Dr. D.B. “Doc” Rushing
©  Copyright, 2023, Duncan Bryant Rushing

Preface

The Overland Greyhound Lines was a regional operating carrier of the Greyhound Lines.

Contents

Introduction
The Big Picture
Background of the UP Stages
Utah Parks Company
Start of the UP Stages
Entry of the Hound
Great Expansion of the UP Stages
Interstate Coach Company
Even More Growth for the UP Stages
Eastern End
Interstate Transit Lines
Interstate Airlines
UP Railroad and the ITL
“Transcontinental” Highway Service
Extensions, Additions, and Dispositions
Competing and Contracting with the Q
From Chicago to Minneapolis and Back
Pickwick Stages
MTC and Greyhound
“One Moment, Please”
Start of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines
Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines
GLI of Delaware
Pacific Transportation Securities and the Pacific Greyhound Lines
Back to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines
Buck Travis, His California Transit Company, and His YellowaY-Pioneer Lines
End of the Line for the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines
Survival during the Great Depression
A Large Purchase by the Hound
An Even Larger Purchase by the Hound
Pool (Interline) Operations
Overland GL in 1956
Northland GL in 1956
Merger of the OGL into the NGL
Great Lakes GL in 1957
Merger of the GLGL into the NGL
Fifth Central GL and the End of the NGL
Beyond the OGL, the NGL, the GLGL, and the Fifth CGL
Conclusion
Addendum
Postscript
Related Articles
Bibliography

Introduction

          The Overland Greyhound Lines (OGL) was a regional intercity motor-coach carrier in the system of the Greyhound Lines (GL).  It was based in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.  It existed (as a distinct entity) just four years, from 1952 until ‑56, when it became merged into the Northland Greyhound Lines (NGL), a neighboring regional operating company.

          However, in 1943, during World War II (WW2), the two predecessor carriers of the OGL – the Union Pacific Stages (UPS) and the Interstate Transit Lines (ITL) – had begun to use the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Overland Greyhound Lines – with, of course, the consent (indeed, with the persuasion) of the parent Greyhound umbrella firm, The Greyhound Corporation (with an uppercase T because the was an integral part of the official name).

          That assignment of the name of the OGL (to the UPS and the ITL) took place because in 1943 the parent Greyhound firm bought one-third minority (noncontrolling) interests in those two firms.  The UPS and the ITL then (with the approval of Greyhound) used also the Greyhound dog, color scheme, and uniform clothing, and they took part in interline ticketing, interline baggage checking, and coördinated scheduling with the other components of the Greyhound Lines.  [The UP Stages, called UPS here, was always completely separate and different from the United Parcel Service (also globally abbreviated as UPS); that is, those two abbreviations are merely coincidental.]

          In 1952 The Greyhound Corporation, the Greyhound parent firm, bought the entire ownership of both the UPS and the ITL (previously just minority interests), and it next merged those two former affiliates together into itself as a single new division (using the same old name of the Overland Greyhound Lines) of the parent firm.  [If you wish, please read my article about the differences and similarities between divisions and subsidiaries of corporations.]

          Then in 1956 the parent Greyhound firm merged the Overland GL into the Northland GL.

          In the next year, 1957, Greyhound likewise merged the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines (GLGL), yet another neighboring regional operating company, into the Northland GL (including what had previously been the Overland GL), and then Greyhound renamed the newly twice-expanded NGL as the Central Division of The Greyhound Corporation (known also as the Central GL, reusing an old name, making the fifth of six uses of that name).

          [More about the Northland GL and the Great Lakes GL is available in my two articles bearing their respective names.  My article about the NGL includes much material about the background and origin of not only the NGL but also the larger overall Greyhound Lines as a whole, because many of the people and events in one story are the same people and events as in the other story, for the two stories are truly the same story.  In short, the development of the Northland GL was also the early development of The Greyhound Corporation.]

           Please bear in mind that I’m a longtime tutor, mentor, coach, guide, teacher, instructor, professor, writer, and editor, so I have some deeply ingrained tendencies to offer many tips, cautions, explanations, and reminders – to help others to deal with difficult and challenging points – so I’ve repeatedly inserted many pointers about the potentially confusing and complicating names and changes in this article.  If you continue to read here, you’ll soon see what I mean.  The repetitions help me to learn and understand material of this sort and to remember it, so maybe they’ll help you too.  I hope so.

The Big Picture

          The two predecessor firms of the Overland Greyhound Lines – that is, the UPS and the ITL – started as highway subsidiaries of two rail companies – the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad and the Chicago and Northwestern (C&NW) Railway.  The UP Stages began as a sole property of the UP Railroad alone, and the Interstate Transit Lines became a joint property of the UP Railroad and the C&NW Railway.  [The terms railroad and railway are synonymous and interchangeable with each other; some rail carriers use (in their names) the word railroad, and others use railway.]

          [Yes, I know that the official name of the C&NW Railway incorrectly included the word Northwestern as two words (“North Western”).  That use started on 07 June 1859, during the chartering process of the new firm, when one or more people involved in that activity carelessly failed to recognize that the word northwestern was properly spelled not as two words but rather as a single word (without a space).  Now in this article I take the liberty of spelling Northwestern correctly (as one word), as have many other authors and editors during the 16 intervening decades.]

          On 01 December 1943, after The Greyhound Corporation bought (from the rail firms) one-third of the capital stock of the UP Stages and of the ITL, then those two highway carriers jointly began to operate under the trade name, brand name, or service name of the Overland Greyhound Lines, as described above, in the previous (first) section, entitled “Introduction.”  In the next month, January 1944, the two majority (controlling) owners (the UP and the C&NW) of the UPS and the ITL appointed both Carl Eric Wickman and Orville Swan “Sven” Caesar, the president and the executive vice president, respectively, of The Greyhound Corporation, to the two boards of directors of the two subsidiaries (the UPS and the ITL), to represent the interests of Greyhound in the management of them.

          During the time of the zenith of the UPS and the ITL, about the time of WW2, their combined route network lay mostly in the shape of a huge X – with one arm reaching between Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California (via Omaha, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Ogden and Salt Lake City, both in Utah; and Las Vegas, Nevada) – and with the other arm reaching between Kansas City, Missouri, and two cities in the Pacific Northwest – Portland, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington (via Denver, Colorado; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Ogden, Utah; Boise, Idaho; and Pendleton and Umatilla, both in Oregon) – plus many loops, spurs, branches, and alternate parallel routes.  The two arms of the large X coincided with each other between Cheyenne and Ogden, about 36 miles north of Salt Lake City.  There were also three significant branches connecting Omaha with Kansas City, with Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and with Fairmont, Minnesota [with connections and through-coaches for the Twin Cities of Minnesota (Minneapolis and Saint Paul)].

          Later, on 01 October 1952, after nearly nine years of the use of the borrowed identity of Greyhound by the UPS and the ITL, as described above, the parent Greyhound firm – having bought all the remaining stock of those two rail properties (and thus having acquired the entire ownership of the UPS and the ITL) – merged the assets and operations of the UPS and the ITL into a single new division (of The Greyhound Corporation), known by the same old name of the Overland Greyhound Lines.  The parent Greyhound company then dissolved the two leftover empty corporate shells of the UPS and the ITL.

          Even later, on 01 August 1956, as twice mentioned above, the parent Greyhound firm merged the OGL into the Northland GL, a neighboring regional operating company.

          Later yet, on 01 September 1957, as first described above (in the first section, entitled “Introduction”), in one more step of consolidation, Greyhound merged also the Great Lakes GL (GLGL) into the NGL.

          The parent Greyhound firm then renamed the twice-expanded NGL as the Central Division of The Greyhound Corporation (known also as the Central GL, making the fifth of six uses of that same name).  That was the third of four huge new divisions (along with Eastern, Southern, and Western).  [More about that consolidation is available in my article about the Greyhound Lines after WW2, and more about the six uses of the name of the Central GL is available in my article bearing that name.]

Background of the UP Stages

          Sometime in 1911 A. Jaloff began running a bus service, named as the Columbia Stage Company (CSC), between Portland and Seaside, both in Oregon, a distance of about 78 miles, in competition against the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle (SP&S) Railway.  [Seaside is on the Pacific Coast, near Astoria, Oregon, which latter town is at the mouth of the Columbia River.]

          [A. Jaloff appears to have been a married man and an immigrant from Russia (or at least of Russian descent).  He and his wife consistently referred to themselves as merely A. Jaloff and Mrs. A. Jaloff respectively, even in official records and documents.  Jaloff held a (pre-CDL) Oregon chauffeur’s license.  They lived in Astoria, and they seem to have eluded public attention; they did not even appear in the official census reports.]

          In due time Jaloff’s CSC paced eastwardly from Portland – along with the advance of the building of the Columbia River Highway, starting in 1921, from Troutdale, on the east side of Portland, to The Dalles (originally) – and then onward (along the south shore of the river) through Arlington and Umatilla to Pendleton, a total distance of about 209 miles (from Portland to Pendleton).  [That road is now known in part as US‑30 and I‑94.]

          By the spring of 1924, when that road became complete, the CSC had raised significant competition (between Portland and Pendleton) against the passenger trains of the Oregon Short Line Railroad, which was a subsidiary of the UP Railroad in that territory.  The CSC, with 38 White and Pierce-Arrow buses, was then said to have a value of about $400,000 and to be the largest bus firm in the USA as the property of just one person.  [During the early years Jaloff had owned also several Packards and at least one Overland and one Willys‑Knight.

          In May 1925 Jaloff sold his original route, between Portland and Seaside, (and 15 White buses) to the SP&S Railway, which had begun its own bus service, but Jaloff kept his operation between Portland and Pendleton.

          Then a year later, in May 1926, William Crawford bought the CSC and merged it with the Reliance Mount Hood Auto Stages, based in Portland, along with two routes that had previously been a property of his own Camas Stage Company (described in the next paragraph).  He then renamed his expanded firm as the Columbia Gorge Motor Coach Company (CGMCC).  For the operating superintendent he hired Barney Peyton, who had started his bus career in hospitality services at the Yellowstone National Park, and who had worked also for both Crawford and Jaloff.  [Later Peyton carried out a key function for the UP Railroad and then served as the first general manager of the UP Stages – as described below in the two sections entitled “Entry of the Hound” and “Interstate Coach Company.”  Peyton resigned from the UPS in 1932, when the UP Railroad closed the home office of the UPS (in Portland), moved the headquarters functions to Omaha, and consolidated them with those of the Interstate Transit Lines.]

          {Meanwhile several other relevant events took place in the deeper background.  In 1913 J.L.S. Snead began his Reliance firm, mentioned above, which ran the first “horseless carriages” from Portland to Mount Hood, offering passenger transport and sightseeing tours.  [Mount Hood, with a peak elevation of 11,249 feet, is the tallest mountain in Oregon; it stands about 50 miles east-southeast of Portland.]  Then sometime before 1921 Crawford founded the Camas Stage Company and in ‑25 sold it to the Park Auto Transportation Company, a subsidiary of Stone and Webster (S&W), a multistate public-utility management-service company.  [S&W during that era owned a large number of motor-coach properties, including several in Florida, which it merged together in January 1926 and named the resulting firm as the Florida Motor Lines (FML).  Then in January 1946 The Greyhound Corporation bought the FML and renamed it as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL).  More about the FML and the FGL is available in my article bearing the name of the Florida GL.]}

          In 1926, after just one year, Crawford bought back (from S&W) two of the Camas routes – the one between Portland and Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River, and the one between Portland and Washougal via Camas, the two latter in Washington, on the north shore of the Columbia River and to the east of Vancouver.

          Then Crawford promptly ordered 10 Fageol Safety Coaches, and he started raising the level of the service of his new firm.  For example, on 01 September 1926 he introduced “sleeping-car service” on one trip nightly in each direction between Portland and Pendleton (during a time while overnight service was still rare in the intercity-bus industry).  For that he used two of his new Fageol coaches, each equipped with 21 reclining seats, which he had designed for them.  [The correct English pronunciation of the French name Fageol (in the US) is “fad-jull,” rhyming with “fragile” or “satchel.”  More about the Fageol brothers, the Fageol companies, and the Fageol coaches will become available in my forthcoming article about them.]

          In response to that activity by Crawford and his coach line (the CGMCC) through the Columbia Gorge, on 14 March 1927 the UP Railroad formed the Union Pacific Stages (UPS), as a subsidiary of the parent rail firm, incorporated in Oregon and based in Portland.  On 01 May 1927, as described below, in the section entitled “Start of the UP Stages,” the UPS took over the operation of the UP bus service between Pendleton and Walla Walla, Washington, although the ownership of that bus line remained with the rail firm, and on 01 July 1927 the UPS began to run its own bus service between Portland and Pendleton, in direct competition against Crawford’s CGMCC.  Thus began the UP Stages.

