SAN ANTONIO — HOLT Truck Centers, a HOLT Group operating company, announced today that it has acquired Kyrish Truck Centers, a leading provider of new and used on-highway trucks that operates 20 International Motors, Fleetrite Truck Parts, Idealease, and Longhorn Bus dealerships and service centers in Texas.
The acquisition brings the combined number of HOLT Truck Centers locations to 35, making it the third largest International Motors dealership in the United States, a significant milestone for the company’s growth and innovation.
HOLT Truck Centers is an authorized dealer for International, IC Bus, and Idealease at dealerships in Oklahoma and in North and East Texas. The company also operates seven sales and service locations across Texas, providing comprehensive parts and service for all makes of trucks, RVs, and trailers, including engine rebuilds, diagnostics, maintenance, and emergency services like brakes, drivelines, and transmissions.
“As a family-owned company, this acquisition marks an important milestone in our growth and allows us to expand while staying true to our roots,” said Bert Fulgium, senior vice president of HOLT Group. “Our commitment to putting our customers first remains at the heart of everything we do. We’re proud to welcome Kyrish Truck Centers into our family. Together, we will continue to provide the same level of service and dedication that define us.”
Headquartered in Houston, Kyrish Truck Centers has been family-owned and operated since 1976, selling medium-duty, heavy-duty, and severe-service duty trucks, and leading Texas as an International and IC Bus dealer.
With this acquisition, HOLT Truck Centers will expand its presence in Texas to locations in Austin, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley. The 550 current Kyrish Truck Center employees will become employees of HOLT Truck Centers and will continue to operate from current locations. Longhorn Bus will continue to operate under that brand and is the authorized IC Bus dealer throughout Texas.
HOLT Truck Centers is the authorized International and Idealease dealer in Oklahoma, North Texas, and East Texas. Additionally, HOLT Truck Centers has dedicated truck engine service bays throughout its full-service facilities, with the necessary components to provide bumper-to-bumper diagnostics, maintenance, and emergency service, including brakes, drivelines and transmissions for all makes and models of on-highway trucks, RVs, and buses.
With a large selection of new and used on highway trucks, trailers and specialty equipment, HOLT Truck Centers has the inventory to meet your needs. Other manufacturers available at HOLT Truck Centers include IC Bus, Isuzu commercial trucks, Ottawa, XL Specialized, Battle Motors, Load King, and HI-VAC specialty vehicles. HOLT Truck Centers has 35 locations throughout Texas and Oklahoma.
Five individuals were recognized by the National Association of Pupil Transportation (NAPT) during its Annual Conference and Trade Show (ACTS) this weekend in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for their contributions to student transportation and safety.
Adam Johnson was formally announced Sunday as winner of the NAPT Distinguished Service Award. The executive director of transportation at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina began his transportation career in 1996, driving a school bus in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
He worked his way to the role of area transportation specialist at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and then became the director of transportation for Union County Schools in North Carolina. During this time, Johnson became a certified director of pupil transportation through the NAPT.
Adam Johnson
Between the years of 2013-2018, Johnson expanded his career working as a sales consultant for Gregory Poole Equipment in Mebane, North Carolina, selling Blue Bird school buses. He then moved to his current role, where he oversees a department of 1,100 employees that provides transportation services for 104,000 students.
Johnson credited his team for his accomplishments saying, “I’m not one who looks for individual spotlight, because all of my success is a result of the team I have assembled that rallies with me to get the work done each day. So, this recognition is to celebrate all of my team’s efforts to make our department shine.”
School Transportation News asked each NAPT award winner what their advice is to other student transportation professionals. Johnson encouraged creative and outside-the-box thinking. “Don’t be afraid to think differently about your daily operations and how to motivate your staff,” said Johnson “So much of this job is built on relationships and we often miss the opportunities to create positive relationships with our teams, district leaders, and local media.”
The Special Needs Transportation Award sponsored by Q’Straint and Sure-Lok was given to Cathy Poole, Area 8 special needs transportation supervisor at Greenville County Schools in South Carolina. Poole said she was honored and so surprised to receive the award. “When you love what you do, you just do it automatically without recognition,” she said. “So, when I opened the email and read the content, I was like; Wait What? I had to read it again… then I cried. I love what I do. It starts in my heart and flows out.”
