The Crown Coach Corporation (founded as the Crown Carriage Company) is a defunct American bus manufacturer. Founded in 1904, the company was best known for its Supercoach range of yellow school buses and motorcoaches; the former vehicles were marketed throughout the West Coast of the United States. Competing alongside Gillig Corporation and similar its Gillig Transit Coach, the two companies supplied California with school buses nearly exclusively into the 1980s. Crown also was the manufacturer of custom-built vehicles derived from its buses, including the Firecoach line of fire apparatus. For 80 years, Crown was headquartered in Los Angeles, California; in 1984, the company relocated its headquarters and manufacturing to Chino, California, where it operated until its closure. In March 1991, Crown Coach (then a subsidiary of GE Railcar) ended operations as a result of declining demand for school buses at the time. History 1904–1920: Wagons to school buses At the beginning of the 20th century, Don M. Brockway found himself working at the first hardware store in Los Angeles, California. To supplement its income, the hardware store sold parts for wagons and carriages. In 1904, Brockway founded his own company, as Crown Carriage Company began life producing horse-drawn carriages. While the first vehicles were built in a wooden shed, the company moved to a brick factory in 1910. After 1910, as carriages gradually became "horseless", Crown experimented with building truck bodies. In 1916, the company built its first bus body for transit use; it was an open-air design heavily influenced by wagon design. After World War I, Crown built its first body for school bus use. 1921–1949: Airplanes, metal bodies, and Supercoaches In 1921, a major shift in company production occurred as Murillo M. ("Brock") Brockway, the son of the company founder, was put in charge of school bus production. Viewing school buses as a growth market in the suburbs of southern California, Brockway discontinued all wagon production in favor of bus and truck body production. To expand production and improve shipping of its vehicles, a much larger factory in Los Angeles was opened in 1923. In pursuit of developing heavier-duty and higher-capacity school buses, Crown introduced the first school bus with dual rear wheels in 1927 (on a Reo chassis). In 1930, it produced its first all-metal school bus body (on a Mack chassis), with a 43-passenger capacity. In 1929, Aircraft Division of the Crown Carriage Co. licensed the