Tom Forseth Quotations

We've got more customers going east than we do west from Bismarck. I've been surprised by the traffic that's been coming out of the smaller towns.

We have some charter business, but most of our money is made through the regularly scheduled runs.

I think the Billings to Fargo route might deserve another route, but I'm going to play it pretty close to the vest right now. After all, this is a small company. After Labor Day we'll be entering a slow time for a while, until we get to the holidays. Then I might start thinking about adding another bus.

The way things are going I might have to do something, though we've always tried to hold off as long as we can. Our buses get about six to seven miles per gallon. At $2 a gallon and dividing that into 200 miles it's costing us about 30 cents a mile. At $2.80 a gallon it costs us 40 cents a mile. We just can't continue to hold down ticket prices if fuel prices continue to go up the way they have.

It's been a very good summer. It's perhaps the best thing that ever happened to us. We had a mining-worker transportation contract that we lost the first of May last year. That provided us about $2.2 million, so this was very welcome.