Iron Range

My experience with Iron Range can be described with one word....Awesome!

Fantastic quality of regular school route transportation, wonderful charter experiences, and the best professional drivers!

Iron range must hire just anybody. I'm a professional driver and see these busses constantly driving poorly/dangerously.

Now, I'm not one to complain but this morning I had a bad experience with one of your dispatchers. My daughter's bus comes at 8:50 am but we always go outside at 8:40 just in case the bus is early. We did exactly that, my daughter, my new born baby(i only bring him outside if he refuses to go for a nap inside. I will not leave my baby inside alone) and myself went outside to wait for the bus. My daughter's bus driver has been amazing and very friendly to us and i haven't had a problen with him at all. I did not want to get him into trouble or make him feel bad because he's a very nice guy and her bus has been late before at the beginning of the school year so we waited outside until 9:13. My son was getting upset because he was tired of being outside and cold so i had him in my arms in the doorway trying to keep him warm but also not tryig to heat the outside. Heat is not cheap. I then called iron range just asking when the bus driver would be at my house (maybe it was broken down or something, it has happened in the past). The dispatcher answered the phone and i could not hear exactly what he was saying (my son was now screaming) but i have called them in the past couple years and i know that normally they ask what bus your child is on so i told him the bus number (by then he was on speaker phone so that i could try to hear him better) and he rudely said "thats not your childs last name" i apologized telling him that my 4 month old was crying and i couldn't hear what he had said. I told him my child's name and was on hold for a minute he then told me that he could not get ahold of the driver, that it was 9:15 so he couldn't do anything about it and that i had to bring my daughter to school. I do not drive and i didnt want to walk my already cold children all the way to my daughter's school which is only a 30 minute walk but is a long way with too young kids in this cold weather. Not to mention i will still need to walk my 4 month old back home by then he wouldve been outside for an hour and a half. I told the dispatcher exactly this and he simply said he can't help me and hung up. It may not sound like a big deal to some but anyone with young children will understand that it is not ideal. I have never had a problem with ironrange in the past so when this man on the phone was rude to me, i did not appreciate it.

Ironrange provided public charter services for us this past weekend for the national student conference that we hosted. Their drivers were pleasant & professional, buses were clean & in good condition, and Janice in their main office was beyond excellent, working with us to manage our complex contract & coordinating buses. For their drivers and Janice, I highly recommend IronRange. The only problem was that over the weekend when Janice wasn't at work, the weekend dispatcher became confused & sent a driver to the wrong location - and then proceeded to be entirely unhelpful when I called to sort it out. I understand that our contract was complex, but he really didn't have a handle on where his buses were and refused to send a replacement shuttle to transport our attendees while he located the missing bus. Ultimately this wasn't a big issue, and lead to less than an hour's delay for our attendees, but it could've been better handled and I was disappointed in this aspect of Iron Range's work on this contract. Overall - I still highly recommend Iron Range as a bus provider & charter contractor. The small bump in the road of a single lost/late bus over the entire weekend was a very small issue in an otherwise perfectly executed & very complex contract.Their drivers were great, and Janice in their main office is a superstar.