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Wayne is a name in school transportation that predates the familiar yellow school bus seen all over the USA and Canada, beginning in the 19th century. First with all-steel bodies for motorized vehicles in the 1920's, craftsmen in Richmond, Indiana at Wayne Works, its subsidiaries and successors, built not only school buses, but virtually all types of bus bodies during the 20th century, including highway coaches, military and shuttle buses, and even huge bodies pulled by tractor trailers used to haul oil field workers in the middle east.
All manufacturing was at Richmond, but Wayne bus bodies were assembled at multiple locations around the US and at a Canadian assembly plant, Welles. Kits were also shipped overseas even after all North American assembly was centralized in Richmond and Windsor,Ontario.
Wayne went through many changes in ownership, including periods of Divco-Wayne, and Indian Head, and Wayne Corporation finally closed up and went out-of-business in 1992.
Military truck builder Wayne Wheeled Vehicles assembled several products from 1993 to 1995 in Ohio. Former Wayne personnel even built Carpenter and Crown branded buses at the Richmond Indiana facility in the late 1990's. The last buses were produced there in early 2000.
Among many innovations, Wayne pioneered the inboard wheelchair lift and high-headroom doors for persons requiring head and neck support from above. The company was first with a school bus based upon a cutaway chassis, a practical design now one of the more popular. Wayne's crowning achievement was the Lifeguard conventional design in 1973, which featured continuous interior and exterior longitudinal panels, and paved the way for the all-important US minimum construction standards for all school buses in 1977.
Wayne's predecessor, Wayne Works, was founded in the United States of America in 1837. Wayne Works began by making horse-drawn vehicles. Beginning in the early 1900s through the 1940s, several automobile designers and manufacturers were located in Richmond. Among the automobiles manufactured there are: The Pilot, The Westcott, The Richmond, The Rodefeld, The Davis and The Richmond "Steam Runabout."
The Wayne County Historical Museum has a 1907 Richmond on display which was built by the Wayne Works, along with horsedrawn "kid hack" also manufactured by the Wayne Works.