Darin Fiechter and Sierra Falso were crushed when the couple lost their Santa Barbara restaurant in 2011, Fiechter said.

"It was like losing a child; not that I'd ever had kids, but I could equate it to losing your favorite dog. This was our baby," Fiechter said. "We were the faces of it, we were there every night. When you lose that, you don't know what to do."

After working other jobs to make ends meet, Falso pitched a new business idea out of the blue for the couple to embark on: wine tours in a black school bus, he said.

Photos Courtesy Of Darin Fiechter

MAKE IT YOUR OWN Every couple can customize the white lettering to display any message they'd like on the outside of a Jump On The School Bus vehicle for their wedding day.

"We laughed it off, [but] we went home that night, and we're talking the next day and I'm like, 'You know it wasn't that bad of an idea. We could do something like that," Fiechter said. "School buses are relatively cheap to buy because [companies] just unload them after they get old, but they run and run. They run forever and are relatively low maintenance."

The couple bought their first school bus with the $4,000 they got when Falso sold a Rolex she'd received as a gift from an ex-boyfriend. They painted the bus black and got all the licensing and qualifications to drive the bus, he said. The couple used the bus to transport people for their own wedding on Nov. 11, 2011. Six months later, they booked their first wedding party.

Now, Jump On The School Bus has more than 20 black buses, books 200 to 300 weddings a year (making about 3,000 trips), and provides its services across the Central Coast—ranging from Ventura to San Luis Obispo counties, Fiechter said. The majority of the buses are renovated with limo-style seating so guests can face each other, and the couple can create a customized message for the outside of the bus.

"It's a privilege to be a part of people's wedding day. It's a lot of pressure though because if you screw up, you ruin someone's day," he said. "So we're riding the line every day that nothing's going to break down, which luckily they normally don't."

During the off-season, Jump On The School Bus also provides transportation for other events, like wine tastings and birthday parties, and they recently partnered with the Santa Maria-Bonita and Santa Barbara Unified school districts to help with transportation needs during the school year, Fiechter added.

Although the pandemic set the company back slightly and they had to sell 10 buses from their fleet, the company managed since people leaned toward postponing their weddings rather than canceling, Fiechter said.

Photos Courtesy Of Darin Fiechter

GETTING TO THE VENUE Jump On The School Bus founders and owners Darin Fiechter and Sierra Falso launched their transportation company in 2011, and it now serves 200 to 300 weddings a year.

"We did lose some because some people just eloped and did something smaller," he said. "So we lost about a quarter of them, but three quarters we got back, so we survived."

Normally, wedding parties with 100 to 150 people will take two to three buses on an eight-hour contract. Fiechter estimated that it costs about $2,200 for each bus, which includes transportation for everyone to and from the wedding and a deposit that acts as a gratuity. All the pickup and drop-off logistics are worked out between Jump On The School Bus and the wedding planner so there are no hiccups on the big day.

"They're supporting a mom-and-pop business, local people that afford to pay the top rate, hourly pay to their staff. That's what they're allowing us to do," Fiechter said.

Many venues on the Central Coast are now requiring wedding parties to book transportation for their guests for safety reasons, he added.

"They don't want any liability of people driving in and out. I'm surprised that there's a few venues that allow people to drive; it doesn't make sense to me," he said. "People are drawn toward buses because it's efficient and it's fun."

Fiechter and Falso used their own buses again when they celebrated their 11th wedding and company anniversary on Nov. 11, 2022—recalling all of the work they put in to create Jump On The School Bus, Fiechter said.

"If you're into numerology, which I wasn't until [later], 11-11 is like a rebirth and a cleansing, and we had just lost everything at the restaurant," he said. "It saved our lives, the bus business."

Visit jumpontheschoolbus.com to learn more about the company or to request a quote. Δ

Reach Sun Staff Writer Taylor O'Connor, from New Times' sister paper, at toconnor@santamariasun.com.