Optima buses for Miami mean jobs for Wichita

Congratulations to Optima Bus for landing a highly competitive $178 million contract this week to manufacture 300 Opus buses over five years for Miami-Dade County, with an option for 300 more. Because the contract is 10 times bigger than any other Optima has won, the company plans to add 50 assemblers, 20 engineers and more to its 180 workers, and spend $500,000 to reconfigure the plant at 77th Street North and Hydraulic. “It’s jobs, jobs, jobs, at this point,” CEO Michael Monteferrante said. This is exciting news for the Wichita area, especially given the latest Boeing Wichita layoffs.
Posted by Rhonda Holman

5 Comments

  1. Posted April 28, 2006 at 7:30 am | Permalink

    I’m really happy to hear they are successful. :) Something to be proud of indeed.

  2. Shocker'07
    Posted April 28, 2006 at 9:44 am | Permalink

    When the city of Wichita is in the market for new buses, I hope it supports this local company.

  3. Ben Huie
    Posted April 28, 2006 at 10:23 am | Permalink

    Agree with both above. Wichita has cutting edge ‘metal-bending’ technology; we should be getting more of this kind of business.

  4. Julie
    Posted April 28, 2006 at 10:23 am | Permalink

    Shocker -When City of Wichita purchased it’s “new” fleet of buses a few years ago they bought them thru Chance Coach, a local company.

  5. Shocker'07
    Posted April 28, 2006 at 11:44 am | Permalink

    Julie, that’s good to hear. So we have TWO bus companies in town? I guess we’re becomming the transit capital of the world in addition to the air capital.