Page4 | Dothan | Southern Coaches

Where We Began

Southern Coaches President John Adams Washington DC Rally.jpg

Founded in 1989 by G. Milton Adams, Southern Coaches is a second generation family owned and operated business that has grown to be one of Alabama’s premier motorcoach operators.

Mr. Adams originally owned a regional truck line with his sons, George and John, driving the trucks and helping run the business as teenagers. That's how they spent their summer school breaks and vacations. After graduating from college, John continued to work in the business and honed his own business savvy in sales. The senior Adams had always been a motorcoach enthusiast and his first coach purchase was the classic GM Silverside. Then in 1987 he sold the truck operation, secured a charter authority and created Southern Coaches. There is rich history woven between the family and the transportation industry. Southern Coaches is the legacy that stands.

We are family owned and operated, and our continued growth is benchmarked by remembering that our customer's comfort and safety always comes first. Southern Coaches is committed to maintaining the highest standard of excellence in our equipment as well as in our professional, courteous staff.

Southern Coaches is Alabama's premier carrier! and we invite you to take a look around the pages of our website and get to know us. From the very beginning our commitment has remained the same: to provide a safe, memorable, and exceptional travel experience to every single one of our passengers through our gracious, knowledgeable, and professional staff and our first-rate motorcoaches.

John Adams currently runs Southern Coaches with a team of professionals and has worked hard to develop and maintain his father's legacy while guiding the way for it to become one of Alabama’s foremost MotorCoach operators.

Our Drivers

Our Motor Coach Operators are trained, uniformed professionals who do their utmost to provide the safest ride possible for our passengers. They are courteous, competent drivers who operate their motor coaches in a safe, efficient manner at all times, and attentively see to our passenger’s needs. And they are usually pretty entertaining! We are proud to say that our drivers willingly and consistently go above and beyond their call of duty. As qualified interstate drivers, they meet a multitude of rigorous federal standards. Driving records are checked on a regular basis, and drivers must pass a physical examination, which includes a drug screening. Southern Coaches takes pride in the safety records of our drivers, which has become a cornerstone of our outstanding reputation.

Our drivers are limited by federal laws as to the number of hours that they may drive on a designated trip or during the day. These “hours of service” regulations are for your safety. Should your trip require more than the allowable hours, we’ll make arrangements to have another driver ready to take over. Many states and provinces have other local restrictions limiting what the driver may do. Our drivers are familiar with all the various local laws regarding speed, parking, and routing.

Our Maintenance Team

Southern Coaches takes great measures to ensure the highest standards of care and maintenance of his fleet. We start by providing covered facilities for buses on the ready line, as well as an onsite shop with five maintenance bays and a separate wash and fuel building.

Staff professionalism, safety, cleanliness, and preventive maintenance are all points of pride for Southern Coaches. A 50-point inspection is conducted on every vehicle that returns from a trip, regardless of whether it is gone for one day or three weeks. Starters are changed every year, and other major components are changed before they fail. Two full-time mechanics, two maintenance helpers, and a supervisor regularly attend Webinars and training for particular makes and models, with full-time mechanics certified on air brakes, electrical and other specialty components.

These practices are what has earned Southern Coaches a Number 1 rating issued by the Military Traffic Management Command of the Department of Defense.