            Now let’s back up.

Utah Parks Company

          Sometime early in 1925 the UP Railroad started its first bus service – not as a replacement or supplement for rail service – but rather as a part of its new Utah Parks Company, a subsidiary, which offered bus connections and sightseeing tours to the nearby Zion, Cedar Breaks, and Bryce Canyon national parks (along with its own lodges and restaurants) and beyond southeastwardly to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, in northwestern Arizona.  [The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe (AT&SF), or simply Santa Fe, Railway served the south rim of the Grand Canyon, near Williams and Flagstaff, both in Arizona.]  The UP Railroad based its new subsidiary in Cedar City, Utah, near the southwestern corner of the Beehive State, at the end of a 33-mile branch line from Lund, Utah, on one of the main lines of the UP Railroad, between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles (via Las Vegas, Nevada, and Barstow and San Bernardino, both in California).  Soon Cedar City thus became known as the “Gateway to the Parks.”

          Those bus operations continued to run – under the Utah Parks Company – until 1972, when that subsidiary ceased to exist.

Start of the UP Stages

          Meanwhile, however, the UP Railroad began to run highway service to replace certain selected rail service – to start to replace some of its unprofitable or marginally profitable passenger trains – and, in a few cases, to make more of its limited track capacity available for its freight trains, which were (and still are) more profitable – or to avoid scheduling conflicts between freight trains and passenger trains.

          In its first replacement service, on 20 August 1925, the UP Railroad displaced two of its four round-trip trains from Pendleton, Oregon, to Walla Walla, Washington, and back, along a distance of 45 miles in each direction.  It started with a single White 50‑A parlor car.

          On 14 March 1927 the UP Railroad formed the Union Pacific Stages (UPS) as a subsidiary of itself.  Then on 01 May 1927, as first mentioned in the last paragraph of a previous section, entitled “Background of the UP Stages,” the UPS took over the operation of the bus line between Pendleton and Walla Walla, although the ownership of that bus line remained with the parent railway firm.  Again, thus began the UP Stages.

          Next, on 01 July 1927 and with much fanfare and publicity, the UPS began a more ambitious project – a supplementary bus service between Portland and Pendleton – a distance of about 209 miles – mostly within the famous Columbia Gorge (the valley of the Columbia River).

          In the open countryside between Pendleton and Salt Lake City (via Boise and Pocatello, both in Idaho, and Ogden, Utah), the distances were great, and the population was mostly sparse, so those in charge of the UP Railroad were content to continue to run their bus operations just between Portland and Pendleton and between Pendleton and Walla Walla – that is, without any further bus operation – until the early part of 1929.

Entry of the Hound

          Early in 1929 the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC), of Chicago, which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation, entered the scene by buying a minority (noncontrolling) interest in Crawford’s Columbia Gorge Motor Coach Company.  That was one part of the MTC’s reach from the Midwest toward the Pacific Coast.

          By that time Crawford’s CGMCC had bought options for buying two more lines, which, if exercised, would give it a complete route between Portland and Salt Lake City.  They were the lines between Pendleton and Twin Falls, Idaho, via Boise, from the Blue Mountain Transportation Company, and between Twin Falls and Salt Lake City via Pocatello, from the Beehive Stages.

          Soon the CGMCC exercised its options, thus buying those two routes, and the MTC increased its ownership (in the CGMCC) from a minority interest into a majority (controlling) interest.

          The resulting reorganization left no job for Barney Peyton, the former operating superintendent of the CGMCC, who soon switched loyalties by hiring on with the UP’s subsidiary Oregon Short Line Railroad.

          About 01 April 1929 the MTC’s CGMCC began direct (no-transfer) through-service between Portland and Salt Lake City.

          Next on 01 May 1929 the MTC appointed Crawford as the regional manager of the new line between Portland and Salt Lake City for the MTC (and, nine months later, for Greyhound, when, on 05 February 1930, the MTC became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation).

          The MTC never merged the CGMCC into any of the operating companies of the MTC but rather temporarily allowed the CGMCC to continue to run under its own name as a wholly owned subsidiary of the MTC – until 31 May  1929, when the MTC sold the CGMCC to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.

Great Expansion of the UP Stages

            Suddenly and rapidly, within just three months during the first half of 1929, the UP Railroad assembled a motor-coach system that paralleled and complemented its rails all the way from Omaha, Nebraska, its hometown, to Portland, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington – not so much to replace passenger trains as to supplement them, support them, and feed them (with both passengers and small cargo, often called package express).  The UP Railroad did so mostly or largely by buying preexisting carriers along the way.  Many motor-coach carriers had sprung up.  Many of them had begun to offer significant competition to the UP passenger trains, just as competition had taken place in the Columbia Gorge, between Portland and Pendleton.  The officials of the UP Railroad wisely decided to offer their own alternate parallel highway passenger transport alongside their other rail routes as well (rather than to allow outside highway carriers to continue to siphon off UP’s passenger revenue). 

          By the end of 1929, in less than a year, the UP Stages already owned and ran more than 200 parlor coaches (not counting those of the Utah Parks Company, described above, in a previous section, entitled “Utah Parks Company,” or the similarly and confusingly named UP Stage Company, which offered highway connections at the train station of the UP Railroad in East Los Angeles).

          Most of the establishment of the route system of the UPS between Omaha and Salt Lake City (via Ogden) was simple and straightforward – except for several routes in a relatively small irregular quadrangle marked by four towns in Nebraska – Omaha, Norfolk, Grand Island, and Beatrice – containing also Fremont, Columbus, and Lincoln.

          On the other hand, however, the routes between Ogden and the Pacific Northwest (that is, Portland and Spokane) and the establishment of them were much more complex: 

              First, there were three alternate routes between Ogden and Burley, Idaho, near Twin Falls, and there was a branch route between Pocatello (between Ogden and Burley) and West Yellowstone, Montana, which was and is the western gateway to the Yellowstone National Park.

              Second, there were also not only the route through the Columbia Gorge between Portland and Umatilla and onward to Pendleton but also four routes to the northeast of Umatilla and Pendleton:

                   one route between Umatilla and Spokane via Pasco and Ritzville, both in Washington;
                   one between Pendleton and Spokane via Walla Walla and Colfax, also both in Washington;
                   a branch line from Colfax to Grangeville, Idaho, via Lewiston, Idaho;
                   and a branch line from Lewiston to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

          Further, the processes of establishing those routes were likewise more complex and complicated. 

          One such chain of events concerns the Interstate Coach Company (ICC), based in Spokane, which was completely separate and different from the Interstate Transit Lines (ITL), based in Omaha.  [The ITL in 1943 was one of the two major components, along with the UP Stages, that began to use the name of the Overland GL (as a subsidiary of the UP Railroad and the C&NW Railway), and in 1952 it was the other of the two components that together became the Overland GL (as a division of The Greyhound Corporation).]

          Here’s the tale of that part (the ICC) of the UP Stages in the Northwest:

Interstate Coach Company

          In Spokane about 1916 William Nichols founded and started running the curiously named 500 Taxicab Company.

          Sometime before 1921 the 500 Taxicab Company began to run also a bus service between Spokane and Lewiston, in the panhandle of Idaho, via Colfax and Pullman, both in Washington, a distance of about 105 miles.  In that same year, ‑21, the State of Washington issued one of its first “grandfather” certificates (of convenience and necessity) to the 500 firm for that route.  Soon 500 started using Yellow Cabs (products of John Hertz’s Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company, of Chicago), and in 1922 Nichols renamed his 500 firm as the Spokane Yellow Cab Company.

          About the same time Nichols transferred his bus operations into a new subsidiary (of his taxi firm), which he named as the Interstate Coach Company (ICC).  Then he became also an early buyer of Yellow Coaches, products of John Hertz’s new Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company, of Chicago, which was then a subsidiary of Hertz’s Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company.

           [On 17 April 1923 John Hertz in Chicago founded his Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company and then sold it in July 1925 to the General Motors (GM) Corporation.  Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., the president (and later the chairman of the board of directors) of the GM Corporation, had seen a good opportunity for the expansion of GM into another market of the automotive-manufacturing industry.  In August 1925 GM placed its Yellow Coach property into its GM Truck Company and then renamed that firm, a subsidiary, as its Yellow Truck and Coach (T&C) Manufacturing Company, based in Pontiac, Michigan.  In 1943 GM changed its Yellow T&C subsidiary into a division and renamed it as the GMC Truck and Coach (T&C) Division (of the GM Corporation).  Thus the brand name Yellow Coach became changed into GM Coach.]

          In 1926 the ICC added an alternate route between Pullman and Lewiston via Moscow, Idaho, and in -28 it added a branch line between Spokane and Clarkia, Idaho, via Fairfield, Washington.

          The Spokane Yellow Cab Company also ran a franchised agency of the Hertz Driv-ur-self rental system, using five cars and offering them for short-term rentals.  Nichols referred to his service as a “gasoline livery stable.”

          During 1929 William Nichols sold his ICC (including 18 buses) and his taxicab company (including his car-rental agency), and several months later in that same year, ‑29, at age 46, he died of a kidney illness.

          In January 1929 two bus men, H.B. Olson and George Fay, bought the ICC from William Nichols for $350,000.

          Then on 01 April 1929 Barney Peyton (then an official of UP’s Oregon Short Line Railroad), acting on behalf of the UP Railroad, bought the ICC from Olson and Fay, and Peyton promptly reconveyed the ICC to the UP Railroad.  The rail firm did not promptly merge the ICC into its UP Stages; instead it allowed the ICC to continue to operate separately until 01 May 1930.

          On 22 April 1929 the UP Stages began to run southwardly from The Dalles (between Portland and Umatilla) to Bend, supplementing UP’s one daily railway round trip.  The UPS soon extended several of its daily bus trips from Bend onward southwardly to Klamath Falls, Oregon, almost to California.  [Yes, “The Dalles” (including the word the) really is the proper and official name of that town.]

          Next on 01 May 1929 the parent UP Railroad appointed Barney Peyton – an official of the Oregon Short Line Railroad, the former operating superintendent of the CGMCC – as the first general manager of its UP Stages.

          During April and May 1929 the parent UP rail firm made contracts to buy at least seven preexisting bus carriers in eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, and western Idaho.  Soon it closed those deals.

Even More Growth for the UP Stages

          Sometime in June 1929 the Interstate Coach Company bought (from the Auto Interurban Company) a route (previously mentioned) between Spokane and Umatilla via Ritzville and Pasco, both in Washington, which enabled the ICC to run a direct (no-transfer) route between Portland and Spokane, so it began to do so.

          Then the Gem State Transit Company (GSTC), which the UP Railroad had bought in May 1929 (during the UP’s burst of purchases in April and May), in turn in August 1929 bought two routes (from the Beehive Stages) – one between Pocatello and Montpelier, Idaho, and another (likewise previously mentioned) between Pocatello and West Yellowstone, Montana, the western gateway to the Yellowstone National Park, via Idaho Falls.  As in the case of the ICC, the parent rail firm had not yet merged the GSTC into its UP Stages; instead it allowed the GSTC also to continue to operate separately until later.

          On 01 November 1929 the UP Railroad merged the GSTC into its UP Stages, and on 01 May 1930 it merged the ICC into its UPS.

          By using the increased operating authority from the GSTC, on 01 September  1929 (even though the Gem State subsidiary had not yet become merged into the UP Stages), UPS started direct (no-transfer) service between Portland and Salt Lake City – five months after the MTC’s Columbia Gorge firm did so.

          To run that new through-service (between Portland and Salt Lake City), the UPS bought five more Whites in September 1929, four ACFs in December 1929, two Mack BKs in February 1930, and four more ACFs and four Yellow Coach Z-250s (with FitzJohn bodies) in May 1930.  That gave the UPS a total of 82 coaches.

Eastern End

          The development of the highway routes of the UP Railroad were even more dramatic and dynamic in the eastern end than in the western end.

            As soon as the crude roads became improved well enough to allow reasonable operation – in 1921 – many independent entrepreneurs in Omaha began to offer intercity bus service to connect the UP hometown (Omaha) with various destinations, including many towns on the UP railway map.  Most of those pioneers in Omaha used medium-duty Reo Speedwagon chassis with Weir 16-seat bodies built in a local shop, and, sadly, most of them failed to survive the severe demands of the first winter.

