Large transportation company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Along with a number of high-profile airline bankruptcies throughout 2025, companies providing bus and other road transportation services have also struggled with an economic downturn and a changing market.

Coach USA, the parent company behind bus brands like Megabus and Short Line, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2024 with debts of between $100 and $500 million before eventually being bought out by New York holding company The Renco Group.

After a district court declared it bankrupt in September 2025, German bus company Bernie Reisen had to cancel various student and local regional city trips already booked by customers.

Peoria Charter Coach bus company files for bankruptcy over looming Covid debt

The latest bus operator to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. is Illinois-based Peoria Charter Coach. The filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of Illinois shows that the company has between 50 creditors and less than $10 million in both assets and liabilities.

Peoria Charter Coach provides bus routes from the city in the southeast of the state to destinations including downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport. According to Chief Executive James Wang, the company is unable to make the final lump payment on a loan whose interest rate rose from 3.1% to 8.5%, and which kept the company operating during the Covid pandemic.

“This fall, it became clear that filing for reorganization was our best option and in the best interest of our customers, employees, vendors, and the company’s long-term future,” Wang said in a statement to the local Peoria Journal Star.

The Subchapter V section of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Peoria allows a company with less than $2.75 million in total assets to file for a simplified form of bankruptcy protection that will allow it to continue operations.

That is Peoria Charter’s stated goal, and according to Wang, bus routes will continue to run unaffected as it seeks to restructure.

The company behind brands like Megabus also filed for bankruptcy in June 2024.

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“It is a tool to reorganize, not shut down”: Peoria Charter CEO

“It is a tool to reorganize, not shut down,” Wang said to the outlet. “Our employees, our services, and our standards of quality remain unaffected. We are still here. Still running buses. Still committed to safety, reliability, and the communities we serve.”

Peoria Charter also sells a number of routes to large Illinois universities such as Northwestern and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and from these schools to a number of suburbs to which many students need to travel over the holidays.

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Wang added that in the five years since the travel shutdown during Covid, ridership has stayed steady and in many cases even increased. However, the rising price of gas and other operational costs made its past debt increasingly difficult to escape.

He further classified Peoria Charter’s current state as being one of “many small businesses across the country which are facing this same Covid hangover.”