Ford B series

The Ford B series is a bus chassis that was manufactured by Ford Motor Company from 1948 to 1998. A variant of the medium-duty Ford F-Series, the B-series was developed for bus use. Alongside its sales in the United States and Canada, the chassis was exported worldwide for various manufacturers.

In contrast to the F-Series chassis-cab truck, the B-Series was a cowled-chassis vehicle: a bare chassis aft of the firewall, with all other bodywork supplied from a second-stage manufacturer. While primarily adopted for yellow school bus applications, the B series also saw various specialty uses.

Coinciding with the late 1996 sale of the Louisville/AeroMax heavy-truck line to Freightliner (which led to the introduction of Sterling Trucks), Ford ended cowled-chassis vehicle production after 1998. Though Ford has remained in the medium-duty segment (introducing the F-650/F-750 Super Duty for 2000), the company has not since developed a cowled-chassis derivative of the model line, instead concentrating on cutaway chassis vehicles. The role and market share of the B-series in the cowled-chassis segment was largely superseded by the Freightliner FS-65 and the Blue Bird Vision (a proprietary chassis paired with a body from its manufacturer).