A litany of troubles drives a Brooklyn bus company into Chapter 11; nightly visits from the repo man
It's hard to lose a school bus. But when a driver for Caravan Transit scoured the company's Brooklyn yard early one morning in August, he couldn't find his vehicle.
So he called General Manager Edwin Maldonado. "You're blind, it's gotta be there," Mr. Maldonado said to himself. "Just check again," he told the driver. The driver checked again. No sign of his bus.
Mr. Maldonado rushed to Caravan's headquarters and soon realized that 24 other buses were missing. The wire for the security camera perched above the front entrance had been sliced. The steel chain that secured the yard's sliding gate had been cut. He called the police.
But it turned out that creditors, not criminals, were the culprits. The buses had been repossessed.
When another 13 buses vanished in the middle of the night less than a month later, Caravan owner Jeffrey DeStefano realized his time was running out. Some $2 million in debt, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month. read more
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