A 50,000-square-foot warehouse on the Burroughs campus in Plymouth Township has become the new home of a bus unlike anything else built in North America. Pareto Mobility has opened a manufacturing and assembly facility there to produce Step-Free, a commercial bus the company describes as America's first fully flat, low-floor model, with ramp-based boarding and room for up to four wheelchair users at once.
The facility sits at 13150 Haggerty Rd. B3-100, according to dbusiness.com, and will handle engineering, assembly and production under one roof. The outlet reports the opening also marks a return of commercial bus manufacturing to Michigan five years after Champion Bus stopped operating in the state in 2021. Per WXYZ 7 News Detroit, Pareto Mobility operates from the Plymouth Township warehouse and is already creating jobs in the township.
Step-Free's defining feature is its floor: it has a fully flat passenger floor with no interior steps or disruptive transitions, dbusiness.com reports, letting riders and wheelchair users move the full length of the bus without obstruction. WXYZ reports that, per AJ Kumar, the bus has no steps and allows passengers to sit anywhere in the vehicle, and that the design is totally flat from front to back, helping people using wheelchairs, walkers and other mobility devices board without needing a wheelchair lift.
A Founder Who Wants Accessibility to Be the Default
The project is led by AJ Kumar, described in a release carried by PR Newswire as a first-generation immigrant, inventor, founder and CEO of Pareto Mobility. That release notes the bus's low entrance and ramp-based boarding system replaces traditional wheelchair lifts. Per WXYZ, Kumar said the company began as a solution to a transportation-industry problem, and he wants accessibility to become the standard rather than an add-on.
Kumar also supports manufacturing the bus locally in Michigan, according to WXYZ's reporting. The same report states Pareto Mobility produces what its owner says is the first fully flat-floor commercial bus available in North America. The dbusiness.com report frames the company's broader goal as making low-floor accessibility a mainstream feature, not a costly specialty option, in the commercial bus market.
Beyond the bus itself, Kumar says he has invented seven technologies that have been granted U.S. patents, with four more applications pending, per dbusiness.com. He has also said Pareto Mobility will sell Step-Free vehicles through dealers nationwide and deliver them across the United States and Canada, the outlet reports.
New Workers Get a Fast Start
The Plymouth Township plant is also giving young workers an unusually fast introduction to manufacturing. WXYZ reports that Ferdinando Tijerina, who moved to Michigan from Texas, started his first job at Pareto Mobility and is gaining hands-on experience typically acquired over roughly 10 years in the field. Roland Hill, who graduated in 2023, also started his first job at the company, according to the same report. WXYZ describes Pareto Mobility as a workplace employing young graduates entering the workforce, combining technology, research and light manufacturing under one roof.
Filling a Once-Vacant Burroughs Plant
The building itself carries its own local history. WXYZ reports the Burroughs Corporation manufacturing plant was once vacant before Pareto Mobility moved in, and that Burroughs occupied the Plymouth Township plant for decades, specializing in engineering for banking equipment. Wes Graff, president of the Plymouth Community Chamber of Commerce, welcomed Pareto Mobility as an addition to the Plymouth area, per WXYZ's report.
Chuck Curmi, supervisor of Plymouth Township, described Pareto Mobility as the kind of new business the township wants, according to the same WXYZ report. For federal regulators, the design direction Pareto Mobility has taken lines up with existing guidance: the Federal Transit Administration states that wheelchair loading is best facilitated by level loading, and that if level loading is not possible, a low-floor bus with ramp extension is the next-best alternative. Separate FTA guidance notes that federal rule 49 CFR Part 38 still requires wheelchair lifts to carry a minimum design load of 600 pounds and accommodate a wheelchair measuring 30 inches by 48 inches, a standard that applies to the lift-equipped buses Step-Free is designed to bypass.