Poole said that transportation and special needs were part of her daily life as the daughter of a father who is blind and a mother who drove a school bus. In 1985, he became a student driver at the age of 16. After college and starting a family, she returned to transportation as a bus driver for students with special needs and worked as classroom aide in special needs classrooms. She said this experience inspired her to pursue the role of special needs transportation supervisor.
When reflecting on the experience leading up to winning the NAPT award, Poole said she is grateful for the managers, colleagues and a “crew of wonderful coworkers, drivers and aides” that she has worked with.
Cathy Poole
“I am not going to say this is easy, things can change in the blink of an eye and stress levels rise. However, I want to make sure that all students, transportation staff and the public travel safely to and from school daily,” she said. “If your heart is not in it, then you are only going through the motions and that is unacceptable to me.”
Poole said her advice to other student transporters is to seek out education regarding best practices, policies, procedures and legal knowledge. She noted that NAPT has “outstanding” professional development courses. “Put that knowledge to use in our work environment,” said Poole. “You may get pushback but stand strong and do it for the safety of the students, parents, schools, transportation staff and public. Reach out to other transportation professionals with questions or support. The more you learn the more you grow.”
The Continuing Education Award sponsored by Thomas Built Buses was awarded on Saturday to Jennifer Gardella, director of transportation at Rockwall Independent School District in Texas. Gardella told STN that she “was filled with so many emotions when I received the email on congrats. I’m honored, I’m excited, I’m speechless to be chosen from our NAPT transportation group.”
Gardella’s entrance to the education field began as a teacher. She told STN that her love of working with students took her behind the wheel of the yellow school bus in her own hometown that was experiencing a driver shortage. She said she enjoys problem solving at whatever role she is in and actively looks for teachable moments and ways to utilize staff resources. She praised her team at Rockwall ISD, where she just started her first year as director after serving as an assistant director at Frisco ISD, saying that every member of the team works towards a common goal of providing excellent service for the students.
Gardella stressed the importance of finding a good team of individuals to build relationships and find solutions in the often-stressful field of student transportation. “Transportation is an ever-changing busy environment, and everyone needs a way to release the stress of the multi-tasking job. I know with every decision I have made I have many walking with me. It takes a village to keep the school bus rolling in the right direction.”
Jennifer Gardella
Danielle Bedsaul is the recipient of the School Bus Driver Training & Safety Award sponsored by IC Bus and was also recognized on Saturday As supervisor of transportation at Harford County Public Schools (HCPS) in Maryland, Bedsaul said a goal of hers has been to win a NAPT award, as her district has been recognized by the organization twice before, once in 2002 and in 2006.
“HCPS is always striving to improve our safety program for training our school bus drivers and attendants. However, we have realized that the training really needs to extend beyond our drivers and attendants,” she said. “We need to educate the students, parents, schools, and the community about the safety measures that need to take place to keep our students safe.”
Bedsaul’s entered the world of transportation in 2004, when she applied for the job of receptionist at the HCPS Transportation department.
“I’m always telling people that I thought the transportation department sounded like a boring place to work, and I genuinely thought I would take the position and then move to another department or school when another opportunity arose,” she shared. “I’m still waiting for a boring day. There are none in transportation!”
Danielle Bedsaul
After working one year as the receptionist, Bedsaul became the district’s coordinator for special needs transportation. A year later, she was named the supervisor of transportation and has held the position for 18 years.
Bedsaul noted that drivers and attendants are transportation’s key assets as they are the ones interacting with the students every day. “My advice to other transportation professionals would be to be an active listener to your team members, drivers, attendants, schools, parents, and students. Ask them what they need to continue to enhance safety and training. Often drivers and attendants say they want “better communication”, and people often interpret that as newsletters, e-mails, memos, etc. But what they often want is someone to listen to them…really listen to them and their concerns. And we really need to do that because they are the ones out on the roads every day with our students.”
Growing up in Southern California, Saxon Metzger and his brother Ayda Donne — now 29 and 26 — didn’t think much about their Indigenous heritage in Oklahoma. Their great-grandmother’s family fled the reservation after her aunt saw her mother murdered during the Osage Reign of Terror, when locals brutally attacked tribal members over oil resources, as the brothers learned while researching the family history.
