On Monday 25th February 1929, Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company Limited (BMMO—Midland “Red” Motor Services) renumbered some of their long-distance services with ‘X’-prefix route numbers. At this time, Service 196 running between Birmingham, Coventry, Rugby, and Northampton was renumbered to Service X96.
On Saturday 12th April 1930, the route was extended from the Birmingham end to serve Dudley, Wolverhampton, Shifnal, Wellington, and Shrewsbury. This extension made the route one of the longest stage-carriage bus services in the country, with a length of just over 100-miles in each direction. Initially this extension was primarily on weekend journeys, with three buses to and from Shrewsbury on Saturday and Sunday, but only one bus during the week.
By 1931, a minimum fare of 6d (six old pence) was applied throughout the route to try and prevent the bus from bus becoming congested with people only making short journeys, also, the popular Anywhere Ticket could not be used. These restrictions were not in place when the route was introduced and appear to have been lifted during the wartime period.
| X | 9 | 6 |
| September | 1929 | Birmingham ↔ Coventry ↔ Northampton | |
| January | 1931 | Northampton ↔ Coventry ↔ Birmingham ↔ Shrewsbury |
On Saturday 2nd September 1967, Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company Limited (BMMO—Midland “Red” Motor Services) introduced additional short-working journeys on Service X96 corridor to provide extra capacity on the busiest parts of the route, but to avoid confusion these were given different route numbers in the range X93–X95. These were…
Service X96 had previously called at all stops, but with introduction of this new group of services all ran as Limited Stop between Coventry and Wolverhampton in both directions, and were inter-worked to give an hourly frequency between Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Shifnal. On sections of the route before and after those locations, the short-working journeys resulted in timings being less regular.
| X | 9 | 6 |
| July | 1970 | Northampton ↔ Coventry ↔ Birmingham ↔ Shrewsbury |