Upon Cleveland's inauguration as a county in April 1974, the six-year-old Teesside Municipal Transport's operations were brought together with bus operators in the other three boroughs, with the exception of Hartlepool Borough Transport, and a joint council committee named Cleveland Transit was formed.

[1][2] The municipally-owned company operated bus and coach services across the new county for the next twelve years, adopting a green and primrose livery for its fleet.

[1] Cleveland Transit standardised on a fleet of Northern Counties-bodied Leyland Fleetlines, which were rebodied in the 1980s,[3] Bristol VRs and Dennis Dominator double-decker buses and Leyland Leopard single-decks in this period,[2] also experimentally operating a Rolls Royce-engined Leyland Fleetline converted to run on liquid petroleum gas, the first LPG-powered double-decker in the United Kingdom, in the mid-1970s.

[11] Cleveland Transit purchased Kingston upon Hull City Transport (KHCT), a former municipal bus operator located in the non-metropolitan county of Humberside that was losing £100,000 a month, from the city council for over £2 million in December 1993.

[14] The Cleveland Transit identity was originally retained by Stagecoach for a short period, with new Northern Counties Palatine bodied Volvo Olympians being delivered with 'Part of the Stagecoach Group' slogans on the Cleveland Transit logos,[15][16] however full Stagecoach identity began to be adopted for the Cleveland Transit fleet from 1995 onwards.