Eight years after it started serving south Hampshire, this family owned independent has grown from four vehicles to a licence authorisation for 40 and has ambitions for further modest expansion. As ALAN MILLAR reports, structure, systems and a professional appearance underpin a business that has exploited niche opportunities to avoid treading on the toes of its larger big group neighbours
Let us start by settling how to pronounce the name Xelabus. Definitely not ‘Zelabus’ as in xylophone or Xerxes, but ‘XL-abus’, the third last letter of the alphabet also prefixing the numbers of most of its routes as a form of branding.
As David Jukes explained in an article about this Eastleigh company in our June 2012 issue, Xela is Alex spelt backwards, the name of threeyear- old Alex Blair who died from a rare form of childhood cancer in August 2009. His father Gareth, now 38, is managing director of Xelabus and his grandfather Phil is chairman. They set up the family-owned company in 2010, providing Gareth with a change of career and new purpose in life after two years of personal trauma and tragedy. His first job had been in a Ford dealership and he had gone on to work at PB Bus Marketing, the business his fat…
