The privatisation of the former municipally owned bus services on Teesside was brought about because of the desire by central government to see buses de-regulated and wherever possible ownership transferred from the public domain to the private sector.

After much deliberation, Cleveland County Council, which was itself later to be abolished, decided to seek to dispose of the undertaking. A proposal was made, by the management, for a management-employee buy-out, and an agreement was made, subject to several safeguards being imposed, that saw this completed on the 1st May 1991.

The undertaking, under its Managing Director, Mr. Malcolm Howitt, had already been slimmed down considerably, to meet the challenges that competition had brought; costs were further reduced by modernising the fleet thus saving costs on maintenance of ageing buses fleet. Most of the renewals were single-deck vehicles as the capacity requirements of most routes was now reduced. Considerable numbers of mini-buses were also purchased.

Expansion came when Cleveland Transit Ltd purchased the municipal Kingston upon Hull City Transport Ltd. fleet. This was run from the headquarters at Church Road, Stockton.

In late November 1994 approaches were made by Stagecoach Holdings plc who were rapidly expanding their Scottish empire southwards. Busways, the Tyneside- based operator had already been acquired and the Stockton management decided to sell Transit Ltd including KHCTto them.

Stagecoach had also acquired HartlepoolTransport Ltd.Transport and they were assimilated into Cleveland Transit Ltd. Stagecoach started operations in Darlington, initially coming under the control of Busways but eventually passing to Cleveland Transit Ltd. in 1995.

All the separate operations kept their own livery as agreed under the terms of the purchase, but in 1996 Stagecoach "stripes" started to appear.

The competition had largely ended by October 1995 when a re-distribution of services between Transit and North East Bus took place. North East Bus owned the services that had been United, Tees and District and T.M.S., which they had acquired in 1990. The agreement saw Transit give up services in Yarm, Eton and much of Thornaby, but gainlarge areas of Hartlepool, Billingham and Hemlington. Through direct lines of succession, now broken, Transit's operations had stretched back to 1914 (Yarm), 1919 (Eston area) and 1930 (Thornaby local)

Delta Coaches Ltd.had ceased local service operations in 1995 and acquired the vehicles and operations of Cleveland Coaches. Delta acquired Cleveland Coaches express services and excursions, as well as private hire work. The only remaining competition then was from Robson's Town Service, which eventually ceased operations in November 1999, and Leven Valley who still operate today in 2001.

Guisborough town services were withdrawn in 1999, and local East Cleveland operator Abbey coaches, now operates the services.

In the first year of the new century, Stagecoach re-organised its North East structure and Transit went into the control of Stagecoach North East. They gained a new livery and trade locally under the slogan "Stagecoach on Teesside", but Cleveland Transit Ltd. is still the legal operating name.

Ian Wilson

Cleveland Transit's livery was green and white, as illustrated, and with a yellow band over the lower deck windows on double-deck buses. On single deck vehicles, the livery used much more of the yellow, with only the lower quarters being green. The logo was in white and had a white underscore that bore the strap line.
"EMPLOYEE OWNED-WORKING FOR YOU"

The short lived Tees Valley livery was similar but the green was replaced by maroon, Kingston Upon Hull was again similar, with the green replaced by mid blue.

Some double-deck buses were transfered to the coach fleet for a while and orange was substituted for the green used on the service bus fleet.

When Stagecoach applied its livery it was mainly white but with orange, red and blue stripes around the lower quarters, carried up at the rear to the roof and down the opposite side. The logo read "Stagecoach Transit"

The 2000 Stagecoach Group livery is white, with red rear panels and blue front, with an orange scroll.

Transit Cap Badge