          Also in 1921 an unknown person founded the Boulevard Transportation Company (BTC), which ran on two routes connecting Minneapolis, Minnesota, with several destinations in Minnesota – plus two intercity routes based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – plus, starting in 1922, two routes in Nebraska and Iowa – connecting Omaha with Fremont and with Sioux City, Iowa.

          When the BTC started its operations based in Omaha (in 1922) – to Fremont and to Sioux City – it used heavy-duty coaches – six White 50s with Eckland bodies (built in Minneapolis).  Later it extended its Sioux City line to Correctionville, Iowa.  [Details about the Eckland brothers and their parlor-car bodies is available in my article about the Northland GL.]

          {The quirky name of Correctionville resulted from no connection with a prison or other “correction” institution but rather because the town sat (and still sits) on a “correction line” – a line used to adapt the flat two-dimensional rectangular-grid surveying system to the three-dimensional curvature of the surface of the Earth, which most of us agree to be spherical (rather than flat).  By the way – for no extra charge – navigation, including GPS, uses practical applications of spherical trigonometry – that is, spherical (curved) imaginary triangles laid out on the spherical surface of the Earth and its oceans (and imaginary spheres at various altitudes of aircraft in flight above the Earth and its oceans).  So, boys and girls, bear in mind that geometry and trigonometry provide the foundation of an extremely exciting and engrossing subject area (navigation) that touches the stars, the planets, the sun, the moon, the tides of the oceans, and the classical laws of motion of Sir Isaac Newton.  Further, the Newtonian equation F = m x A plays a basic and important part in navigating a modern submarine or any of many other types of vehicles or other movable objects (by using inertial navigation).  I’ve digressed, so let’s return to the subject at hand.  [Those are some of the babblings of this former Naval officer who has navigated two submarines and one surface ship in the open sea – along with a small aircraft on solo cross-country flights – and a long-ago college student who had an undergraduate major in physics and a minor in math.]}

          About the same time, in 1922, the White Transportation Company, using similar heavy-duty coaches, started running between Omaha and Lincoln and soon onward westwardly to York, Nebraska.

Interstate Transit Lines

          According to the UP Railroad, Russell John Walsh, of Omaha, started a bus line between Omaha and Nebraska City, on the Missouri River, about 44 miles to the south; however, Walsh himself said that he had paid $250 for that route to a previous owner.  In either event that line had started sometime in 1921 (with two buses, making four round trips each day), then ran for a short while (for an unknown time), and then fizzled. 

          Nonetheless, on 23 February 1923 Walsh restarted that line, and he and it succeeded.  He ran his business at first as a proprietorship (that is, as a property of a sole owner, himself, not as a partnership, corporation, or other form of business association), using the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Interstate Transit Lines (ITL) – that is, doing business as (d.b.a.) the Interstate Transit Lines.  [Many people, including some lawyers, insist on referring to “sole proprietors” and “sole proprietorships” – but those terms are pompous redundancies and therefore stylistically bad – because, as a matter of law and a matter of definition, a proprietor is necessarily a sole one, and a proprietorship is likewise necessarily a sole one.]

          Soon Walsh added more routes and more destinations for his ITL:

              On 01 March 1924 he bought the White Transportation Company – first mentioned above in the last paragraph of the previous section, entitled “Eastern End” – running between Omaha and York via Lincoln.

              On 01 July 1924 he bought the route between Omaha and Fremont from the Boulevard Transportation Company – first described in the previous section, entitled “Eastern End.”

               Sometime in 1925 (on a date or dates no longer known) he bought two more routes – between Fremont and Lincoln and between Fremont and Norfolk (both from the Lincoln-Fremont Bus Line).

              Sometime later in 1925 Walsh restarted a route between Omaha and Sioux City, Iowa, which the BTC, based in Minneapolis, had started in 1922 (as described above, near the start of the section entitled “Eastern End”) but eventually quit.

              Also in 1925 he extended his Nebraska City line southwardly, first to Saint Joseph and soon onward to Kansas City, both in Missouri.

              Then in 1926, on dates no longer known, he started a short line (about 40 miles) between Omaha and Wahoo and a longer one (about 230 miles) between Omaha and Fairmont, Minnesota, where it met the Northland Transportation Company (NTC) and made connections with it to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  

          [On 15 August 1929 the NTC became a subsidiary of the brand-new Northland Greyhound Lines (NGL).  On 31 December 1934 The Greyhound Corporation merged the assets and operations of the NTC (previously a subsidiary of the main NGL) into the NGL of Illinois, and then the parent Greyhound firm dissolved the empty corporate shell of the NTC.  Thus all the former routes of the NTC came under the name of the Greyhound Lines.  More about the Northland GL and the NGL of Illinois is available in my article bearing the name of the NGL.]

          Competitors also ran on many of those same routes (and many others) – because the State of Nebraska had not yet begun to regulate the intrastate bus industry within its borders – but the ITL survived, whereas most of its rivals either sold out or gave up.

          On 01 June 1928 Walsh bought (from George Oscar Armond) the SYA (Seward-York-Aurora) Bus Line, which he had extended eastwardly to Lincoln and westwardly to Grand Island.  Walsh merged the SYA into his ITL.  [Lincoln, Seward, York, Aurora, and Grand Island lay (and still lie) in a nearly straight line (from east to west) along the road now known as US‑34 (parallel to the modern nearby I‑80).]  SYA appeared to have started in 1925 and to have done so with Mack (likely AB) coaches.  Afterward Armond did not continue in the bus business.

          Finally and wisely, on 20 June 1928 Walsh incorporated his ITL.  [Walsh continued as the only president of the ITL and then as the only president of the Overland GL – until he died – on 16 January 1955 – six and a half months before the parent Greyhound firm merged the OGL into the Northland GL (on 01 August 1956).]

Interstate Airlines

          When Russell Walsh and his lawyer incorporated the Interstate Transit Lines, they used the foresight and imagination to look into the future.  When they submitted their articles of incorporation to the Secretary of State of the State of Nebraska, they stated the purpose of the new firm to do a “bus and aviation business” – “bus and aviation” – and the Secretary of State approved the document in precisely that form and thus issued the charter for the ITL on 20 June 1928.

          Although that notion or concept may appear to be extravagant or overly ambitious – for a bus man to conduct an “aviation business” – Walsh soon began to act on it.  Not later than the summer of that same year, 1928, on a date no longer known, the Interstate Airlines (IA), as a division of the ITL, began to fly, using three Stearman C3 single-engine biplane aircraft, on a route in the shape of an irregular (“scalene”) triangle – with Omaha, Chicago, and Minneapolis at the three corners (“vertices”).

          However, the new airline, IA, lost money while hauling just passengers, as did most other early airlines – until it won a mail contract, as did many other early airlines.  On 01 December 1928 the IA also began hauling the US Mail (as well as passengers) on a route between Chicago and Atlanta, Georgia, via an intermediate node at Evansville, Indiana, with a westward branch between Evansville and Saint Louis, Missouri, and an eastward branch between Evansville and Louisville, Kentucky.

          In Saint Louis the IA met the Universal Air Lines (among others), and in Louisville it met the Continental Airlines (among others).  [Soon (in 1929) Universal became rebranded as the American Airways, which later (in ‑34) became merged with the Colonial Air Lines, thus forming the American Airlines.]

          On 29 March 1929 The Aviation Corporation (with an uppercase T), known also as Avco, came into existence as a holding company, which bought interests in more than 90 “aviation-related” firms (not only air carriers but also other aviation-related concerns as well) by the end of that same year (1929).  Avco then owned at least controlling (if not 100-percent) interests in both Continental and Universal, so Avco sought and wanted also Interstate (Walsh’s IA) – so that Avco could then link Universal in Saint Louis with Continental in Louisville via Evansville.

          Sometime during the summer of 1929, during that frenzy of purchases by Avco, it bought the Interstate Airlines (which by that time already owned and flew 12 aircraft); Russell Walsh then turned back to his Interstate Transit Lines and concentrated on it.

UP Railroad and the ITL

          When Russell Walsh bought George Armond’s elongated SYA Bus Line, on 01 June 1928 (as described above, near the end of the section entitled “Interstate Transit Lines”), the ITL thus became the largest intercity-bus operation in the Cornhusker State and therefore became the one most visible to the officials of the UP Railroad – who soon began to seek and buy successful preexisting motor-coach firms – to complement their passenger trains, to gain the bus revenue for the UP coffers, and to reduce or eliminate the competition of other (outside) highway rivals.

          On 01 July 1929, during the flurry of purchases by the UP Railroad in 1929, first described above in the section entitled “Great Expansion of the UP Stages” – and during the same season as the frenzy of purchases by Avco in the aviation industry – the parent UP firm bought the ITL (with 45 coaches) for a price reported as $1,500,000.  UP kept Walsh as the president of the ITL.

          On the same day, 01 July 1929, the UP bought also (from E.J. Delahant) the Queen City Coach Lines (with six assorted buses), based in Beatrice, Nebraska, and (from O.W. Townsend) the remainder of the intercity business (but not the local city-transit lines in Hastings) of his Cornhusker Stage Lines (with 29 Mack AB coaches), based in Hastings, Nebraska – after Townsend’s selling, late in 1928, much of his part of the new YellowaY-Cornhusker System to the owner of the even-newer YellowaY-Pioneer System. 

          Then the UP merged the assets and operations of the Queen City concern and the intercity remainder of the Cornhusker Stage Lines into the ITL, thus increasing the roster of the ITL to a total of 80 coaches.

          On 11 September 1928 a YellowaY-Pioneer coach completed the first regularly scheduled coast-to-coast bus trip in the US, from Los Angeles to New York City, by a single operating company.  However, that service did not long continue, because of the difficulties for a single thinly capitalized firm to sustain such an extended and ambitious operation.

          In 1929 the Motor Transit Corporation, the original Greyhound parent firm, bought the YellowaY-Pioneer System, and in ‑30, after the MTC became renamed, The Greyhound Corporation merged the assets and operations of YellowaY-Pioneer (formerly a subsidiary of the MTC) into itself. 

          [Townsend had started in the motor-coach industry at age 30 on 01 June 1924 by founding the Highway Transit Company, which used the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Cornhusker Stage Lines.  He ran first between Hastings, his hometown, and Grand Island – and by May 1928 he ran his coaches all the way from Chicago through Omaha and Hastings to Denver and onward to Salt Lake City, well on his way and on his plan (with his YellowaY-Cornhusker System) toward Los Angeles – until the YellowaY-Pioneer System upstaged Townsend and his YellowaY-Cornhusker System.  Some commentators say that Townsend started between Hastings and Lincoln, but he started between Hastings and Grand Island, and he later added Lincoln as another destination.]

          [Oliver William Townsend, known most often as O.W. and sometimes as Ollie or Red, was a colorful, ambitious, and visionary man – and a unique, amazing, admirable, and successful one.  He also founded the Atlantic-Pacific (AP) Stages in 1928 (and ran them between Saint Louis and Los Angeles via Kansas City), then sold his AP Stages in ‑29 to T.L. Tallentire and his Colonial Stages (running between Saint Louis and New York City), which then became known as the Colonial Atlantic-Pacific Stages (CAPS).  Next, during 1931‑32, Townsend managed the eastern end of the CAPS (until the CAPS failed in business), then in ‑32 he bought (from F.J. Feight) a majority (controlling) interest in the Teche Lines (TL) and started making deals with The Greyhound Corporation, which in ‑32 allowed Townsend to begin to refer to his Teche Lines as the Teche-Greyhound Lines (TGL).  Greyhound bought a small piece of the Teche Lines, and it continued to increase its partial ownership of the TL.  When it gained a majority interest, in 1934, Greyhound removed the hyphen from the name of the TGL.  During ‑39 The Greyhound Corporation finished buying all the remaining minority interest in the Teche GL; then on 31 December 1941 the parent firm merged the TGL into itself as a division.  However, Townsend continued as the president of the TGL until 1949, when he became the chairman of the board of directors of the TGL, and he continued in that post until he retired, on 01 October 1954, when Greyhound merged the TGL, along with the Dixie GL, into the Southeastern GL.  Much more about Townsend, his activities, and the Teche GL, along with YellowaY, YellowaY-Cornhusker, and YellowaY-Pioneer, is available in my article bearing the name of the Teche GL, and even more about YellowaY, YellowaY-Cornhusker, and YellowaY-Pioneer will become available in my forthcoming article about the Pacific GL.]

          During 1929, after the UP Railroad bought the Interstate Transit Lines, the ITL bought a total of 76 new coaches – a mixture of Mack BKs, White 54s, some Studebakers (with FitzJohn bodies), and a few eastern-built Fageol Safety Coaches (with Bender bodies).  That step nearly doubled the size of the fleet of the ITL (from 80 to 156).  Of course, that allowed the retirement of some of the older, smaller, non-standard, worn-out, or undesirable coaches.

