Barber Transportation

The quality of this company is BEYOND awful. Barber Transportation is the dregs of Baltimore's transportation industry. My school booked this company for an 8th Grade Field Trip from Baltimore to Six Flags America; never again. From the moment that the bus pulled up to our school, I had immediate concerns about what we might have been getting into. Now I am not usually one to judge a book by it's cover, but when I am entrusting the lives of not just myself and my chaperones, but the lives of 30 8th graders to a transportation company, the LEAST they can do is make sure that the driver they are sending doesn't look like she just rolled off of a West Baltimore drug corner. I'm talking bright red weave, jeans that had gigantic rips all the way up showing her thighs, only wearing one glove, and a very blank look on her face. Basically, the most unprofessional-looking person imaginable.



Anyways, halfway to our destination, the bus broke down on the side of the interstate. They sent another bus to come rescue us, but then the driver got lost and drove us almost 40 minutes in the wrong direction. When I pointed this out to her, she got very defensive and tried to convince me that we were going the right way. I had to basically show her my GPS to convince her that we were waaaaay off course. I had to talk her through the entire way back on course, all the way to Six Flags. We were well over 2 hours late to our destination.



At the end of the day, she was supposed to be there at 6pm to pick up our group and have us back to our school by 7:15. At around 5:45, she called me and told me that she was stuck in traffic but on her way and that she should be there soon. When she was over 20 minutes late, I called her back to get an update about her ETA. No answer. I called again, no answer. I then informed my administrators of the situation and they tried to get in touch with Barber Transportation's office. No answer. They tried calling the bus driver as well. No answer. Nearly 2 hours later, she finally showed up at about 7:50pm with no explanation whatsoever. But there WAS, however, some random guy with her on the bus. All she said was, "you all must be hot and angry" and that was it. No explanation, no apologies, just a bluntly obvious statement and some random dude.



On the way back to Baltimore, she took the most backwards way conceivable. What should have been an hour drive turned into a nearly 2 hour bad decision. She drove like a maniac the entire way back: weaving in and out of traffic, waiting until the last second to slow down for traffic, basically all of the things you should NOT do when you have a bus full of students on board. When we were finally approaching the city on 295, it became clear that she was not going to go through the tunnel to get us back to Northeast Baltimore. I quickly asked her if she would take the tunnel, even offering to pay the toll myself so that we could just get back sooner (as parents were obviously waiting to pick up their kids), but she refused and insisted on taking us through the one of the roughest stretches that West Baltimore has to offer. This unnecessary detour easily added an extra 45 minutes onto our trip. We didn't end up back at our school until almost 10pm, nearly three hours later than we were supposed to. She never apologized for any of this, and even had the nerve to make comments to her "friend" that WE were inconveniencing HER.



Any company that has the terrible professional sense to send someone like this out to not only represent their business, but to care for the transportation of other people's children needs to be shut down IMMEDIATELY. This was the first and LAST time our school will ever use this company, and I urge anyone who reads this to not give your business to such a negligent organization.