Tunisia's oldest bus builder is STIA, Société Tunisienne d'Industrie Automobile, which was founded in 1961 as a state enterprise. From 1964 to 1973 the company assembled imported CKD-vehicles. From 1974 to 1986 two Van Hool licenced bus bodies were produced and from 1987 onwards STIA also built its own models. By 2005 the Tunisian government started a privatisation proces which in 2009 led to the sale of STIA to the Marbrouk group which changed the company name to ICAR, Société les Industries de Carrossage Automobile.

SETCAR was founded in 1976 and became Tunisia's second bus builder. In collaboration with Volvo it introduced its own line of buses and coaches. The company has a capacity of 400 buses and coaches per year. It has also exported buses, among others to Senegal and Gambia.

Finaly MAN entered the Tunisian market beginning of the new Millennium in collaboration with Alpha Bus, a new name.

After independence in 1956 initially French buses were imported but soon Italian buses (FIAT) became the most important source. STIA also built most of its vehicles on FIAT and later IVECO chassis. During the 1970's and 1980's imported vehicles included new Karosa and Ikarus buses. Also, secondhand Italian, Spanish and German buses were used by the government-owned bus operators. From the beginning of the 1990's onwards virtually all public transport buses have been built in the country itself. Only in 2014 a large batch of secondhand buses was bought again, by Sfax.

Coaches were initally imported, but since STIA, SETCAR and later Alpha Bus started offering high quality coaches the majority of those are also built in Tunesia, often in collaboration with a foreign bus builder. The only sector where imported vehicles are generally used is the mini- and midibus sector, up to around 25 seats.

Old foreign buses can be found for transport of workers. These are individual purchases and one can find buses from a range of countries: Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy are all represented in the "imported buses" section.