Caio Buses

[luvrbus]

Anyone here ever own or know anything about  CAIO buses ?

[buswarrior]

Big, long running Brazilian bus maker.

That name has cropped up periodically, when they make occassional attempts to enter the North American market.

Happy coaching!
Buswarrior

[CrabbyMilton]

I clicked on their USA website and it appears to be gone. I heard mixed things about them not really good.

[luvrbus]

Big, long running Brazilian bus maker.

That name has cropped up periodically, when they make occassional attempts to enter the North American market.

Happy coaching!
Buswarrior

There one up for auction in WV on Iron Planet ( Ritcie Bros) ,R/B has lot of buses up for auction,Setra, Vanhools,MCI and Prevost ,the 2009 -2014,MCI J4500's are hitting the block now in CA

[muldoonman]

What kind of engine it that bus. Looks yellow like a Cat.

[Dave5Cs]

Been around since 1945 about here is the site.
http://caio.com.br/eua/sobre

[CrabbyMilton]

That's interesting. Would be neat to see one of those skoolies here in service. FCCC has links to several bus builders. Problem is, some of the items on their site have not been updated for many years. I think there is still a brochure on there from 2007!!

[Busted Knuckle]

Back about 2010 they reached out to us (after we bought the 2 S417 Setra's) they reached out to us and asked if we'd be interested i testing one of their DEMO's at first I told them not interested. But the salesman was persistent, and asked me "If I brought you one for a month and left it with you, would you use it?"
Well I ain't no fool I took them up on it. I met the salesman in Clarksville, TN and right off the bat we had trouble with it. Couldn't get the door to open while showing it to us. (Luckily we had someone with us that was outside the bus, and opened the door from outside for us!)
It was FILTHY dirty inside and out it was a 2009 35' model that the salesman said had been sitting in a warehouse for almost a year. I don't know about that, but it had about 1/8" to 1/4" of dirt/dust inside and out and took our bus cleaner 2 days to fully detail it!
When they gave it to us they told us "Here it is, use it for a month and give us an honest objective opinion on it when we pick it up!"
Well we ran the heck out of it although 2 college baseball teams didn't like it as it didn't have as much space as they were used too inside an luggage bays both!
The softball teams we OK with it, the volleyball and soccer teams liked it.
Right away first trip it came back from the actuator for dumping the toilet tank failed. (but they overnighted us one, for us to install)
We constantly had problems with the door not opening from the inside and most of the time I could walk the driver through releasing the air on it and opening it that way over the phone altough a couple times that wouldn't work and someone had to open it from outside!
We had issues with lighting (inside an out!), gauges, getting static shocked (more that once) from touching the dash, an I don't remember the rest of the list.
But the salesman was NOT very nice after he read our list of problems and got our honest opinion on it! (I told him if you don't want my honest opinion, don't ASK for it!)

Funny thing was when we gave it back they sent it to someone in N. IL or IA and they took a softball team to a tournament in Hartsell, AL and one of our drivers was down there too.
Well one day AL DOT showed up in the bus parking lot and started doing DOT inspections on the buses. My driver was right beside the little Caio and was getting his inspection when the DOT officer on the Caio called the DOT officer on our bus and told him "Hey, I'm stuck on this bus the door won't open!" The officer on our bus was laughing and telling him "Well looks like you'll have to test one of those emergency exits for real!"
Our driver over heard it and told them he could get them out, they looked at him funny, and he told them he'd been stuck on that very same bus 2 weeks ago and his boss talked him through getting it open over the phone.
Well our driver told them how I'd told him and it still didn't work so he called me I told go over and push the button from the outside. He did and it opened. The DOT officers, hurried up and finished his inspection (giving us a sticker showing ours passed in our windshield), bought him lunch and got my phone # from him to call me for more info on the bus.
Turns out the salesman lied to whoever it was using it and told them because of it's size it didn't require DOT #'s or a CDL! The driver didn't have a CDL, didn't know what a log book was and they had NO insurance or tags on it! Needless to say they were immediately placed out of service. (driver and bus!)
We weren't impressed at all, but that was 12 yrs ago! (things could've improved)
  BK   

[CrabbyMilton]

Reading a story like that is enough to scare anyone away from a particular product.
Now the luggage capacity and overall quality are two separate issues. The fact that the sales rep was such a jerk was probably a good thing. Just imagine if you had bought one of those buses. He would have stonewalled it and kept throwing it back to the warranty dept. and they wouldn't have done anything about it either. How did the FREIGHTLINER chassis perform? Ride and handling etc? I have heard that those are pretty good chassis but kind of take it or leave it. Makes you wonder how they survived all of these years unless South America is used to bad quality buses.

[luvrbus]

Reading a story like that is enough to scare anyone away from a particular product.
Now the luggage capacity and overall quality are two separate issues. The fact that the sales rep was such a jerk was probably a good thing. Just imagine if you had bought one of those buses. He would have stonewalled it and kept throwing it back to the warranty dept. and they wouldn't have done anything about it either. How did the FREIGHTLINER chassis perform? Ride and handling etc? I have heard that those are pretty good chassis but kind of take it or leave it. Makes you wonder how they survived all of these years unless South America is used to bad quality buses.

Since 1945 on South America roads says they are not all bad,there are quite a few for sale in the USA all with manufactured in Brazil Cummins engine which has been made there for 50 years 

[CrabbyMilton]

Well as they say, perception becomes reality. Obviously there is a reason why CAIO never got traction up here. Not saying you're wrong however.

[luvrbus]

Well as they say, perception becomes reality. Obviously there is a reason why CAIO never got traction up here. Not saying you're wrong however.

Lot of the foreign bus makers never made it in the USA ,MCI rules in the USA 

[chessie4905]

Bus companies learned years ago that excellent factory support in parts and service is critical. Also economics and reliability in operation.

[Busted Knuckle]

That little Caio we used for a month rode and drove great.
But keep in mind it was practically a "new" bus even though it was almost 2 yrs old as it had been in storage for most of that time. I don't recall the mileage on it but it was very low when we got it and I ran (or had my drivers run) it as much as we could (it was a free to me bus after all!) If I remember we put close to 20,000 miles on it! (LOL that was another thing the salesman bitched about when they got it back, but hey at least I did a full service on it while we had it! LOL)
I can't tell you how it would hold up over time/miles as we didn't have it long enough for that!

Clifford's right foreign bus makers never make it very far in the North American (US) bus market.
Dina, Izar, Caio, Volvo are just a few that have failed to get a solid footing. Setra and VanHoole are stil around but but not like MCI & Prevost!
  BK 

[CrabbyMilton]

At least MCI and VAN-HOOL are wise enough to offer 35' models. TEMSA seems to hold it's own here too. Perhaps that's why we don't see too many of these lower cost buses that were built on that rear engine FREIGHTLINER chassis anymore like we did about 15-20 years ago. Now we see more of such buses built on heavy pickup truck and larger medium duty truck chassis. Those may be fine for let's say a college sports team, church or geezer hotel but not over the road charter.