Marionville field temporary home for 2,000 vehicles

Rural site near Republic transport company Stein and Sons attracting attention for eye-catching, gargantuan fleet
If you drive on Lawrence 1247 off of US 60 in Marionville, you will come across a field with over 2,000 white vans, buses and other vehicles parked in neat rows over 20 acres. The field is a stock lot for Model 1, a commercial vehicle company that deals in large sales of passenger transport automotives.
Bethany Holman, the lot manager, said that the vehicles largely come to the lot straight off the assembly line.
“They come mostly factory direct,” she said, “and we sell them on a large scale. Like right now, we have 300 going out to Amazon off of our lot. We do your utility vans; we have your OATS buses and stuff like that. Most of them are wheelchair accessible BraunAbility, stuff like that. So, we’re trying to stock hospitals and airports.”
The lot is located in Marionville, Holman said, due to the work of Stein & Sons LLC, a transport company located in Republic.
“(Stein & Sons) is owned by Dave Stein … so his transport company brought them in, and Model 1 is renting the property from him as a lot,” she said.
The vehicles, Holman said, were previously held at a lot in Billings, which she called the “Billings 20.” They were moved to the Marionville lot starting around the end of September due to certain difficulties with the Billings 20.
“The land itself wasn’t (really) suitable over there,” she said. “We had a pond that (tended to) … overflow. And then, we were between the highway and the railroad tracks, and it just didn’t allow for a lot of heavy semi traffic.”
When the vehicles were first brought to the lot, Holman said, it attracted a lot of local attention. Some people, she said, weren’t happy that so many buses were parked in the lot at first, she said, but as they’ve come to better understand the purpose of the lot, they’ve become more accepting of the vehicles’ presence.
“Tons of people come,” she said, “(and) they’re very curious. I can say that a lot of people have been pretty receptive to us. Some of them are a little bit turned off by our ‘yard decorations,’ as some of them have (called) them, but once they really realize what we really do … they understand (that) this is actually a pretty cool thing to have going on in the community.”
For more information, go to www.model1.com.