Ready for Back to School: Delivering 100% Route Coverage in Rockford
As students and families prepare for another school year, Zum is ready to welcome them back.
Our teams have spent the summer preparing for the first day of school — recruiting and training drivers, conducting dry runs, and completing the operational testing necessary to deliver safe, reliable service from day one.
Our number one priority is ensuring students get to and from school safely and on time. For many students, when the yellow school bus doesn’t arrive, they don’t get to school. That’s why 100% route coverage is so important — and why Zum builds contingency planning into our back-to-school preparations.
In Rockford, Zum continues to actively recruit local drivers and move qualified candidates through the state-required training and certification process. To ensure every route is covered while local drivers complete their required training and certification, Zum temporarily brought in 24 experienced, certified drivers as part of its 180-driver team from other markets approximately a week and a half before the start of school. Since arriving, these drivers have been conducting dry runs and practicing their assigned routes to ensure they are fully prepared to provide safe, reliable service from day one. This temporary measure allows Zum to maintain full route coverage while continuing to recruit, train, and certify local drivers.
This is a temporary operational measure designed with one goal in mind: ensuring students have reliable access to school from the very first day. Zum will continue recruiting, hiring, and training locally as these temporary drivers transition out.
We are proud to report that Zum is prepared to deliver 100% route coverage for the first day of school tomorrow.
Back to school is the culmination of months of preparation, but it’s also what our teams prepare for every day: making sure every student has a safe, reliable ride to school and arrives ready to learn.
We look forward to a great school year in Rockford.