After talking about the bus station in Parker Street on another thread, I began to wonder if anybody had any recollections of the chaos that followed in 1986 when buses in Manchester were deregulated. The idea of this was to introduce some competition on certain bus routes across Greater Manchester, so as well as Greater Manchester Buses (or GM Buses as it was known), there were also small companies introducing mini-buses. One in particular I recall was the Bee-Line Buzz Company with its bright yellow mini-bus, but can't seem to remember the names of others.
Personally my main gripe about this was why GM Buses had to change some of the bus numbers. The bus I always caught whilst working in Piccadilly was the number 94 which ran through Chorlton-[censored]-Hardy right up to Southern Cemetery and from here went to Levenshulme. I was living in Old Trafford at the time and used to get on and off this bus on Seymour Grove. As far as I know, the 94 ran for years until deregulation when it suddenly became the number 48 going towards Levenshulme, and changed to 49 when coming back to the cemetery for some peculiar reason. This didn't last too long anyway and the number 48 was eventually decided on for both directions.
Also all the stops for that particular bus had changed in the Piccadilly area and I remember trying to get home on the first day of deregulation. I eventually found the stop but I remember everyone boarding the bus asking the driver if they passed such and such a place, and so on. It was truly chaotic for the first few days.