Founded in 1918 in Mitchell, Indiana, the company produced a variety of vehicles, with the majority of production consisting of yellow school buses for the United States and Canada.

Several of Carpenter's ideas were adopted, including shatterproof safety glass, steel seat frames, and a fold-out stop sign.

During the World War II moratorium on private-sector vehicle manufacturing, Carpenter became a bus supplier for the US Army and US Navy, becoming a source of buses for military training facilities across the United States.

[3] As with other manufacturers, Carpenter conventional-style buses in the early 1950s were available on a variety of chassis, including Chevrolet/GMC, Ford, Dodge, International Harvester, Mack, REO, Diamond T, Studebaker, and White.

Although one of the larger school bus manufacturers, Carpenter allowed for a great deal of specialization and available options for a purchaser.

[3] In 1990, Indianapolis-based businessman Dr. Beurt SerVaas formed a holding company (CBW, Inc) to acquire Carpenter Body Works.

During the acquisition, the product line was called "the Cadillac of school buses";[3] as such, the company had high hopes for the future based on its moves early in the 1990s.

In May 1991, Carpenter purchased the tooling, product rights, and intellectual property of Crown Coach, a California-based manufacturer that had closed its doors two months prior.

[3] The original intent of the company was to restart production of the Crown Supercoach Series II under the Carpenter name, but the complexity of its unibody construction proved too expensive for mass production (the purchase price of the original Series II was over $125,000 in 1990, nearly twice as high as a competitive Blue Bird or Thomas).

Far more modern than its predecessor, the Coach utilized a chassis manufactured by the Crane Carrier Company of Tulsa, OK and was equipped with a Detroit Diesel 6v92 coupled with an Allison transmission.

The same year, Carpenter leased the former facilities of Wayne Corporation (closed in 1992), moving company operations to Richmond, Indiana.

Along with restarting a larger, more advanced facility, the company inherited the leadership and workforce of the former Wayne operations, bringing considerable experience and knowledge of the plant and industry to the effort.

The Crown Classic inherited some parts from the Wayne Lifeguard, including its windshield, entry door, and driver's switch panel.

In adapting to the equipment at the Richmond plant, a change to the techniques of welding the roof joints from the procedures used before at Mitchell would later prove vital in excluding Crown by Carpenter products from containing a crucial structural flaw.

[6] To make the option possible, the floor of the Crown RE was angled upward in the rear portion of the bus (to gain height over the engine compartment).

[7] In place of cash payment for the development of the Crown FE/RE, Carpenter offered chassis manufacturer Spartan Motors a ⅓ stake of the company in 1996.

Distinguished by its fully vertical rear body, larger entry and emergency doors, a redesigned windshield, and an all-new drivers area (with nearly all controls shared with the Wayne Lifeguard).

Intended as the flagship of the new Carpenter product lineup, the 2001 Chancellor RE rear-engine Type D (transit-style) school bus was built on a Spartan Motors chassis.

From all reports, the Chancellor was well-received, incorporating many components and features long desired by school bus operating and maintenance personnel.

Also, Spartan had been serving lower quantity and higher margin markets for similar products used for high-end Class A motor homes as well as fire and rescue apparatus.

This was a familiar dilemma, the same one which earlier had helped seal the fate of the Crown and Gillig coaches on the West Coast, as well as the entry of competitor Blue Bird into the mass-transit market during the 1970s.

For almost 20 years, Carpenter had been struggling between a variety of factors, including declining market share, reputation, and company finances.

Though Spartan Motors considered its investment in Carpenter profitable in the long term, the parent company felt that school bus production itself was too much of a financial risk.

[12] Following the 2003 accident, subsequent inspections of Carpenter school buses by operators in various parts of the United States revealed cracked and broken welds in their roof structures; the problem was not unique to the vehicle involved in the rollover crash.

In the initial investigation, the problem of cracked and broken roof welds were found in each type of Carpenter buses built at the Mitchell, Indiana facility prior to its 1995 closure.

[12] In a normal case, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) would have used the findings as part of a full-scale investigation.

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC has a thirty-six passenger school bus built by Carpenter Body Works in 1936 on a chassis made by Dodge in 1939.

The bus carried students to the grade school in Martinsburg, Indiana from 1940 to 1946, and was owned and driven by Russell Bishop during that period.