When His City’s Transit Service Stalled, One Man Built His Own Bus Company

In 2012, Andy Didorosi bought a few buses on a whim. He owned an asset management company at the time and didn’t know exactly how he was going to use them. But the following year, the Skillman Foundation, a Detroit-based education nonprofit, approached him with funding and a need: help kids get to much-needed after-school programs in neighborhoods with very few public transit options. “I launched the Detroit Bus Company to work on transit gaps in the city of Detroit,” Didorosi says. “It’s like an insurmountable issue that we’re working to hopefully solve.” Today his company picks up hundreds of kids in six underserved neighborhoods across the city and takes them to their activities.