It is pretty stupid in a sense (especially for us, when we're looking for decent used buses fairly cheap), but the numbers don't lie.
A new bus runs around $80,000 (and up...I think $100,000 is a fair estimate.)
It makes little difference if they sell the old one for $1,000 as scrap, or $3,000 to some dealer (or one of us) as long as the grant for a new, cleaner bus is more then the difference (and I'd guess it's more then the difference.) Most of these are EPA grants where the old bus has to be taken off the road to be eligible for the grant.
200,000 miles at 7mpg will burn 28,571 gallons of diesel per bus. (The fuel cost alone is $75,000.)
Heres 25,000 gallons of fuel.
Thats a lot. When it comes to a fleet of buses, that starts to multiply fast.
For a skoolie it doesn't matter, since it will never see that much mileage, but for a fleet of 20-50 buses, its a bit different.