Roenigk still keeps tabs on company, family
BUFFALO TWP — She might not drive a school bus these days, but Jeanne Roenigk, 90, still likes to get on her zero-turn lawnmower to cut the grass.
And she’s still vice president of W.L. Roenigk Inc., a contractor of school buses and vans for 15 school districts throughout Western Pennsylvania, founded by her husband, William, in 1945.
The Pennsylvania School Bus Association, made up of 300 school transportation contractors and industry partners, recently honored her company for its 75 years of operation. Although, as Sue Roenigk, Jeanne’s daughter and president of the company, put it, Roenigk marked its 77th year in 2022, but the 75th recognition was delayed for two years by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jeanne said her husband started the company in 1945 with two buses and a contract to transport students in what was then Buffalo Township Consolidated Schools.
When they married in 1954, she came aboard as office help even as the Roenigks had eight children.
As the family expanded, so did the company. Today Roenigk Inc. has 700 buses on the road carrying an estimated 36,000 students daily. Operations are conducted out of 10 locations. The company employs nearly 550 people.
William Roenigk died in 1991, and his wife stepped in as president from 1991 to 2012.
She said she still comes to the office in Buffalo Township, which is easy enough since it’s in her daughters’ converted bedroom on the bottom floor of her house.
“I’m usually up at 5 a.m. I don’t know why. I guess you can only sleep so long,” Jeanne said. She said every morning between 6 and 6:30 she listens to the buses pulling out of the garage. And every day between 4 and 5:30 p.m. she hears the buses pulling back into the garage.
“I’m never late to work,” she said. “I say if I can make it to work, anybody can make it too.”
She opens mail, writes checks and does the payroll, said Sue, but what she really likes to do is get on her Ferris zero-turn mower and take to the yard.
“There’s a lot of grass around here to mow,” Jeanne said. “My son, Mike, made a ramp for me to get on the thing. I walk up the ramp, turn around, sit down, and away you go.”
Her daughter-in-law, Shelly Roenigk, said family members learned to listen for the sound of the mower because one time Jeanne ran out of gas and had to wait until somebody noticed her predicament.
Predicament might also be used to describe some of the challenges facing Roenigk Inc. today.
There’s the ongoing struggle to find bus drivers.
“There’s a lot of factors,” said Sue Roenigk. “There’s too much free money out there. You need a very responsible person to do this job.
“Retired people make the best bus drivers. They have a work ethic, they’re responsible and they like kids,” she said.
She added, “It’s a perfect job for a mom. They will be home in time to meet the kids. There’s no evenings or weekends. You’re off on holidays and in the summer.”
There’s also dealing with inclement weather, although Sue Roenigk said 2004’s Hurricane Ivan was the worst example.
“It rained and rained and rained. It washed out the Monroe Road Bridge. They kept the kids at the school. It made for a very, very long night,” she said.
Roenigk Inc. also leases dump trucks to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, has an excavation and tar-and-chip business, and has a new venture that makes use of its buses during the summer.
But Jeanne said “We’re doing wedding charters with the school buses during the summer. It’s getting pretty big.”
The company’s many ventures are keeping four of her children and six of her grandchildren employed in the company as everything from board members to mechanics.
But Jeanne never forgets that her company’s buses are carrying children. Safety posters and reminders dot the office walls and doors.
“Are we successful? It’s more important to do it right than to be big,” she said.
Jeanne originally wanted to be a nurse not helping to run a school bus company.
“I didn’t plan it that way,” she said. “I told my husband, ‘Stick around.’ I wasn’t going to put up with this place for the rest of my life. But he didn’t listen.”
