The Mystery Bus
The story behind an unusual school bus that I saw on I-95
Welcome to another edition of Willoughby Hills!
This newsletter explores topics like history, culture, work, urbanism, transportation, travel, agriculture, self-sufficiency, and more.
If you like what you’re reading, you can sign up for a free subscription to have this newsletter delivered to your inbox every Wednesday and Sunday and get my latest podcast episodes:
I was recently looking back at photos from the summer and I found an interesting one.
I took this photo while traveling down I-95 in South Carolina on my way to Florida in our RV. In case you can’t tell, the photo is of a white school bus with large holes cut into the side of it.
My first thought when I saw one on the road was that it was a “skoolie” under construction, which is a type of RV that is custom built out of a decommissioned school bus. Some skoolies retain the original school bus windows, while others make major exterior modifications.
But after seeing the first one, there was a virtual parade of these buses: half a dozen or more passed in the span of maybe 30 minutes, all traveling down the interstate with the identical cutouts.
The only marking on the bus was “Jose Gracia Harvesting,” so the buses seemed to have some kind of agricultural use. I was wondering if they were being used to transport migrant farm workers between harvesting sites, although I didn’t understand how removing the windows and having giant openings benefitted passengers. I decided to Google that and see what I could learn.
As far as I can tell, there is no website for Jose Gracia Harvesting, although the company does seem to be quite large. According to the Department of Labor’s website:
“Jose M. Gracia Harvesting Inc. provides workers for the harvesting of agricultural commodities in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Jose M. Gracia Harvesting Inc. contracts with Melon 1, one of the nation’s largest melon distributors.”
It turns out that the buses in question are used for harvesting of melons. According to the USDA, Florida is the biggest domestic producer of watermelon, accounting for one in every four domestic watermelons in 2019, with Georgia and North Carolina also contributing significantly.
This video on YouTube shows the process of harvesting, hauling, and boxing the watermelons at a farm in Florida and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen:
The farm featured in the video says that during peak harvest season, they can bring in 35-40 busloads worth of melons from their 200 acre fields.
It’s unclear who started reusing school buses for harvesting watermelons, but they seem to be in widespread use across the country. According to a piece for Delmarva Now profiling watermelon farming in Delaware, a used school bus is seen as reliable and cost about $2,500 in 2015. I would assume that price has gone up in the last 8 years, but it’s still a very affordable tool. It also shows how little demand there is for used school buses if the price is so low.
The buses are stripped of the seats and either have the roof cut off entirely or have large holes cut in the sides. The harvesting process is quite labor intensive, with four or five people acting as a human convey belt, passing melons to each other and ultimately to somebody in the back of the bus who loads and stacks the melons.
At some farms, the buses are unloaded and boxed on site. At others, the bus loaded with melons is driven to the closest packing facility. The buses are only used for a few weeks each year during the peak of watermelon harvesting. They then sit dormant for most of the year.
The buses that I saw traveling north on I-95 were likely coming from the harvest in Florida, and moving to the harvest in North Carolina, where the crops would be a few weeks behind because of the higher latitude. Gracia’s buses have a few front bus windows in tact, which makes me wonder if these buses were also transporting the people doing the harvesting.
The work is labor intensive and grueling, and is often performed by people who are easily exploited. In the case of Jose Gracia Harvesting, the business which sparked this initial curiosity, a settlement was reached in 2022 for poor working conditions. According to the U.S. Department of Labor:
Division investigators found Jose M. Gracia Harvesting, Inc. failed to provide and maintain adequate housing standards for 80 women and men he employed. Specifically, the division determined Gracia Harvesting violated the following housing and transportation safety requirements when he failed to:
-Prevent rodent and fly infestation in worker housing.
-Secure meals for workers or offer sufficient kitchen facilities. As a result, some workers had to purchase meals at an average cost that exceeding the maximum amount allowed.
-Provide a sufficient number of beds, resulting in overcrowding and workers sleeping on the floor.
-Ensure workers had heated housing during winter months.
-Provide toilets within a quarter of a mile from the work site, and failure to provide soap, potable water and single-use towels for handwashing.
-Failed to provide adequate storage for workers’ personal belongings.
In addition, there were violations related to how his employees were paid. Jose Gracia Harvesting was required by the DOL to pay $69,372 in back wages to 152 workers and $180,000 in civil penalties.
There are a few lessons in the story of these watermelon buses. For one thing, it’s a reminder that the workers that grow, harvest, and pack our food in this country are often marginalized, exploited, underpaid, and treated poorly. It’s also a reminder of how many humans are responsible for bringing food to our table. Beyond just the people that pick these melons, there’s the drivers that bring the boxed melons to market, the workers at distribution and storage facilities that load and unload these crates of melons, the grocery store workers who stock the shelves, and the cashier who charge us for them. At every step in the cycle, there’s a human with a story and a life. It’s easy to overlook that and lose gratitude for the food on our table.
There’s also an interesting story about reuse here. I love how old school buses that might otherwise be scrapped are being given a second life as a farm tool. School buses, which otherwise don’t have a ton of options for reuse, seem to be uniquely suited for this work. A pickup truck or tractor could substitute for the bus, but they wouldn’t hold nearly as many large melons and would require many more trips.
Finally, I hope there’s a lesson here about staying curious about the world around you. It’s easy to be on autopilot and not notice the quirky things around us, but when we pay attention and ask questions, we can discover a world that we never knew existed!
Thanks for reading Willoughby Hills! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Related Reading
If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.
I wish there was some sort of system for the produce we buy at the grocery store that says it was grown and harvested in humane conditions where employees are paid fairly. Our agricultural system is very out of whack with Big Ag (meat and dairy) receiving huge government subsidies while fruits and vegetables do not. I recently made a donation to the Labor Food Bank for Farm Workers in CA since they don´t even make enough to feed their own families after working long grueling days in the fields. The system is corrupt and so frustrating knowing that I am contributing by buying "healthy" foods at the grocery store!