If the presidential limousine is known as "the beast," the new official tour bus could be called "the behemoth."

The Secret Service is trucking President Obama and his senior staff through the Midwest this week on an imposing jet-black coach, outfitted with top-notch security and communications equipment to keep its occupants safe.

The White House says the $1.1 million bus, and its accompanying motorcade of more than two dozen vehicles, allows the president to visit "real people in real places" that wouldn't otherwise be easily accessible. Obama began the three-day trip in Minnesota and ends in Illinois Wednesday.

Neither the Secret Service nor Hemphill Brothers Co., the Nashville, Tenn.-based company that built the bus, would comment on the "security additions" or what it's like inside as it rumbles along rural roads.

But some of Obama's travel companions, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the interior is "subdued," and that the president has been using the front seating area, which has two chairs and a sofa, for some parts of his travel and two other groupings of four chairs farther back in the bus for others.