Pensacola's 'Mr. Bus Driver' has millions watching on TikTok, but his No. 1 fans are students

Bus drivers may seem like unlikely candidates for stardom. But Pensacola's Cordarius Jones, known as "Mr. Bus Driver," is making quite the name for himself.

Videos the 29-year-old has made and posted on social media about life as an Escambia County School District bus driver have been seen by millions. Just one of his TikTok videos alone amassed 2.9 million views.

But even more importantly, Jones goes above and beyond his job's duties in how he cares for the elementary and middle school students who ride his bus, trying to give them a daily dose of kindness whenever those big doors swing open and they step onto his yellow bus.

"You never know what these kids are going through at home," Jones said. "When they get on here, you don't know if they are coming from an unstable home, getting yelled at ... then next thing you know, they're on the bus, and you don't want them to be getting the exact same thing. On the short ride I give them, I try to make it as positive as possible."

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Jones memorizes the faces of every one of his dozens of regular riders and bids them "good morning" by name, every morning.

"By addressing them by name, it builds that personal relationship with you," Jones said.

He decorates the interior of his bus with pictures and inspirational quotes, picked by theme, which he swaps out for a new aesthetic every fall.

"I joke with them," he said. "I tell them, 'I don't want to drive a dull bus. I don't want you to come in and see a tan ceiling. I want you to see something that brightens your day.'"

Around select holidays, he outfits his bus with speakers.

"And actually what I did this year for Christmas was, me and another bus driver, we played Christmas music, but I played it on an external speaker," Jones said. "You're pulling up to the bus stop and you're hearing Jingle Bells or this Christmas song or that one.

"I would just play it the entire year-round, but people in the neighborhoods, they'd stop and stare at you like you were crazy."

'A funny guy with a big heart'

Jones frequently alternates between differing routes for various district schools, but his mainstays are West Pensacola Elementary School and Workman Middle School.

This year, he went with a combo theme of Mario and Dr. Seuss to decorate the interior of his bus.

Cutout and colorful individual letters pasted to the bus ceiling spell out the quote Dr. Seuss quotes such as: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

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Pictures of the Cat in the Hat and Thing 2 stand proudly, taped on the ceiling, near the texts.

Images of Mario and Luigi, Yoshi and flying turtle shells, gold coins and Mushroom ornament the vehicle's side walls just above the heads of young riders who Jones refers to as his "students."

"My students come and like to see if they can find their favorite characters," he said.

He added he was thrilled to be the first-ever member of the Escambia County School District's Transportation Department to win the district award of Stellar Employee of the Month.

His efforts as both a bus driver and educator were acknowledged by the School Board when he was handed a plaque at the board's April 19 meeting.

"Mr. Cordarius Jones is a bus operator with a positive message for both students and parents. The inside of Jones' bus looks like a classroom," Escambia County Superintendent Tim Smith said at the award ceremony. "Lessons about kindness, history, facts and the like can be seen affixed to the ceiling of the bus. Cordarius Jones is a funny guy with a big heart."

Bus driver job helped Jones cope with grief

Jones said he gives so much of himself to the students because without them, he still might be in a dark place in his life.

Four years ago, his grandmother passed away and grief struck him like it never had before.

"I wouldn't really call it depression. I just had my days, you know? It was unexpected to where I couldn't even process it," he recalled. "I'd be out with my friends, my family, having fun, and all of a sudden, it was in the back of my mind. I'm thinking, ‘Oh, I wonder what my grandma doing.'"

He stopped going out much but still needed to find work, and after seeing advertisements for open bus operators positions three times in one day, he took it as a sign that something or someone was steering him in the school district's direction.

"Seeing those smiling faces in the morning is something I didn't know I needed at the time," he said.

"It's like the kids lifted me up, brought a different side out of me out. Before doing this, I was the shy guy. I promise you, I was a shy guy. I hated taking pictures, I hated doing video. I didn't like seeing myself that way," Jones remembered. "And now, you can't take your camera off of me."

Birth of TikTok's @mrbusdrivercj

Jones made his first social media posts about being a bus driver when he was still in training for the new job.

"I was doing my dry run, which is practicing the route before the school year starts and put in kind of a bad neighborhood," Jones said. "The kids, they weren't excited to see the bus so they threw Popsicles at us, at the bus."

The thought that the popsicle-throwers would be his daily riders in a matter of weeks provoked some major nervousness.

"So, I posted about it, and it blew up," Jones said, adding that he received over 700 comments of support, messages to stick with it and requests that he later repost with updates of how the job was going.

Jones never looked back. He created the Facebook page "Mr. Bus Driver" on which he continued to write posts about his career and on to which he frequently uploads fun videos about student life.

"One of the videos that I liked that I did was about the middle schoolers. They'll act a certain way on the bus. On the bus, they'll be like, 'Bleep, bleep, bleep,'" he said, imitating times he has to tell students to stop cursing. "And then, when you get to the bus stop and their parents out there, they get off and start instantly acting like angels."

Jones' Facebook page has amassed over 18,000 followers. His TikTok page, @mrbusdrivercj, has over 28,800 followers.

His most popular TikTok video of all time — about "who closes the door when the bus driver gets off?" — garnered nearly 3 million views.

"A lot of my students will see the videos and start smiling," he said.

Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at colinwarrenhicks@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: TikTok videos by Pensacola's "Mr. Bus Driver" have millions of views