a large volume under low pricing pressures, even though their products would have proved more durable in the long run. As such, Carpenter was no longer able to compete with AmTran, Blue Bird, or Thomas on price. This was a familiar dilemma, the same one which earlier had helped seal the fate of the Crown and Gillig coaches on the West Coast, as well as the entry of competitor Blue Bird into the mass-transit market during the 1970s. It was also similar to the situation which faced HARSCO BMY (parent company of Wayne Wheeled Vehicles) operation some years earlier, where a lesser quantity of higher quality products (at a correspondingly higher price) had also been the plant's historical output. Closure Carpenter had been struggling for almost 20 years when it ended school bus production in 2001. During the economic times around the millennium, lower initial capital costs seemed to trump longevity as a selling factor. When it was time for purchasing decisions, financially pressed districts and contractors tended to select lower-cost products with shorter life cycles. Spartan Motors, by then the ⅔ owner of the company, did not see a solution to the market dilemma and felt the projected continued losses would exceed the value to their business plan, voted to end its venture. Epilogue: Body structure concerns On March 20, 2003 in Alachua County, Florida, a Carpenter school bus rolled over onto its roof. At the time of the accident, no passengers were on board and the driver survived the accident. In the rollover of the bus, the internal roof structure failed, causing much of the roof to collapse down to the level of the seats. Following the 2003 rollover accident, subsequent inspections of Carpenter school buses by operators in various parts of the United States revealed cracked and broken welds in their roof structures; the problem was not unique to the vehicle involved in the rollover crash. In the initial investigation, the problem of cracked and broken roof welds were found in each type of Carpenter buses built at the Mitchell, Indiana facility prior to its 1995 closure. Crown by Carpenter buses and Carpenter buses built in Richmond, Indiana from 1996 to 2001 (which used a different design for its roof structure) were not found to have any issues with cracked or broken roof welds. In a normal case, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) would have