The Basque company has grown a lot over time and now has more than 200 people in its professional team.
In a society in which equality between men and women has advanced to the point that the preparation and leadership capacity of men and women is similar, it is worth asking why women are still not present in some sectors. Only 22% of transport professionals in Europe are women, according to data published by the European Commission’s Women in Transport-EU Platform for Change. There are more and more of them, but there is still a long way to go and many barriers to overcome for them to achieve prominence in the mobility sector.
Undoubtedly, a long debate in which Idoia Cuadra Ibáñez de Elejalde, who has been at the head of the road transport company CuadraBus since 1995, has already been involved for quite some time. The company, created more than forty years ago by her father, José Luis Cuadra, has grown a lot over the years and now has more than 200 employees.
All this human team is divided between its headquarters in Amurrio (Álava), Bergara (Guipúzcoa), Etxebarri (Vizcaya) and the warehouses that the company has in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Llodio and Agurain-Salvatierra, from where they provide occasional services and regular lines at national and international level. CuadraBus has a fleet made up mostly of vehicles adapted for people with reduced mobility, from 7 to 60 seats in regular services, up to 116 seats in city buses offering shuttle services.
To this fleet of vehicles, the company has recently added a T-ONE XL, which has just left Integralia’s facilities. The minibus acquired by the Basque company has up to 22 seats and equipment created ad hoc for them, including a luggage rack, USB sockets for all passengers, individual reading lights, LED lighting and, of course, the characteristic lettering of all CuadraBus vehicles. All these requirements that CuadraBus has requested from Integralia are intended to be used for school transport, with the possibility of also using it for other types of services.
Undoubtedly, this new minibus will continue forging CuadraBus’s long journey, a company that has always been known for its high quality in details and for knowing how to anticipate the needs of its customers. This philosophy has earned CuadraBus several awards over time. Among the most outstanding awards, CuadraBus was the first Basque company to achieve quality recognition for its school, workers, urban transport and regular line services, certified by Aenor in 2012. The same year in which professionals in the bus and coach sector named it company of the year in the discretional transport category. In 2016, the Basque Institute for Women, Emakunde, accredited it as a collaborating entity in equal opportunities between men and women, making it the first road transport company in the Basque Country to achieve this.