Skip To Main Content

WALK IN THEIR SHOES: Bus Mechanic Mitch Honey

There are 82 different vehicles that the Ferndale School District owns and operates. It’s more than just a fleet of school buses – that number also includes vans for athletics and special education, trucks for the maintenance department, tractors for the groundskeeping crew, and so on.

“If it’s got wheels and is owned by the schools, we’ll work on it,” said mechanic Mitch Honey. “It’s a lot to keep us busy, to say the least!”

Since 2022, Honey and fellow mechanic Rob Madero have worked behind the scenes to make sure Ferndale students get to and from school safely. It’s something he takes pride in. In fact, the Washington State Patrol sent his team a letter of recognition last year for passing their inspections with a success rate of over 95%.

“This was really gratifying to receive,” Honey said. “It’s cool to be able to put my name on this and say, ‘We do this and do it well.’”

Honey spent much of his childhood in Lynden, where his great-grandfather (an “old-school gearhead,” according to Honey) recalled stories of working on classic DeSotos, Studebakers, and Lincolns at a dealership. By the time he was a teenager, he was already tinkering around.

“I was turning wrenches on old farm equipment, quads, dirt bikes – whatever I could get my hands on,” Honey said.

After attending diesel mechanic school and working at Northwest Diesel Power as a boat mechanic, Honey joined the Ferndale School District crew in 2018. Other than a brief stint in the private sector, he’s been working here ever since.

One unique aspect of being a school transportation mechanic is that they become the authority on vehicles that differ wildly from a typical car. For example, a school bus has a mile and a half of electrical wire inside it.

“I’ve become an expert in this niche area that not a lot of other people know, and there’s a lot of nuance to buses that you don’t find in a lot of other wrench-turning,” Honey said.

The mechanic team receives requests every day from school transportation staff via request slips. These requests can range from replacing a headlight to changing the oil to replacing a battery. The mechanics will also inspect any new vehicles before they hit the roads.

“If there’s going to be kids on a new bus, I need to be 100% confident that it will be solid before it leaves,” Honey said.

Lewann Eggert, Director of Transportation for Ferndale School District, praised Honey’s work and said the whole department loves him.

“Mitch has done an amazing job for us,” she said. “He’s found ways to save money and has been an amazing asset to our school district.”

Honey feels similarly about Eggert and his job at Ferndale School District.

“It’s a blast working here,” he said. “We have a good time, and it’s great to have a boss that supports me.”