Founded in 1909 as the Garford Motor Truck Company, Superior is best known for constructing bodies for professional cars (hearses) and school buses.

In 1925, Garford Motor Truck changed its name to the Superior Body Company and opened a new plant housing a large manufacturing facility and administrative offices.

In 1938, having achieved success and having established a dealer network of its own, Superior left the partnership with Studebaker and began building bodies on General Motors platforms.

Superior and other ambulance and funeral car manufacturers had to design new bodies and retool their factories, resulting in much higher consumer costs.

1977 also brought new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for school buses built after 1 April,[2] which increased both costs and engineering challenges.

[citation needed] At the same time, a downturn in North American school bus purchase volumes began as the children of the Baby Boom generation completed their elementary and secondary educations.

By 1980, Superior was one of the six major school bus body manufacturing companies in the United States, competing with Blue Bird, Carpenter, Thomas, Ward, and Wayne, as well as Gillig and Crown whose buses were primarily sold on the West Coast.

Bidding competition for reduced volumes became devastating to profits and even liquidity; in 1979, Ward declared bankruptcy, reorganizing as AmTran the following year, which later became IC Bus.

After Sheller-Globe announced the closure of its Lima bus and professional car manufacturing operations in 1980, several small businesses purchased portions of the assets, and carried on successfully with several product lines.

Although no legal determination of product liability was ever made, Sheller-Globe and Ford Motor Company each contributed substantially to the settlement funds for those injured and the families of those who were killed.

Reckless Disregard: Corporate Greed, Government Indifference, and the Kentucky School Bus Crash was published by Simon & Schuster of New York City.