On March 20, 2003 in Alachua County, Florida, an 83-passenger Carpenter school bus rolled over onto its roof, causing the roof to collapse down to the seat level.  Inspection of the crash vehicle revealed numerous broken and defective welds in the roof and pillar structure.   Normally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would conduct a full-scale investigation and if a defect determination were made, would order the manufacturer to conduct a safety recall. However, since Carpenter is no longer in business, there is no one that NHTSA can hold accountable to develop a remedy for this problem.

However, NHTSA is concerned about this problem.  The purpose of this advisory is to provide school districts and school bus operators with guidance on what to do if they have any of these buses within their fleets. Unfortunately, given the age and the type of weld failures occurring in these buses, there is no single repair that can assure adequate performance in a crash.  Since NHTSA is not the vehicle manufacturer and does not know all the relevant details about the design and construction of these buses, it cannot recommend any particular modification or repair procedure.  

eBay will not allow links to the NHTSA web site. If you just Google "Carpenter school bus recall" , you can find out which buses are involved. These are pretty serious defects that I am appalled are being ignored in the ad copy of the sellers of these Carpenter buses. I would not want to spend a lot of money converting a bus that was unsafe and that I could not later sell. Buyer Beware!