metal lathe,” explained Joe. “I had wanted one for many years but couldn’t justify the cost of a quality lathe. He was a very interesting man and after talking for a couple of hours we went back to his shop, and I finally got to step inside this piece of history.”
Joe related that the bus has been stripped of all passenger seats and had been converted into livable space. Leon had been employed in the research and development segment of Polaris. He parked the bus on some land near the northeast entrance of Yellowstone Park, in Cooke City. During the winter, Leon lived in the bus as he worked hot rodding and fine tuned Polaris snowmobiles, where many of his ideas and processes ended up being used in production of the machines.
Leon’s Life In The Bus
According to Joe, the man spent many winters in the bus. “He told me of having to shovel away the deep snow blocking the door and steps of the bus, just so he could get inside. Cooke City gets huge amounts of snow, and he said there were many winters when all that could be seen of the bus from the outside was the stovepipe coming through the roof. The stovepipe went to the wood stove that is still inside the bus.”
“There is also a bed in the rear of the bus, and an old cook stove, which is pretty much all there is to the interior of the bus,” said Joe. “After a few more hours of hearing these great stories, we ended up settling on a deal that allowed me to buy the bus and the Seneca Falls metal lathe, which has since become an irreplaceable tool in my little, one man operation.
How Does It Drive?
Nothing beats a first-person accountwhen it comes to driving impressions, so we will let Joe tell the you about how it motivates: “Even with the governed carburetor, I have reached 65 mph. At 55 to 60 mph, it is a very nice cruiser . The first time I drove it home, which was only a 5 mile trip to my place, it rode like a lumber wagon. It was parked for about 20 years, and even though the tires were in good shape – and still inflated – there were flat spots on them. Going around corners only put the flat spots in different areas, making the bus vibrate even more. It nearly rattled the fillings out of my teeth.”
“After bringing the bus home and cleaning it up a bit, I gave it a tuneup and replaced all of the filters. One that was done, I then took it on a 50 mile trip. It probably took 20 of those miles for the tires to get round again,” he said laughing. “It rode nice after that . It has a five-speed tranny, with a single-speed rearend. The roof has many dents from so many years of heavy winters, and it would probably be best to just have new sheeting laid over it. It has a beautiful rat rod patina.”
Finally, Joe gave us his honest opinion on the exterior. “Many people with shiny hot rods tell everyone how many hundreds of hours they have into their paint jobs. Well … it took 69 years to get this bus to look like it does.”
It looks great to us Joe.
Details:
- 1948 White Touring Bus, special order on WB28 chassis
- Originally a 42 passenger configuration
- Inline six cylinder flathead gasoline engine
- Governed carburetor
- Air brakes
- five-speed manual transmission
- Single speed rearend
The bus is for sale, and Joe said that he has a clear title, and he will entertain offers of cash, or trades with cash. Remember, as Joe says, “You gotta call. That is the ONLY way to reach me, and the ONLY way I do business.”