In the past decade, the brothers began exploring this history, including the fossil-fuel linked violence and exploitation recently showcased in the film “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Today, the Osage Nation is home to the country’s highest concentration of abandoned, uncapped oil and gas wells, which continue to leak methane and other dangerous pollutants.
Now, Metzger and Donne are seeking to connect with and give back to the Osage Nation and other tribal communities by making sure clean energy does not leave its own legacy of abandonment or disinvestment.
Eighth Generation Consulting, an organization Metzger founded, aims to provide solar decommissioning workforce training and project management, as well as promote solar installation.
“Tribal nations, along with many other historically disenfranchised communities, are justifiably skeptical of development that doesn’t fully acknowledge its potential shortcomings, having been bearing the brunt of fossil fuels,” Metzger said.
Osage Nation Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear has officially pledged support for the brothers’ vision. In March, Eighth Generation won a U.S. Department of Energy Community Energy Innovation concept phase prize, meaning a $100,000 grant, mentorship and the chance for more DOE funding. Metzger was also recently awarded a Grid Alternatives Tribal Energy Innovators Fellowship, which comes with $50,000 and mentorship, and he is a finalist for MIT’s Solve Global Challenges Indigenous Communities Fellowship program.
Family roots
Metzger studied economics at Southern Illinois University and the University of Utah, then returned to Southern Illinois to help facilitate the deployment of solar in the largely rural, lower-income region.
He was program director for the nonprofit Solarize Southern Illinois, then worked as a project developer for StraightUp Solar, a residential and commercial solar installer focused on underserved areas in Illinois and Missouri. Metzger got an MBA with an emphasis in sustainability from Wilmington University, then worked for a decommissioning company in California.
Striking out on his own, he co-founded a company called Polaris Ecosystems that does solar decommissioning project management and consulting. Polaris is under contract to support commercial and utility-scale repowering in California and Texas, Metzger said, declining to give more details because of confidentiality clauses in the contracts.
The company collaborated with a Georgia solar waste management company called Green Clean Solar, whose founder, Emilie Oxel O’Leary, said she plans to partner with Polaris on more contracts. Her company has found ways to reuse solar packaging and components – for example, using thousands of cardboard boxes from solar delivery as mulch for a tree nursery in Hawaii, where landfill space is especially scarce.
“Saxon and I find these solutions together. We find sustainability. We bring circularity to our conversations,” she said. “Very few [companies] do what we do. These billion-dollar companies have never stopped and thought about this.”
Metzger now leads Eighth Generation and Polaris from Chicago, while also teaching a sustainable business class at Wilmington University.
Donne is in charge of grant-writing for Eighth Generation, while pursuing his doctorate in English literature at New York University, with a focus on Indigenous literature and environmental justice. Donne also collaborates with NYU professor and toxicologist Judith Zelikoff, doing blood and urine testing and health workshops with the Ramapough Lenape Nation in New Jersey, who face serious health threats from a former Ford Motor Company illegal dump that is now a Superfund site. Donne hopes to further intertwine the humanities and STEM sides of academia in pursuit of environmental and energy justice for tribes.
“My family is very scarred by what happened during the reign of terror. They tried to run” from that legacy, said Donne, who also works as chief librarian at the International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma. “But repressing things like that rarely works, rarely protects you for very long. I like to think that Saxon and my work is kind of a departure from that history of denying our identity and running from the pain that’s in our family.”
On visits to the Osage Nation, the brothers say they’ve recognized the cultural as well as economic importance that fossil fuels still hold for the tribe. They strive to acknowledge and respect this dynamic while promoting clean energy. The tribe currently has no large-scale solar on its land, and this year a federal judge ruled that a controversial wind farm must be removed because it failed to get proper permits a decade ago. The tribe has long opposed the wind farm, which was built on sacred land.
“We’re trying to plug into the existing things that they’re doing, and not show up and say, ‘Hey, we know what the solution is,’” said Metzger. “This is my tribe, these are my folks, my culture, my people. But I am approaching it with the understanding that to a certain degree, I’m also an outsider from a market that they don’t have access to.”