“Transcontinental” Highway Service

          Having bought a strong and successful motor-coach system – the Interstate Transit Lines – with a route network already covering much of Nebraska (and more), the officials of the UP Railroad were ready and prepared to start to develop their new highway subsidiary (the ITL) into what they called a “transcontinental” service – between Chicago and Los Angeles – reaching not literally all the way across the North American continent but rather almost three-quarters (73 percent) of it nonetheless.

          When the officials of the UP Railroad bought the ITL, they acquired a corps or cadre of executives, managers, supervisors, and workers who largely were already trained, seasoned, qualified, productive, and successful – and their plans, routines, systems, and procedures were in place and at work.

          That made the parent UP firm ready to take its next logical step – to extend its highway service both eastwardly to Chicago and southwestwardly to Los Angeles (although its own rails reached no farther to the east than Omaha – and just across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs, Iowa). 

          However, the UP Railroad had long (since 1887) operated through-cars on its railway Overland Route between Chicago and California via Omaha – by contracting with the Chicago and Northwestern (C&NW) Railway for the C&NW to “handle” those cars between Omaha and Chicago by moving them in its passenger trains between those two cities.  [To “handle” in this context is railroad lingo.]  The two rail firms scheduled their respective trains in such a way as to provide reasonable and convenient connections in Omaha – so that the through-cars could be switched in Omaha in a timely way between the connecting trains of the two carriers.

          Thus the officials of the UP Railroad approached their counterparts of the C&NW Railway, aroused their interest, began negotiations, and soon (on 24 October 1929) sold a one-third interest in UP’s Interstate Transit Lines to the “Northwestern.”  [Curiously, perhaps, the contract of 24 October 1929 (between the UP and the C&NW) backdated the sale and purchase to a fictitious effective date of 01 July 1929, which is also the same date when the UP bought the ITL from Russell Walsh.]

          Meanwhile the motor-coach service had already begun.  On 10 October 1929 the first coaches ran between Chicago and Denver (with two trips daily in each direction), then on 27 October 1929 the coaches started running all the way between Chicago and Los Angeles via Omaha and Denver.  [That was the first ITL service between Omaha and Chicago.]  Further, on 30 October 1929 the ITL began also connecting service between Saint Louis and Denver via Kansas City (with appropriately scheduled connections in Denver).  During the 1930s the ITL added first a third daily trip and then a fourth daily trip between Chicago and Los Angeles; however, only two daily connecting trips remained between Saint Louis and Denver, and in 1932 those became cut back to trips between Kansas City and Denver.  [The Pickwick-Greyhound Lines, then the Western GL, and later the Southwestern GL ran the route between Saint Louis and Kansas City with intrastate authority, which the ITL did not hold.]

          [The ITL never held intrastate authority within Missouri (with only interstate authority there), so its ticketing for many trips in Missouri took part in the common fiction of issuing tickets to or from East Saint Louis, Illinois, or Kansas City, Kansas – as did, for example, the Cardinal Stage Lines, a predecessor of the Pennsylvania GL, which, without intrastate authority within Pennsylvania, issued many tickets to intrastate passengers to or from Philadelphia with a stated origin or destination of Camden, New Jersey, rather than Philadelphia, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.  Likewise the Missouri Pacific (MoPac) Railroad and its highway subsidiary never held intrastate authority within Missouri, so it too engaged in that same fiction.  The UP and MoPac motor-coach subsidiaries never held intrastate authority within Missouri between Saint Louis and Kansas City – because the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines already “held the paper” (the certificate) for that route.  More about that fictitious ticketing is available in my article about the Pennsylvania GL.]

          In 1932, during the reorganization resulting from the bankruptcy of The Pickwick Corporation and the Pickwick-Greyhound (PG) Lines, the ITL withdrew from the route segment between Kansas City and Saint Louis, and The Greyhound Corporation reassigned that former-Pickwick route to the first Western GL (and later to the Southwestern GL).

          During that same time – during the winding up of the PG Lines (by The Greyhound Corporation under the supervision of the trustee in bankruptcy – the ITL bought the PG route between Omaha and Chicago.  [The PG route included intrastate rights within Illinois, whereas the ITL had previously not held such rights within Illinois.]

          [More about the PG Lines is available in my article about the Illinois GL, and even more will become available in my forthcoming article bearing the name of the PG Lines.]

          In different markets and at different times the UP and the ITL advertised and operated their highway service under the various names of the Union Pacific Stages, the Chicago and Northwestern Stages, the Chicago Northwestern Stages [without the word and or the ampersand (&) sign], or sometimes even as the Interstate Transit Lines.  The ITL also variously marked its coaches with those different names.

          The UP and the ITL often applied the slogan or nickname “The Overland Route” to its highway route between Chicago and Los Angeles – a name which the UP had used – along with at least two other iterations – the Overland Flyer and the Overland Limited – for UP trains between Omaha and San Francisco, California.  [The word Overland in this context began at least as early as 1858, in the name of the Overland Mail Company, which operated a stagecoach line between San Francisco (via Fort Smith, Arkansas) and both Saint Louis and Memphis, Tennessee.  Fort Smith was the junction between the Memphis route and the Saint Louis route.]

          In 1943, when The Greyhound Corporation bought one-third interests in both the ITL and the UP Stages, and when it became useful and appropriate to lend a Greyhound name to those two UP subsidiaries, “Overland” was an obvious and fitting name, so the ITL and the UPS – still under the control of the UP Railroad – began to use the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Overland Greyhound Lines – with, of course, the pleased consent of the officials of the parent Greyhound firm.

          And then in 1952, when The Greyhound Corporation bought the entire ownership of both the ITL and the UPS and then merged them together into a new division of the parent Greyhound firm, that division too became known as the Overland Greyhound Lines.

Extensions, Additions, and Dispositions

          During 1929‑31, under the control of the UP Railroad, the Interstate Transit Lines acquired about a dozen routes in several states, most of which involved not purchases but rather applications (for certificates of convenience and necessity) to the individual states involved, and none of which involved a transfer of coaches.  All of those acquisitions helped to extend and to improve the shape and details of the route network.

          Further, the ITL made many other significant additions in Iowa:

              In 1930 it extended its Sioux City, Iowa, line (from Omaha) to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, over two parallel routes, and on 12 May 1930 it bought all of the intercity highway routes (but not the local city-transit streetcar lines) of the Sioux Falls Traction System.

              The purchase of the Sioux Falls concern added two more routes from Sioux Falls – to Worthington, Minnesota, and to Esthervillle, Iowa; it also removed the traction firm as a competitor on the route between Omaha and Sioux City, where it too had run (with highway coaches) since 1925.

              Sometime later in 1930 the ITL made two more purchases – one (from J.W. Harris) for a feeder route between Spencer, Iowa, and Spirit Lake (between Sioux Falls and Estherville) – and one (from the Yellow Cab and Transfer Company of Sioux City) between Sioux City and Storm Lake via Holstein (beyond Correctionville), all four in Iowa.

              Sometime in June 1930 the ITL extended its Fairmont line (from Omaha) along the rest of the way to Minneapolis (in direct competition against the Northland Transportation Company, which by that time had become a subsidiary of the Northland Greyhound Lines).

              On 26 August 1930 the ITL bought (from M.B. Hildreth) a roundabout route between Sioux City and Odebolt via Denison, all three in Iowa.

              On 28 February 1931 it made a major purchase.  It bought the Fort Dodge, Des Moines, and Southern (FDDM&S) Transportation Company – the highway subsidiary of the Fort Dodge, Des Moines, and Southern (FDDM&S) Railway, which was an electric interurban carrier.  It paid a total of $275,000.  The deal included 39 coaches, a garage in Des Moines, and certificates for intrastate authority on 515 miles of routes along highways within Iowa.

              The FDDM&S Transportation Company (the highway carrier), based in Des Moines, had an interesting history:

                    The FDDM&S Railway (the parent firm) had assembled its motor-coach subsidiary in these steps:

                   In May 1925 it bought (from Mary Sørensen, a woman with a Danish name) a route between Fort Dodge and Algona (about 43 miles to the north).

                   In or about August 1925 it acquired (by application) a route between Des Moines and Ames (about 34 miles to the north).  Ames was the home of the Iowa State College (of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts), which in 1959 became renamed as the Iowa State University (of Science and Technology).  After the ITL bought the FDDM&S bus firm, it started 7‑24 service (via the campus) at two-hour intervals.  The ITL also started a shuttle-bus route in Ames, replacing a former streetcar route, between downtown and the campus; eventually, though, on 15 September 1944 it sold the shuttle route.

                   In June 1926 the FDDM&S highway carrier closed the gap between Ames and Fort Dodge (apparently by application), thus creating a complete route between Des Moines and Algona (paralleling the main rail line of its parent firm).  It also made a branch or extension from Harcourt (between Ames and Fort Dodge) to Spencer via Rockwell City, all in Iowa.

                   In June 1927 FDDM&S bought the Hawkeye Stages, which then owned 14 coaches and two routes – between Des Moines and Indianola and between Des Moines and Ottumwa (Radar O’Reilly’s hometown) via Oskaloosa.  The buyer allowed the Hawkeye Stages to run as a subsidiary at least until the fall of 1928.  By that time Hawkeye had begun to run also a detached branch line between Monroe and Knoxville, about 15 miles, near Pella, southeast of Des Moines and northwest of Ottumwa.

                   By the fall of 1928 FDDM&S had begun to run also between Ames and Waterloo via Marshalltown, all three in Iowa.

              Sometime later the FDDM&S highway firm merged the Hawkeye Stages (previously a subsidiary) into itself.

          When the ITL and the FDDM&S Railway calculated the price for the FDDM&S highway firm, the parties agreed on these included items: $132,500 for the 39 coaches, $33,000 for the garage in Des Moines, and $99,700 for the certificates (for the intrastate authority).  As I first mentioned above, in this section, the parties closed their deal on 28 February 1931.

          On 01 July 1932 the ITL leased a route – between Fort Dodge and Algona – a minor one – to L.L. Larson, who used the trade name of the Algona Bus Lines.  [That appears to be the first disposition of an intercity route by the ITL.]

          Please use great care in seeing and understanding – especially in the first several paragraphs of this section – the differences between Sioux City, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  [Details matter, and accuracy matters.]

Competing and Contracting with the Q

          During 1929‑30 a new motor-coach carrier, the Burlington Transportation Company (another BTC), began to raise some heavy competition against the ITL.

          On 14 February 1929 the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad formed its BTC for the usual reasons – to run a motor-coach system paralleling some of its rail routes – to supplement some of its passenger trains, to replace some of them, to earn some of the profits available from that activity (rather than surrendering the revenue to outside highway carriers), to reduce or eliminate competition from those outside firms, and to free some of the limited track capacity for the more profitable freight trains.  [The CB&Q Railroad was often known also as the Burlington Route or the Q (both officially and unofficially).]

          The BTC began operating on 09 April 1929, by placing five Yellow Coach Ws (with Cadillac V‑8 engines) on three routes in Nebraska in direct competition against the ITL:

              between Omaha and Lincoln,
              between Lincoln and Hastings via Grand Island,
              and between Lincoln and Hastings via Fairmont (not the Fairmont in Minnesota but rather the one in Nebraska).

          Later in that same year, 1929, the BTC extended westwardly (by application) from Hastings to Kearney, Nebraska.

            During 1930 the BTC and the ITL negotiated an agreement for a division (between themselves) of their common territory in Nebraska – on these terms:

                  The BTC discontinued its service between Lincoln and Hastings via Grand Island (on a UP rail route).  [The segment between Hastings and Grand Island was the very first route of O.W. Townsend, when, in 1924, he started his Cornhusker Stage Lines; it later went to the ITL.]

                  The ITL discontinued its service between these four pairs of towns, each of which lay in the territory of the CB&Q Railroad:

                        Hastings and Superior,
                        Hastings and Red Cloud,
                        Lincoln and Nebraska City,
                        and Hastings and Lincoln via Fairmont.

                  Also the ITL rerouted its through-service between Omaha and more westerly cities (Denver, Cheyenne, and beyond) – from Hastings (on a CB&Q rail route) to Grand Island (on a UP rail route). 

                  And the BTC continued to use its east-west route via Fairmont and Hastings (on a CB&Q rail route).

                  Further, the BTC and the ITL coördinated with each other on their common route between Omaha and Lincoln.  Previously each of them had dispatched a coach every hour from each end, but they began to run alternate trips – and they began to accept each other’s tickets on that route segment.

