Louisiana bus company adds Texas branch to service energy projects

(Courtesy Hotard)

Hotard Coaches goes where the work takes it—industrial work, that is.

The new Orleans company—part of All Aboard America Holdings—has signed a seven-year lease on a 10-acre commercial site on Texas 73 in Port Arthur that once housed a movie theater and car lot, the Beaumont Enterprise reports. It will serve as a depot and office for the motor-coach company’s expanding operations in southeast Texas, focused on transporting workers from their camps to industrial work sites.

The newspaper reports that thousands of construction workers are expected to be on sites in the southern Jefferson County community of Sabine Pass split among the Port Arthur LNG and Golden Pass LNG projects in the next three to five years. Sabine Pass is served by a narrow road that can be easily congested, and the Port Arthur LNG project is currently in a build-up phase to create level land for the site surrounded by marshland.

The company has served a similar role in projects around Lake Charles and the rest of Southwest Louisiana.

Gary Chetoni, director of business development for Hotard Coaches, said the company has already started work on the site and hopes to have buses transporting workers to industrial sites within the next 30 days.

“We like to think we carved out a niche for these mega projects where employees could be parked at dozens of places while a site is being built up,” he told the Beaumont Enterprise. “It is different than turnaround transportation or short-term construction. Sometimes we have to use motor-coaches to handle long-term travel.”

The Beaumont Enterprise has the full story.