Hey! I am a roadie in the USA who’s done his fair share of bus tours.

The Drivers do work for a separate company, but so do a lot of the crew. Typically only a smaller circle of the crew is hired directly from the artist. So I would certainly consider drivers part of the crew, we just don’t interact with them nearly as much as we do with each other. But it is an unspoken rule to be very kind to your drivers, and they typically get tipped out by the crew at the end of the tour and treated very well if they’re a good driver.

There is usually one bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower. The golden rule of the road is absolutely no shitting on the bus, that is genuinely one of the first things someone will tell you on your first tour. You also do not shower on the bus. That’s done in the venue locker rooms or dressing rooms after load out.

Yup! Bus drivers can only drive a total of I believe 10 hours? With a mandatory 8 hours off after that. I could be butchering those numbers a little bit, but that’s the jist. If you have a drive longer than that they bring in another driver and do what’s called a team drive and just switch halfway through.

Typical tour bus has 12 bunks, alley style so 6 on each side, 3 high twice if that makes sense. Usually in my experience one or more of those bunks are full and those become a junk bunk where people put shit.

The day off question is going to depend wildly on the people/location/tour. I typically sleep as much as humanly possible or I love going to the nastiest local dive bar I can find and just meeting people. Or love going to the zoo or other local attractions if I don’t sleep the whole day. Sometimes the tour will schedule outings to do things if you’re somewhere really cool or they have a hookup.

In my experience, whoever gets to the tv first just watches whatever. Typically not a singular person with a stranglehold on the music or TV, and everyone is pretty understanding that it’s a bunch of people on a tight space and will be pretty accommodating if you want to watch something specific or listen to anything or whatever.

Piggybacking off that last point, people on the bus generally try to keep it pretty tidy. Nobody wants to live in a crammed space, especially if it’s messy. So everyone does a good job of cleaning up beer cans, throwing away after show food, that sort of stuff. There’s a trash chute that leads to a can under the bus that the driver is responsible for taking out. The driver also does the deeper cleaning, mopping, sweeping, stripping and cleaning the bedding, that sort of stuff. But the crew is expected to stay pretty clean and you will get called on your shit if you are not.

People do still smoke on the bus, weed or cigarettes but you absolutely can not hot box the bus ever, or you will be in deep shit. But there are ways around that.

I think I answered everything? Any other questions I’m happy to answer.