From Chicago to Minneapolis and Back

            In April 1931 the ITL began service between Chicago and Minneapolis via Milwaukee, maybe in response to a suggestion by one or more of those in charge of the C&NW Railway, which ran many passenger trains on that route (as did The Milwaukee Road).  [The ITL had first run to or from Chicago on  10 October 1929, when it first ran between Chicago and Denver via Omaha – in preparation for its through-service between Chicago and Los Angeles, which began on 27 October 1929.]  The ITL ran only two daily bus trips between Chicago and Minneapolis in each direction (with interstate authority only), whereas the Northland Greyhound Lines of Illinois (the NGL of Illinois) ran four such trips in each direction (with both intrastate and interstate authority).  Before long the ITL cut back its service from Minneapolis to Milwaukee.

Pickwick Stages

            Meanwhile in the Far West ….

            In 1911 Charles Wesley Grise, in San Diego, California, began the first activity leading to the Pickwick Stages and therefore also (later) to the Pickwick-Greyhound (PG) Lines.  Grise was a mechanic who owned a downtown automobile-service garage (near the site of a present Tesla charging station).  He also founded the Imperial Valley Stage Line.  Using a Cadillac open touring car with a hired driver, his firm started hauling passengers through the Imperial Valley between San Diego and El Centro, California, about 113 miles to the east.  Soon Grise had eight cars in service there.

            In the next year, 1912, in an indirect result of an escape from the Mexican Revolution (of 1910‑20), A.L. Hayes bought a second-hand Ford Model T and used it to run an “auto-stage” line between San Diego and Escondido, California, a small town about 36 miles to the north.

            In or about 1913 Herbert Pattison, the sales manager of a car dealership in San Diego (the Schacht Motor Car Company), joined Hayes’s operation, and he later worked for a while (in an unknown capacity) for the Pickwick Stages.

            In 1914 Grise and Hayes merged their two operations together.  They soon began to use increasingly larger vehicles, including Locomobile and Pierce-Arrow touring cars.  Grise and Hayes, first individually and later jointly, had used the Pickwick Theater in San Diego as their terminal in that city.  Later in that same year, 1914, they named their concern, apparently a partnership, as the Pickwick Stages (taking a cue from the name of that theater).  Even later, in ‑17, Hayes bought the interest of Grise in their firm, thus gaining the entire ownership of the Pickwick Stages.

            About the same time, 1914, the Pickwick Stages began service also between San Diego and Los Angeles, about 120 miles to the north.

            Meanwhile in 1913 Charles Francis Wren had arrived in California with an intent to enter the business of providing highway transport for passengers in one way or another.  With one open touring car he began a route between downtown Los Angeles and Venice, a suburb on the Pacific Coast, about 15 miles to the west-southwest.  He also bought a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles, where he created a union bus station, serving not only his own line but also the Pickwick Stages, the United Stages, and the White Star Stages.  [A union bus station is a bus station that serves more than one bus carrier, just as a union train station serves more than one rail carrier.]

            In the spring of 1916 Wren began a second line – to San Fernando, a small town to the northwest, about 22 miles away – and by the fall of the same year, ‑16, he extended to Santa Barbara, also on the coast, about 99 miles away (altogether) to the west‑northwest.

            Then he continued to push to the north.  By 1918, after several more extensions, he had reached San Francisco, about 420 miles from Los Angeles.

            In 1918 Wren and Hayes joined forces, and on 13 January 1919 they incorporated their stage line as the Pickwick Stages, Inc.  They created two divisions of their firm – the northern one (between Los Angeles and San Francisco), under Wren, and the southern one (between Los Angeles and San Diego and between San Diego and El Centro), under Hayes.  Wren served as the president, and Hayes served as the vice president.

            By 1920 Wren had extended his northern division northwardly all the way to Portland, Oregon, about 1,056 miles from Los Angeles.  

            Further, on 16 December 1922 Wren formed a holding company, which he named as The Pickwick Corporation (with an uppercase T because the word the was an integral part of the official name), based in Los Angeles.  The Pickwick Stages, Inc., became a subsidiary of the umbrella holding company.  Other subsidiaries later included the Pickwick Airways, a group of AM radio-broadcast stations, a coach-building plant, and a chain of hotels.  [More about The Pickwick Corporation (the holding company) and its other subsidiaries will become available in my forthcoming article bearing the name of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.]

            Wren continued to expand his route network between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  During that time, in September 1924 and in December 1925 Wren bought two bus operations (based in Fresno, California) from E.J. Thompson, who next served as Wren’s superintendent or regional manager in San Francisco, and who later collaborated with Wren in forming the Rocky Mountain Stages, to offer highway service between San Francisco and Salt Lake City via Reno, Nevada.  [Rocky Mountain Stages was an unfortunate misnomer, for the route in question – between San Francisco and Salt Lake City – traversed not the Rocky Mountains (between Idaho and New Mexico) but rather the Sierra Nevada (in California, including the rugged vicinity of the infamous Donner Pass).  Wren may have hoped to extend from Salt Lake City to Denver (through the Rocky Mountains) sometime later, but the name of the Rocky Mountain Stages nonetheless did not fit a route between San Francisco and Salt Lake City.]

            Next Wren and Hayes began to consider the wisdom and feasibility of reaching the Midwest and the Northeast (of the US) from Southern California, so they began to watch the developing opportunities and circumstances, including the paving of the roads and other improvements to them.

            In or about April 1925 the Borderland Transit Company began to offer motor-coach service westwardly between El Paso, Texas, and Yuma via Phoenix, both in Arizona, using new Mack AB parlor coaches.

            In March 1926 the Pickwick Stages, extending eastwardly into the Southwest, bought the Borderland firm – although Pickwick then ran to the east only as far as El Centro.  That is, a gap (of about 62 miles) remained between El Centro and Yuma.

            Because of that gap, to offer through-service between Phoenix and Los Angeles, Pickwick made an interline through-ticketing agreement with the United Stages, which already ran between Los Angeles and Yuma via Palm Springs (in California) and El Centro.  Thus through-passengers transferred coaches and carriers in Yuma, while using through-tickets (from either carrier).  United, a property of two brothers, Howard and Thomas Morgan, already had a good business relationship with Wren and Pickwick, including its use of Wren’s union bus station in Los Angeles.

            Further, to offer through-service between Phoenix and San Diego, that same interline agreement with the United Stages allowed through-passengers to transfer coaches and carriers in both Yuma and El Centro while using through-tickets from either carrier (aboard Pickwick between Phoenix and Yuma, aboard United between Yuma and El Centro, and aboard Pickwick again between El Centro and San Diego).

            Later in 1926 the Pickwick Stages bought the United Stages.  Thomas Morgan had served as the president of the United firm, and Howard had served as the secretary.  Each of the brothers continued in management with Pickwick under Charles Wren as the president.  Thomas soon served as the vice president of the Pickwick Airways, and Howard soon served as a manager of the Pickwick Stages and then as the general manager of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines, based in Kansas City.  Howard later served as the general manager of the first Western Greyhound Lines (which was the remnant of the PG Lines with a new name after the bankruptcy of the PG Lines), also based in Kansas City.  While Howard worked in Kansas City, he lived in the magnificent Pickwick Hotel in Kansas City.

            [Howard Hamilton Morgan, the bus man here, had two sons.  The older one, Howard Harlan Morgan, became a decorated and distinguished pilot who flew 79 missions in the Pacific Theater with General Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers (of the US Army Air Corps) during WW2.  Even as a boy he became intensely interested in aircraft and aviation, and he built many scale-model airplanes.  Until January 1942, when he volunteered for active duty in the Army, he had worked for the Douglas Aircraft Company in El Segundo, California.  He eventually reached the rank of colonel, and many people held him in high regard.]

            On 01 April 1926 the Pickwick Stages acquired intrastate rights on the extension of its Portland line to Seattle, Washington; however, surviving records and other documents do not now make clear how long or how regularly Pickwick ran beyond Portland to Seattle.  [On 31 May 1929, when the Pickwick Stages transferred many of its assets and operations to the Pacific Transportation Securities (which soon became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines), the Pickwick Stages no longer ran any farther north of Portland.]

            Wren apparently felt pleased with Borderland’s Mack ABs, since late in 1926 Pickwick bought several Mack ALs, which had just come onto the market.  Pickwick continued buying ALs for some time; it bought bare chassis from the Mack Truck Company and then built onto them (in Pickwick’s own body plant, in El Segundo, near Los Angeles) 27-seat bodies (similar to the ones that Pickwick built during its current periodic renovations of its Pierce-Arrow coaches).

            [Because of the poor general condition of most of the early roads in the Far West during that era, several motor-coach carriers in California repeatedly replaced the bodies of their coaches and touring cars after just a few years while they repeatedly recycled the existing chassis.  Some of those carriers bought bare chassis and built their own original bodies as well as their later replacement bodies.  Pierce-Arrow chassis were especially popular among those carriers in California during the use of that practice.]

            Wren’s ultimate goal was to reach Chicago; Boston, Massachusetts; New York City; Washington, DC; and the rest of the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Atlantic Seaboard, so he continued to press on.

            During 1927, as the new completed Macks became available (one by one), Pickwick extended in steps from El Paso – to Roswell, New Mexico – Amarillo, Texas – Oklahoma City and Tulsa, both in Oklahoma – and then Saint Louis, where it arrived on 01 November 1927.  By that time eight Mack ALs were in service for Pickwick, making one trip daily in each direction between El Paso and Saint Louis.  Soon Pickwick added a branch line between Kansas City and Joplin, Missouri, near the southwest corner of Missouri, between Tulsa and Saint Louis.  By November 1928 Pickwick also had two more Mack ALs, slightly longer, each with a 33-seat body (longer than the previous 27-seat bodies).

            Soon Wren started a branch line from Springfield, Missouri, between Joplin and Saint Louis, to Harrison, Arkansas, apparently on his way to Little Rock, Arkansas – and perhaps on his way to forge a route between Kansas City and Memphis – and then who knows where beyond Memphis.    [After Wren arrived in Saint Louis, he did indeed reach southwardly to Memphis, Birmingham, and New Orleans – by buying a bankrupt firm (the Gregory Bus Lines).  More about that is available below, near the end of the section entitled “Back to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.”]

            Wren’s last major purchase for that route (across Missouri to Saint Louis) took place in August 1928, when he bought the Missouri Bus Line Company, thus acquiring intrastate authority and eliminating competition between Joplin and Saint Louis.

            In Saint Louis, on arrival there, on 01 November 1927, the Pickwick Stages met the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC) [before the MTC became renamed (on 05 February 1930) as The Greyhound Corporation].

            [The Pickwick Stages did not meet the MTC in the Pacific Northwest until early in 1929, when the MTC arrived in Portland and bought a minority position in William Crawford’s Columbia Gorge Motor Coach Company – as described above, in an early section, entitled “Entry of the Hound.”]

            During 1926‑27 Carl Eric Wickman, Orville Swan “Sven” Caesar, and Ralph A.L. Bogan – the “three musketeers” at the top of the hierarchy of the MTC – had already begun to watch the approach of Charles Wren and his Pickwick Stages from the Southwest into the Midwest, where the MTC was busy at work to build what had begun to grow into the Greyhound Lines.  Wickman, Caesar, and Bogan gave much of their attention to the expansion of their own route network eastwardly from Chicago – toward Boston; New York City; Philadelphia; Baltimore, Maryland; Norfolk, Virginia; and Washington, DC – but they nonetheless took note of Wren, Pickwick, and their activity – especially because of the rapid advance of Pickwick into the Midwest and toward the Northeast.  [The Pickwick Stages in 1927 had already become the largest intercity bus company in the US, and it then was about twice as large as the MTC.]

            [Much information about the growth of the MTC and Greyhound from Chicago to Boston and New York City is available in my article about the Central GL, and much about the growth of the MTC and Greyhound from Chicago to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Washington; Norfolk; and New York City is available in my article about the Pennsylvania GL.]

MTC and Greyhound

            Meanwhile, on 20 September 1926 in Duluth, Minnesota, Wickman and his associates formed the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC).  They intended for the MTC not to operate any motor-coach service but rather to own (“hold”) subsidiary regional operating carriers.  They expected and intended their new “holding” company (the MTC) not to operate but rather to buy some preexisting firms and to create some new ones, depending on the circumstances and opportunities in the various regions.  [Later, on 05 February 1930, the MTC became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation.]

