WADSWORTH, Ohio – When Ed Valentine, of Valentine Farm in Wadsworth, was looking for a way to transport his hogs to market, he considered a number of different vehicles. In the end, he settled on a school bus the local school system was trying to get rid of.

“I know the superintendent of the Wadsworth schools pretty well, and he showed me a bus that the school had revamped to transport some items,” Valentine said.

Picking up on the idea, Valentine decided that the 60-passenger bus fit his needs perfectly and would offer a little fun to the chore of hauling his pigs to market.

The bus had adequate room for about 50 200-pound hogs. The old bus cost less and provides a smoother ride for the porkers than a trailer could ever manage. Valentine said the bus required a few modifications from a child to a swine transporter.

“I guess it took me about three days to make the conversion, and I have been using it for almost a year now for my weekly trips to the market,” he said.

Valentine, a Medina County Farm Bureau member, operates a 600-acre farm with soybeans and corn, and raises about 1,500 hogs a year.

Valentine enjoys making the trip in the bus to the Producers Livestock market near Wooster. “The first few times we turned a few heads,” he said. “But now, people are used to it and don’t pay much attention.”

Valentine is just one of many farmers across the country who are putting old, worn out school buses to use as a service truck.

In Keenes, Ill., the family-owned Frey Farms converted retired school buses into harvest machines. These buses help drive the harvest at this southern Illinois farm, which is one of the largest pumpkin producers in the country.

“A bus is self-propelled,” Ted Frey said. “You don’t need a tractor or anything. Once you leave the field, you can do 45 to 50 miles per hour and get it to the warehouse. In the past, we used tractors and trailers. Tractors could do only 30 miles per hour. This is a little faster, and definitely more economical.”

Frey Farms grows fresh fruit and vegetables in seven states and distributes nationally. The farm utilizes 50 buses during harvest season on its numerous farms. The vehicles are purchased either at auction or directly from school districts, which limit passenger bus miles before retiring them.

“We buy anywhere from two to 10 of them at a time,” Frey said. “They turn out to be very dependable and strong trucks.”

Frey Farms has a crew that specializes at turning the vehicles from carriers of students to haulers of pumpkins. After tearing out the passenger seats, the workers remove the windows, leaving frames over the wheels to provide stability. The side frames are covered with plastic tiling material to smooth out the edges.

The floors are sprayed with a food-grade coating that keeps the payload clean. That payload per bus is roughly 1,500 pumpkins. The buses are washed daily.

After the buses are modified, they are inspected before they go on the road. Vehicles without air brakes can be driven by workers without commercial licenses.

“Old buses are plentiful and cheap,” said Ed Winkle, former Warren County, Ohio, Extension specialist. “They’re used for tractor haulers, grain haulers, campers, hog haulers. Just about anything you can think of.”

At the Unified School District in San Diego, they’ve taken this classic yellow school icon and turned it into a mobile farm.

“Obviously it’s not a farm, but a tool, to inspire people to think about where their food comes from, how food is grown and most importantly show that you can grow food in weird, exciting places,” said Vanessa Zajfen, the farm-to-school specialist for the district.

The seats were ripped out and the roof was removed. A glass top replaced the roof. The top is on a hinge so that the educator can stand in the bus while giving lessons. The mobile farm will visit schools three days a week. The students will be able to plant produce on the beds and the harvested produce will be served on the school’s salad bar.

In the United States, transit agencies can receive government funding for replacing buses at 12 years of age.

Because capital funding is easier to get than operating funding, transit agencies choose to throw away their functioning buses and use capital money to purchase new ones rather than use operating money to maintain their existing fleet. For the farmer, this means the school buses are usually good buys.

When purchased new, buses can cost $300,000-$600,000. Discarded or outdated school buses normally sell for just $4,000.