Metzger added that when he first visited the Osage Nation, “I didn’t see a single solar panel, on the entirety of the reservation. I looked for it. I was shocked. It was one of the few places I’ve ever seen that there were no Trump flags, and there were no solar panels.”
Metzger said that it is still likely a long road to installing solar on the reservation, but he’s been encouraged by tribal leaders, and received a letter of support in July from Osage Chief Standing Bear.
A growing need
More than half of states have decommissioning policies that require financial assurances be put up in advance, according to a 2023 year-end report by the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center and DSIRE. Nineteen states have no state-level decommissioning policies at all, the report shows, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
“When it comes to assurance policies, you want to make sure landowners won’t be stuck with the bill at the end of the day, a dine-and-dash situation,” said Justin Lindemann, a co-author of the report and policy analyst at North Carolina State University’s Clean Energy Technology Center. “In most states, you have to have these finances in place well before the project decommissions.”
Solar project contracts and permits typically include a decommissioning estimate. In states with financial assurance requirements, developers are usually required to put up incremental amounts of financing over time for decommissioning, so that there is not a major financial burden tacked on to the project’s startup cost.
Metzger said that in his experience, estimates can be unrealistically low, a situation that in the near-term can benefit everyone, as the project cost appears lower.
“The reality is that our industry doesn’t really want to have that conversation” about decommissioning costs and logistics, “because a developer, if they included the full cost of decommissioning, would not sell as many projects,” Metzger said. “No one really wants to hear that the project is going to cost more.”
Lindemann said he hasn’t seen major problems with low-balled estimates, but there still have been relatively few large-scale decommissions. State laws and policies can try to ensure that estimates are accurate and large enough financial assurances are available. For example, Ohio requires that estimates be revised periodically, and if the estimate has increased, the required bond must be increased too.
Ideological opponents of solar have stoked fears about solar panels filling up landfills and presenting hazardous waste. Those concerns are often exaggerated, as solar panels are made up primarily of steel and glass and the toxic compounds in the cells present relatively little risk, experts say. Even as solar farms expand exponentially, solar waste will still be much smaller than other waste streams, like construction debris and municipal garbage.
Nonetheless, responsible and smooth decommissioning is crucial for the industry to thrive, experts agree.
“We live in a social media environment where bad stories, singular bad examples do spread,” said Lindemann. “We need to make sure that relationships don’t get strained because of a lack of direction regarding deconstruction and decommission. Do people involved in or impacted by a project understand what’s in front of them 20 to 25 years down the line? That level of trust and transparency can be built, and comprehensive directives from states and other entities provide the first step.”
In 2023, almost 33 GW of solar were installed nationwide, and solar deployment is only expected to keep growing.
“In order to handle that, it’s important to make sure state and local governments have the right rules in place to handle mass decommissioning,” said Lindemann.
Many challenges
Metzger notes there are many costs and logistics to decommissioning that can be easy to overlook: the need to remove fences and drive over fields to haul panels off, lodging for workers, renting equipment like pile drivers, dealing with buried electrical conduit or other hazards.
“If you look at a site, there isn’t one solution,” Metzger said. “Say you have 20,000 panels, that’s a bunch of metal. How heavy is that? What kind of tractor trailers are you going to need to pull it? What about the labor, how many 40-pound panels can someone lift in an hour?”
Metzger and Donne are developing a decommissioning workforce training curriculum, and hope to eventually train Osage tribal members and others in various aspects of decommissioning work and project management.
“We’re thinking about what this is going to look like for our tribe in 100 years,” said Donne. “Are these structural resources available when Saxon and I are long gone?”
That perspective is what inspired the name Eighth Generation, Metzger explains.
“It’s often cited as an indigenous principle to think of an action through seven generations of impact, and that phrase always reminded me that some problems just won’t show up until the eighth generation,” he said.
“And it feels like that is what’s happening here, as we’re staring down millions of panels annually needing decommissioning. It’s all solvable problems to an industry that genuinely is making the world a better place. We need to follow through on the promise we made as an industry to be meaningfully different than previous energy systems, and taking care of our legacy assets is a necessary component of that.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story described Eighth Generation Consulting as a nonprofit; it is a for-profit entity that is exploring nonprofit status.
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