            The MTC promptly. on 25 October 1926, five weeks after its creation, bought two preexisting firms on the same day – its first purchases – the Safety Motor Coach Lines (which Wickman had sponsored in its formation) and the Interstate Stages and its subsidiary, the Cardinal Stage Lines.  The last of those firms, Cardinal, ran between Chicago and Detroit and between Chicago and Philadelphia via Cleveland and Pittsburgh – through Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.  {The Safety Motor Coach Lines is of no further concern here; however, by 1941 (after several steps) it had become a large piece of one of three major parts [the Michigan routes of the second Central GL (CGL)] in the creation of the Great Lakes GL (GLGL).  More about the Safety Motor Coach Lines, the second CGL, and the GLGL is available in my article bearing the name of the GLGL.}

            Then on 23 November 1926, after four more weeks, the MTC formed two new subsidiary regional operating companies – its first creations – the Greyhound Lines, Inc., of Ohio (the GLI of Ohio) and the Greyhound Lines, Inc., of Indiana (the GLI of Indiana).  [The GLI of Ohio also is of no further concern here; however, in 1941 it was another one of three major parts in the creation of the Great Lakes GL.  More about the GLI of Ohio too and the GLGL is available in my article bearing the name of the GLGL.]

            On 01 February 1927, in an event of major significance, the GLI of Indiana (which I first mentioned just above) started running a new route (between Chicago and Indianapolis, Indiana), thus becoming the first business unit of the growing Greyhound empire to make a plic use of the name of the “Greyhound Lines.”  [Ed Ekstrom (in Michigan in his Safety Motor Coach Lines) had previously used the word Greyhound, the image of a greyhound dog, and the expressions Greyhounds of the Highway and Ride the Greyhounds – while promoting his Safety Motor Coach Lines (using mostly Fageol Safety Coaches) – but the GLI of Indiana was the first business unit to make a public use of the name of the “Greyhound Lines.”  Still, though, in the Russell’s Railway and Motor-bus Guide for April 1927, the timetables for Ekstrom’s firm appear under the heading of the “Safety Motor Coach Lines – Greyhound.”  Again, more about Ekstrom and his Safety Motor Coach Lines is available in my article about the Great Lakes GL; further, even more about Ekstrom and his activity in the development of the Southwestern GL (SWGL) will become available in my forthcoming article bearing the name of the SWGL.]

            Of course, the MTC and Greyhound continued to buy, build, and grow.  [More about the background and the early years of the Motor Transit Corporation and The Greyhound Corporation, starting in 1914 in Hibbing, Minnesota, is available in my article about the Northland GL.]

“One Moment, Please”

            It may appear that we’ve made a wrong left turn and become lost, and that we’re about to become even more lost; however, I assure you that we’re still making progress on the history – the background – of the Overland GL.

            Indeed, we’re about to pursue the part of the story about how the OGL gained intrastate rights between Omaha and Chicago – across Iowa and Illinois – from the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines – via the Interstate Transit Lines.

            So … please reboard the coach and reclaim your seat.

Start of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines

            On 01 November 1927, when Wren’s Pickwick Stages arrived in Saint Louis, Wren and his firm made their first direct contact with Wickman and his Motor Transit Corporation (MTC).

            Wren’s Pickwick Stages had created a route network between San Diego and Portland (and – to an unknown degree and for an unknown time – onward to Seattle) via Los Angeles and San Francisco, between San Francisco and Salt Lake City via Reno, between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City via Las Vegas, between Los Angeles and El Paso, between San Diego and El Paso, and between El Paso and Saint Louis, along with a branch line between Kansas City and Joplin (between Tulsa and Saint Louis).

            And Wickman’s MTC had created a route network in Minnesota and Wisconsin, had begun to build a network in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, and had begun to establish arrangements in Pennsylvania.

            Planned and measured growth had taken place in both camps – Pickwick in the Far West and into the Midwest – and the MTC in the Midwest and toward the Northeast and the Atlantic Seaboard.

            Neither Wren nor Wickman saw a need to engage in a turf war with the other, for each of them had learned from his own experience.  Wren had encountered resistance and challenges while he built his Pickwick Stages from Los Angeles to San Francisco and onward to Portland, and Wickman had seen firsthand what had resulted from a fare war in Hibbing in 1914.  [More about the events in Hibbing is available in my article about the Northland GL.]

            The obvious and more desirable solution was for Wren and Wickman to coöperate with each other, so they did.  They formed a joint venture – one by the name of the Pickwick-Greyhound (PG) Lines.  Thus they shared the route between Kansas City and Saint Louis – and then they coöperated about several more routes nearby and beyond.  Their first route started with the Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines.

            Here’s the short version of that:

                  In 1926 the Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines came into existence and started running between Chicago and Kansas City via Saint Louis.

                  Both MTC and Pickwick – that is, both Wickman and Wren – wanted Purple Swan – because each wanted to expand his own route network – and because each of their route systems had reached that middle ground.

                  On 26 January 1927 the MTC and the Pickwick Stages made a preliminary agreement to divide (into two segments) the route between Chicago and Kansas City via Saint Louis – the route of the Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines – to divide it at Saint Louis – after the MTC (later) bought Purple Swan – and then to share (between the MTC and the Pickwick Stages) the route segment between Kansas City and Saint Louis – by creating and operating a joint venture – the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.

                  Sometime during 1927 the MTC formed a new subsidiary, the GLI of Delaware, for the specific purpose of taking over Purple Swan.

                  The Automotive Investments, the acquisition arm of the MTC, bought Purple Swan and then transferred it to the GLI of Delaware.

                  The GLI of Delaware gave its own name to its new property (Purple Swan) as its brand name, trade name, or service name.  That is, Purple Swan became known as the GLI of Delaware.

                  The Pickwick Stages bought a 45-percent stake in the GLI of Delaware.

                  On 31 July 1928 the MTC and Pickwick renamed the GLI of Delaware, their joint property, as the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines (with a hyphen).  That is, they changed the name of the corporation itself.  They also changed the brand name, trade name, or service name from the GLI of Delaware to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines (the same as the new name of the corporation).

                  When the route segment between Kansas City and Saint Louis went to the PG Lines, the other part of Purple Swan – the segment between Saint Louis and Chicago – went to another new firm – the Illinois GL (first as a subsidiary of the PG Lines, later as a subsidiary of the MTC).

            The details follow:

Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines

            In 1926, apparently in June, the Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines started a route between Chicago and Kansas City via Saint Louis.  Purple Swan used a fleet of 30 Fageol Safety Coaches, so it used the words Safety Coach in the name of the company – as did many others – with the pleased assent of the founding Fageol brothers (Frank and William) of their coach-building firm.  [More about the Fageol brothers, their firms, and their coaches will become available in my forthcoming article about them.]

GLI of Delaware

            The MTC, the original parent Greyhound firm, before it became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation, formed yet another subsidiary – its third subsidiary, after the GLI of Ohio and the GLI of Indiana, each of which I describe above, in the section entitled “MTC and Greyhound.”  The new third subsidiary was the Greyhound Lines, Inc., of Delaware (the GLI of Delaware), which on 06 December 1927 took over the Purple Swan firm and placed its assets and operations into itself (and then dissolved the newly empty original Purple Swan corporate shell).  The MTC had created that new firm (the GLI of Delaware) for the specific purpose of taking over Purple Swan.  [The GLI of Ohio, the GLI of Indiana, and the GLI of Delaware are sometimes known collectively as the “first GLI” (in the singular) or the “first GLIs” (in the plural).

            [The Automotive Investments, Inc., based in Duluth, a property of the syndicate of Wickman and his associates (his financiers and investors), was their business unit used for most or many of the acquisitions of preexisting carriers during the early years of the development of what soon became the Greyhound Lines.  That process began to acquire and accumulate preexisting carriers not useful to the Northland Transportation Company (NTC) while the Great Northern Railway owned the NTC (1925‑29).  Automotive Investments bought Purple Swan, and then the former (in a typical pattern) transferred the latter to the GLI of Delaware.  More about the Automotive Investments is available in my article about the Northland GL.]

            Already, on 26 January 1927, slightly more than nine months before the Pickwick Stages arrived in Saint Louis (on 01 November 1927) – in anticipation of the formation of the Pickwick-Greyhound (PG) Lines – the MTC and the Pickwick Stages had made a preliminary contract.  The parties agreed to divide (at Saint Louis – into two segments) the route of the GLI of Delaware – after the GLI of Delaware came into existence and after it took it over – the route between Chicago and Kansas City via Saint Louis – the service first known as the Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines – and then to share the route segment between Kansas City and Saint Louis – by creating and operating a joint ventur – the PG Lines.

            In March 1928, shortly after the Pickwick Stages arrived in Saint Louis (on 01 November 1927), Wren extended his firm eastwardly – to Vincennes, Indiana, on his way to Louisville – and to Pittsburgh via Indianapolis, Columbus (in Ohio), and Wheeling (in West Virginia).  [It appears that Wren’s Pickwick Stages may have thus violated an agreement with Wickman’s MTC – by extending eastwardly farther than the Mississippi River (that is, farther than Saint Louis.  It also appears that Wren had intended to continue all the way to the East Coast – to Philadelphia, Washington, and New York City – but then (on 31 May 1929) Wren and his Pickwick Stages pulled back to Saint Louis – as described below in the section entitled “Back to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.”  [On that day the Pickwick Stages transferred its routes to the east of Saint Louis, among others, to the PG Lines, and then PG, under the insistence of the MTC, withdrew from those routes – so that the MTC and its other operating subsidiaries could concentrate in those areas – eastwardly from Saint Louis – without internal competition from the PG Lines.]

            [In 1935 Wren finally reached all the way between Los Angeles and New York City – but he did so with an entirely different firm – the All-American Bus Lines – which later became the American Buslines [sic] – which (after a merger with the Burlington Transportation Company) even later became a part of the Continental American Lines (a subsidiary of the Continental Trailways) – and eventually (in 1987) became a part of the Greyhound Lines, Inc., under Fred Currey (when the GLI bought the Trailways, Inc., which had previously been known as the Continental Trailways).]

            The MTC was already at work on building from Chicago and from Saint Louis (separately) to Philadelphia via Pittsburgh (that is, preparing to form the Pennsylvania GL).  The reach of the MTC from Saint Louis to Pittsburgh included its purchase (on 20 February 1929) and merger of the YellowaY-Pioneer system, which I describe below in the section entitled “Buck Travis, His California Transit Company, and His YellowaY-Pioneer System.”  [More about the development of the Pennsy GL is available in my article bearing its name.]

            On 06 December 1927, as I first mention above, in the first paragraph of this section, the GLI of Delaware took over the Purple Swan firm.

            On 01 July 1928 the GLI of Delaware took over also three other carriers:

                  the Pierce-Arrow Bus Line, which ran between Chicago and Champaign, Illinois, with an unknown number of Pierce-Arrow coaches;

                  the Interstate Stage Lines, which ran two parallel alternate routes between Kansas City and Topeka, Kansas, with at least 15 Fageol Safety Coaches;

                  and the Tri-county Transit Company, which ran between Effingham and Vandalia, both in Illinois, between Saint Louis and Chicago and between Saint Louis and Indianapolis.  [Effingham was (and still is) the junction between the Chicago line and the Indianapolis line to and from Saint Louis.]

            [The Interstate Stage Lines, mentioned above (running between Kansas City and Topeka) was completely different and separate from the similarly named Interstate Stages, Interstate Airlines, and Interstate Transit Lines, each mentioned above in other contexts (and in other sections).]

            Meanwhile on 19 July 1928 the Pickwick Stages and the MTC entered into a detailed contract about the terms of their much larger deal.  Under one of those terms, Pickwick bought a 45-percent minority (noncontrolling) interest in the GLI of Delaware, which the owners were about to rename.  Pickwick made its payment sometime during the second half of July 1928.

            Then on 31 July 1928, according to another of those terms, the MTC and Pickwick changed the name of the GLI of Delaware to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines (with a hyphen because of the joint ownership).  [The PG Lines had previously been known as the GLI of Delaware, and the predecessor firm had been known as the Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines.]

            Further, taking the next step, on 01 September 1928 the PG Lines, using its new name and under its new ownership, transferred the routes between Chicago and Champaign (from Pierce-Arrow) and between Effingham and Vandalia (from Tri-county) – along with the one between Chicago and Saint Louis (from Purple Swan) – into a brand-new corporate entity, the Illinois Greyhound Lines (IGL), which PG had just formed (as a subsidiary of the PG Lines).  However, PG kept the two routes between Kansas City and Topeka (from the Interstate Stage Lines).  [PG then dissolved the newly empty corporate shells of the Pierce-Arrow, Tri-county, and Interstate companies.]

            [In my private collection of motor-coach memorabilia, I have a timetable folder bearing the date of 03 December 1928 and bearing four names – the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines (in large letters) – and the Pickwick Stages, the Purple Swan Safety Coach Lines, and the GLI of Delaware (all in very small letters).  Likely the presence of the three names in small letters represents a marketing technique – to reassure the members of the public that the PG Lines was somehow related to the older firms and the older more recognized names.]

            At that time the PG Lines ran only between Kansas City and Saint Louis and between Kansas City and Topeka – but the future held much more.  {The subject carrier here between Southern California and Saint Louis (via Joplin) was still the original Pickwick Stages [before the merger of some of it (between El Paso and Saint Louis plus the branch line between Kansas City and Joplin) into the PG Lines].}

            During that era a new Illinois statute required that any carrier holding and using a certificate (of convenience and necessity) must be a “domestic” business firm “domiciled” in Illinois, so the PG Lines formed a “domestic” corporation “domiciled” in Illinois – the Illinois Greyhound Lines, based in Chicago, as a subsidiary of the PG Lines.

            On 30 April 1929 the MTC bought the Illinois GL from the PG Lines and then held it as a subsidiary of the MTC.  [The IGL still held a corporate charter from the State of Illinois, and the IGL was still based in Chicago, so the IGL still satisfied the statutory requirements of the State of Illinois.]  As the MTC – and later as The Greyhound Corporation – continued to develop routes within Illinois, the parent firm placed also most of those other operations into the Illinois GL.  [Several routes in northern Illinois were properties of the Northland GL of Illinois (the NGL of Illinois), and the route between Saint Louis and Terre Haute, Indiana, was the property of the PG Lines of Illinois (the Illinois subsidiary of the PG Lines), which eventually went into the Pennsylvania GL (for its route between Saint Louis and Philadelphia via Indianapolis, Columbus, Wheeling, and Pittsburgh.]

            Later, on 31 December 1948 – after the State of Illinois withdrew its statutory requirement for “domestic” or “domiciled” carriers on intrastate highway route – The Greyhound Corporation – to simplify its organization, to increase the efficiency of its administration, and to reduce its overhead costs and expenses – merged the Illinois GL into the second Central GL.

            Much later, on 22 June 1955, the parent Greyhound firm transferred those former-IGL routes from the second Central GL into the Great Lakes GL.

            Even later,  on 01 September 1957, Greyhound further merged the Great Lakes GL into the Northland GL (NGL), and it renamed the newly expanded NGL as the Central Division of The Greyhound Corporation, called also the Central GL (using the fifth of six instances of that name), which was the third of four huge new divisions (along with Eastern, Southern, and Western).

            During a time of huge (nearly explosive) growth and diversification, Greyhound in 1967 formed the second Greyhound Lines, Inc. (the second GLI) and placed all its motor-coach operations into the new GLI (as a subsidiary of The Greyhound Corporation) – to separate and isolate its assets and operations in its own exclusive and dedicated corporation, just as every one of the other subsidiaries existed in its own separate and isolated corporation.

             Later yet, about 1969, Greyhound (that is, the GLI) reorganized again, into just two humongous divisions, named as the Greyhound Lines East (GLE) and the Greyhound Lines West (GLW), divided at the Mississippi River.

            Finally, about 1975, the GLI eliminated those two divisions, thus leaving a single gargantuan undivided nationwide empire, known simply as the Greyhound Lines (GL), and likewise an undivided nationwide fleet and an undivided management and administrative organization.

            [More about the IGL, the GLGL, and the NGL is available in my articles bearing their respective names, more about the six uses of the name of the Central GL (CGL) is available in my article bearing the name of the CGL, and more about the consolidations and the continuing history of the GLI (all the way to 2023) is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]

Pacific Transportation Securities
and the Pacific Greyhound Lines

            Meanwhile, back on the Left Coast, early in 1929, under the leadership of Carl Eric Wickman and his associates in Duluth and Chicago, several motor-coach interests on the West Coast opened discussions, and they found a better way to the future.  The result, on 17 May 1929, was the incorporation of the Pacific Transportation Securities (PTS), Inc., based in San Francisco.  Three investors held equal shares in the new firm; the owners were the MTC (Greyhound under its first name), The Pickwick Corporation (the parent umbrella firm of the Pickwick Stages and several other Pickwick subsidiaries), and the Southern Pacific (SP) Railroad.  Eric Wickman served as the chairman of the board of directors of the PTS. 

            [Sometime during 1930 Greyhound bought all of Pickwick’s stock in the PTS; several times through the years Greyhound also bought some of the stock of the SP Railroad until 1956, when it bought the last of it.]                                                                             

            Two weeks later, on 31 May 1929, the PTS bought the assets and operations of three large motor-coach concerns – the California Transit (CalTrans) Company, most of the Pickwick Stages, and the intercity-bus business of the SP Railroad (a part of the Southern Pacific Motor Transport Company, which ran highway trucks as well as buses).  The PTS bought also at least 11 smaller carriers – to increase its route network, to decrease its competition, and to increase its intrastate authority.

            The Pickwick routes conveyed to the PTS were those between Portland and San Diego, between Southern California (both Los Angeles and San Diego) and El Paso, between San Francisco and Salt Lake City via Reno, and between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City via Las Vegas.  [Pickwick had discontinued running between Portland and Seattle.]

            The PTS (from the outset) began to run its new motor-coach property under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Pacific Greyhound Lines.  Thus began the Pacific GL, which instantly became the largest business unit of the growing Greyhound empire.  Before long the PTS (the corporation itself) became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines, Inc.; that is, the name of the corporation (PTS) became changed to the same as its brand name, trade name, or service name.  Again, thus began the PacGL.  [More about the PacGL will become available in my forthcoming article bearing its name.]

            [Fred Ackerman, who had served as the auditor of the California Transit Company, then served as the secretary and treasurer of the PTS and of the Pacific GL (PacGL); later he served as the president of the PacGL; later yet he served as the president and even later as the chairman of the board of directors of The Greyhound Corporation.  More about Ackerman and his service is available in my article about the Greyhound Lines after WW2, and more yet will become available in my forthcoming article about the Pacific GL.]

Back to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines

            On 31 May 1929, the same day as that of the transfer of many assets and operations (including most of those of the Pickwick Stages) to the Pacific Transportation Securities – as described above in the previous section – the Pickwick Stages made also a transfer of the entire remainder of its network.  It conveyed its leftover routes and other assets (including an unknown number of coaches) for its business between El Paso and Saint Louis and between Kansas City and Joplin – along with the eastward Pickwick extensions from Saint Louis – to Vincennes and to Pittsburgh – not to the PTS or the Pacific GL but rather to the Pickwick-Greyhound (PG) Lines.  That’s because the route between El Paso and Saint Louis – and the branch between Kansas City and Joplin – and the routes to the east of Saint Louis – did not properly or logically fit into the PacGL or belong to it.  Thus the PG Lines suddenly stretched between El Paso and Saint Louis (and to Kansas City via Joplin) – and even to the east of Saint Louis – as well as along its original route (between Kansas City and Saint Louis).

            Meanwhile in the previous year, on 02 July 1928, the MTC had finally succeeded in starting its own direct through-coach service from the Twin Cities of Minnesota (Minneapolis and Saint Paul) to Chicago and back (via La Crosse and Madison, both in Wisconsin).  The delay had occurred because of the difficult gap – the near impassability of the road – between La Crosse and Madison.  [More about that is available in my article about the Northland GL.]

            During that time, while the MTC began to build routes in and out of Chicago, it bought, among others, two westerly operations to and from Chicago:

                  On 19 October 1927 the MTC had bought the Mohawk Stage Lines Company, running between Chicago and Davenport, Iowa, via Joliet and LaSalle, both in Illinois.

                  Later in 1927 the MTC had bought also – from the Metropolitan Motor Coach Company, a property of the Insull public-utility empire – the Northern Illinois Service Company, which ran mainly between Chicago and Davenport via Geneva, DeKalb, Dixon, and Morrison (all four in Illinois) – plus three shorter routes of no concern here.  [More about the Insull companies is available in my article about the Northland GL.]

            For a short time during 1928‑29 the MTC referred to the Mohawk firm and the Northern Illinois firm (together) as the “Western Division of [the] Greyhound Lines” – although no such organizational entity ever existed – and despite the continuing (albeit temporary) operation of those two firms under their own respective names.

            Sometime early in 1929, while the Mohawk firm was still a property of the MTC (but while it continued to run under its own name), Mohawk extended its service westwardly from Davenport to Des Moines, slightly more than halfway across Iowa (toward Omaha).

            During May 1929 the MTC merged the Northern Illinois firm into Mohawk.

            Shortly afterward the PG Lines formed a subsidiary, the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines of Illinois (the PG Lines of Illinois), domiciled in Illinois and based in Chicago – then the MTC transferred to the PG Lines of Illinois the route of the Mohawk Stage Lines Company between Chicago and Des Moines via Davenport – so that PG could lawfully use its new intrastate authority (from the Mohawk firm) across Illinois between Chicago and the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois (Davenport, Bettendorf, Moline, and Rock Island).

            When the MTC and the Pickwick Stages made their plan to form the PG Lines – to divide the Purple Swan route (at Saint Louis), to share the segment between Kansas City and Saint Louis, and to allow the MTC to keep the segment between Saint Louis and Chicago – it may well have been easy for Wren (at Pickwick) to have agreed for MTC to keep the segment between Saint Louis and Chicago when Wickman (at the MTC) offered to turn over to the PG Lines (of Illinois) the former-Mohawk route between Des Moines and Chicago.

            After arriving in Kansas City – that is, after opening its branch line between Joplin and Kansas City – the PG Lines extended from Kansas City to Omaha via Saint Joseph, from Kansas City to Des Moines via Saint Joseph, and then between Omaha and Des Moines (the third side of a triangle).

          The transfer (to the PG Lines) of the route (with intrastate authority) between Des Moines and Chicago– plus the extensions from Kansas City to Omaha and to Des Moines– allowed PG to offer single-carrier service to and from El Paso (and thus to and from Arizona and Southern California via connections in El Paso)– connecting with not only Saint Louis and Kansas City (via Joplin) but also Saint Joseph, Omaha, Des Moines, Davenport, and Chicago (all five via Kansas City)– along with uncounted intermediate points.

            Also, the extension between Omaha and Des Moines allowed the PG Lines to offer single-carrier through-service between Omaha and Chicago via Des Moines and Davenport – and many intermediate points.

            That route via Des Moines gave the PG Lines a gateway to and from Chicago – not only for traffic to and from Omaha and Kansas City but also traffic to and from El Paso, along with much of the rest of the Southwest, including Arizona and Southern California (via connections in El Paso).  The PG Lines opened also two branch lines between Tulsa and Kansas City, which gave two shorter routes between El Paso and Chicago via Tulsa, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Davenport.

            Further, under the influence of Charles Wren, the PG Lines continued to build its route network – by filling the gaps – by connecting Wren’s older work in the Far West with his newer work in the Midwest – and by extending more and more.  PG added these routes:

                   between El Paso and Dallas, Texas;
                   between Salt Lake City and Omaha via Cheyenne;
                   between Salt Lake City and Kansas City via Cheyenne and Denver;
                   between Denver and Los Angeles via Raton, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, all three in New Mexico;
                   between Dallas and Tulsa, thus offering single-carrier service from Dallas beyond Tulsa to Saint Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, and Chicago;
                  and between Raton and Amarillo, thus connecting Denver with the PG route between El Paso and Saint Louis – and therefore offering single-carrier service between Denver and much of the rest of the Southwest, including Arizona and Southern California (via connections in El Paso).

            Those additions enabled the PG Lines to offer single-ticket and single-carrier service also between more points in California (and many other points in the Far West and Southwest) and the Midwestern gateway cities of Chicago and Saint Louis.

            Having arrived in Saint Louis (on 01 November 1927), under Wren’s continuing influence, the PG Lines also expanded southwardly – by buying from a trustee (on 18 April 1929) the bankrupt Gregory Bus Lines, based in Memphis.  That action gained routes between Saint Louis and Memphis; between Memphis and Birmingham, Alabama; and between Memphis and New Orleans, Louisiana, via Jackson, Mississippi.

            During those processes the PG Lines added also many short branch lines and feeder lines to support its main routes.

Buck Travis, His California Transit Company,
and His YellowaY-Pioneer Lines

            Wesley Elgin “Buck” Travis – who was known mostly or usually as either Buck Travis or W.E. Travis – was a colorful, energetic, and productive pioneer in highway transit in the Far West.  He was born – on 22 July 1870 in Hamilton, White Pine County, Nevada, near what’s now US‑50 and between Ely and Eureka – as the eldest of seven children (and the first of four sons) of a man who owned and operated a large fleet of horse-drawn stagecoaches on a large route network in the Far West. 

            Buck Travis – after one year (1888‑89) at Harvard University (as both a student and a football player) – became not only a bus-operating pioneer in California and elsewhere but also a bus-building pioneer.  [During Buck’s one year at Harvard, he gained national fame as a halfback.]

            At a young age Buck owned and operated a number of rural “star” routes (using horse-drawn delivery vehicles on about 2,000 miles of those routes) in the service of the US Mail, which he subcontracted to others.  In 1905, however, the Postmaster General changed a policy and passed a rule that required that the mail contractors must live in the respective served territories.  Thus Travis sold his star-route contracts to other people (including some of his subcontractors), and then he moved on to other enterprises.

            In 1909, after checking out several other possibilities, Buck in San Francisco bought a taxi service, known as the Taxicab Company of California.  [That took place three years after the infamous earthquake and fire of San Francisco (on 18 April 1906).]

            In or about 1914 Buck founded a subsidiary, the California Body Building Company, in San Francisco, to construct taxicab bodies, to mount them onto car or truck chassis, and to build and modify other bodies.

            By 1917 Buck’s body-building company had begun to build also bus bodies and to mount them on White truck chassis, which he sold to some of the entrepreneurs who had become known as “auto-stage” operators, including many members of a large group of such operators under the name of the Star Auto Stage Association.  During that time Travis drifted from the taxicab business into the bus business, and in 1919 he built his first all-metal bus body.

            In October 1920 Buck Travis and Walter Filer incorporated the Star Auto Stage Company (using a similar name), which bought and took over many of the independent operations of the former association.  [Travis and Filer had collaborated in business since Travis took over his taxicab firm.]  The new company then owned and ran main trunk routes between Merced and Sacramento via Modesto and Stockton plus such routes between Stockton and both Oakland and San Jose, both via Tracy and Livermore, all in Northern California.  About 15 members of the old association continued to own and run about 13 branch and feeder routes.

            On 18 April 1921 Buck renamed his Star Auto Stage Company as the California Transit (CalTrans) Company – largely to escape from the outdated image of the “wildcat” drivers and their loose association – and to emphasize instead the new image of an intercity mainline operation.  By the end of that same year, 1921, Buck had eliminated many of the miscellaneous leftover vehicles (from the old association) of various makes or brands, and he replaced them with a handsome group of new buses – 14 Whites, three Pierce-Arrows, and one Packard – each with a new body from his own plant.

            By the end of the next year, 1922, Buck’s firm had grown to 69 buses, and during the following year, ‑23, it operated about 90 buses in the summer and about 70 in the winter.

            During the following year, 1923, Travis sold his taxicab firm (in San Francisco), and he moved the headquarters of his California Transit Company and his California Body Building Company from San Francisco into two separate new buildings in Oakland, due east across the San Francisco Bay.

            During the 1920s Travis continued to expand and develop the route network of his CalTrans Company and to increase its service.

            Early in 1926, perhaps following the example of the Pickwick Stages, CalTrans adopted a snappy new brand name, trade name, or service name – the Pioneer Stages – and a spiffy new shield.  The new name and the new emblem soon began to appear on timetable folders, the sides of the coaches, their radiator shells, the company facilities, and other places.

            In the summer of that same year, 1926, pursuing that same theme, Buck renamed his California Body Building Company as the Pioneer Motor Coach Works, and he named its products as Pioneer coaches or stages.

            Then in May 1928 W.E. Travis made his last and largest move as an independent businessman – that is, before he and his firms joined the growing Greyhound empire.  He did so in a competitive step in response to a move by his longtime major rival – Charles Wren, of the Pickwick Stages.

            In the spring of 1927 Wren and E.J. Thompson had started the Rocky Mountain Stages, to offer service between San Francisco and Salt Lake City via Sacramento (the capital of the Golden State) and Reno.  [Thompson was the superintendent or regional manager of Wren’s Pickwick Stages in San Francisco; he had come from Fresno, California, after (in December 1925) Pickwick bought the second of Thompson’s two routes based in Fresno.  I first mention Thompson and the Rocky Mountain Stages above in the section entitled “Pickwick Stages.”]

            While Travis looked for a way by which to compete against Wren’s new Rocky Mountain Stages (between San Francisco and Salt Lake City), Buck found a new, weak, and loose chain of independent operators (both individual people and small companies), running coöperatively under the collective name of the YellowaY System.  YellowaY had recently begun to offer service (on one or two daily trips in each direction) along routes from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Saint Louis, Chicago, and Detroit. 

            In May 1928 Buck took his major step.  He formed and incorporated the American Motor Transportation Company (AMTC), which soon bought Buck’s CalTrans Company and his bus-building firm, which he had (again) renamed as the Pioneer Motor Coach Manufacturing Company.  Buck and his close associates held all the common (voting) stock, and an underwriting concern in San Francisco raised for them nearly a million dollars by selling shares of preferred (nonvoting) stock.  With the new cash the new firm bought most of the independent YellowaY operators.  Buck next formed the YellowaY-Pioneer (YP) System, Inc., as a joint-tariff agency for the new combined operation of the Pioneer and YellowaY route network.

            [That move by Travis upstaged O.W. Townsend, who had just (in the preceding year, 1927) begun to form his YellowaY-Cornhusker System, which combined his own Cornhusker System with a large part of the YellowaY System.  Townsend’s coaches had already begun to run between Chicago and Salt Lake City.  More about that is available in my article about the Teche GL.]

            However, the YellowaY-Pioneer System did not last long – because Carl Eric Wickman and his associates in Duluth and Chicago (in the Motor Transit Corporation) had seen Buck and his coaches “coming ‘round the bend.”

            On 11 September 1928 a coach of the YellowaY-Pioneer System completed the first regularly scheduled coast-to-coast bus trip in the US, from Los Angeles to New York City, by a single operating company.  The route included Albuquerque, Denver, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.  However, that service did not long continue with any regularity because of the difficulties for a single thinly capitalized firm to sustain such an extended and ambitious operation.  Buck himself made the whole trip as a passenger and observer aboard that first coach.  [I first describe that matter above in the section entitled “UP Railroad and the ITL.”]

            Eric Wickman and his associates saw the huge benefits, advantages, and opportunities attached to the YP System, so they sought it.  On 05 December 1928 Wickman and Travis made an informal agreement for a sale and purchase, and on 20 December 1928 the MTC made a contract to buy the entire YP System (from the AMTC).  Then just two months later, on 20 February 1929, the parties closed their deal.  [On 14 February 1929 Wickman and Travis had publicly announced the pending merger.]  Thus the YellowaY-Pioneer System became a part of the growing Greyhound empire.

            In my private collection of motor-coach memorabilia I have two full-page display advertisements in The American Magazine – from May and August 1929.  Each of them touts the “new amazing chapter in transportation history” resulting from the merger of the YellowaY System into the Greyhound Lines.  [Greyhound publicly referred to its acquisition not as “YellowaY-Pioneer” but rather as simply “YellowaY.”]

            On 17 May 1929 – as described above in the section entitled “Pacific Transportation Securities and the Pacific Greyhound Lines” – the Pacific Transportation Securities (PTS), Inc., came into existence, and two weeks later, on 31 May 1929, the PTS bought the assets and operations of three large motor-coach concerns, including the California Transit Company.  [The PTS bought CalTrans from the AMTC.]  The PTS (from the outset) began to run its new motor-coach property under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Pacific Greyhound Lines (PacGL).  And soon the PTS became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines, Inc.; that is, the name of the corporation (the PTS) became changed to the same as its brand name, trade name, or service name.

            During the second half of 1929, the Pioneer coach-building plant (in Oakland) – which the PTS had acquired when it bought the California Transit Company (because the Pioneer coach-building firm was a subsidiary of the CalTrans Company) – built an unknown number of coaches for what had until recently been the Oregon Stages System.  The customer was a group of three carriers in Oregon, previously under the ownership of the Southern Pacific Motor Transport Company, which (among others) the SP Railroad had sold to the PTS during the formation of the PTS (on 31 May 1929).  After that date, however, the three former members of the former Oregon Stages System – the Oregon Stages, Inc.; the Pacific Stages, Inc.; and the Coast Auto Lines, Inc. – were simply parts of the Pacific Greyhound Lines.

            Those coaches (for the former lines of the former Oregon Stages System) bore the curious brand name of Pioneer-Will.  By that time the Motor Transit Corporation (before it became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation) owned the C.H. Will Motors Corporation, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as a one-third interest in the Pioneer Motor Coach Manufacturing Company, of Oakland, California – the latter through the Pacific Transportation Securities and the Pacific Greyhound Lines. 

            The design of those Pioneer-Will coaches may have been simply Pioneer coaches with a new name, or they may have been a slightly modified current model of the Will coaches already in production in Minneapolis.

            On some unknown date late in 1929 the Pacific GL, likely at the behest of the MTC, transferred the ownership of the Pioneer building firm to the C.H. Will Motors Corporation.

            During 1930 the Pioneer plant (in Oakland) built a single batch of 60 coaches, under the Will brand name, for the Pacific GL, using a design similar or identical to the one for the Pioneer-Will coaches (for the Oregon operations).  Afterward the Will company closed the Oakland plant and sold it.

            Meanwhile on 21 November 1929 the MTC and the General Motors (GM) Corporation had entered into a complex contract, which included the purchase of the C.H. Will Motors Corporation by GM.  Under the terms of that deal, the Will plant (in Minneapolis) wound down during 1930 and ground to a halt about the end of that year (‑30).  Will completed the last few coaches, of the model NC, and delivered them to Greyhound in January 1931.

             The deal between GM and the MTC anticipated that GM, through its Yellow Truck and Coach (T&C) Manufacturing Company – which in 1943 became the GMC T&C Division of the GM Corporation – would become a long-term nearly exclusive supplier of coaches to the MTC (which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation).

            Eric Wickman served as the chairman of the board of directors of the Pacific GL, and Buck Travis served as the president.

            According to one report, Travis later served for a while as the chairman of the board of The Greyhound Corporation, but he even later returned to San Francisco and to the presidency of the PacGL.

            In 1952 Wesley Elgin “Buck” Travis gave $300,000 in memory of his father, Ezra Johnson “Jot” Travis – for the construction of the Jot Travis Student Union on the campus of the University of Nevada at Reno.  The legislature of Nevada met Buck’s matching challenge of $300,000, and the facility opened in 1958.  The building continued to serve as the student union until 2004, when a larger complex replaced it.  Then in 2008 the same Jot Travis Building became the home of the Davidson Academy of Nevada, an activity of the U of N at Reno, which is a free public day middle school and high school for “profoundly gifted” students.

            [More about the Pacific GL, the CalTrans Company, the Pioneer Stages, the YellowaY System, and the YellowaY-Pioneer System will become available in my forthcoming article bearing the name of the PacGL.]

End of the Line for the PG Lines

            During 1929‑30 the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines had reached its greatest extent, running at least 335 coaches along 10,000 route‑miles.

            Regrettably, though, by the summer of 1930 – during the early time of the Great Depression – after the frightful and massive stock-market crash on the infamous Black Tuesday (29 October 1929) – the PG Lines had begun to run into serious financial trouble due to its sharply decreased revenue (because of its sharply decreased ridership).

            For that reason Pickwick-Greyhound began efforts to reduce its costs and expenses and then to reduce its route system and its workforce and facilities.

            Unfortunately, it appears that the PG Lines had never – not ye – turned a profit during any year of its short existence (since 31 July 1928) – despite – or perhaps because of – its ambitious and dramatic expansion.  [In that era, before the federal regulation of financial reporting to the investing public, it’s hard to be sure about the lack of profit, but the annual reports of both Pickwick and Greyhound (the joint owners of PG) seem to indicate the losses or the absence of profits from the operation of their joint property.]

            Then in January 1932 both The Pickwick Corporation (the parent Pickwick firm) and the PG Lines – along with all the other Pickwick subsidiaries – filed for protection in receivership – a step just short of bankruptcy – in California.

            Further, the court proceedings wasted no time in finding and declaring that the situation of the entire Pickwick Corporation, including the PG Lines, was so profoundly insolvent – broken and utterly unable to pay its bills – that the only reasonable solution was for all of the Pickwick kingdom to go into a liquidation in bankruptcy.

            The officials of The Greyhound Corporation had already decided not to take part in continuing the operation of Pickwick-Greyhound (that is, not to make up for the accumulating losses of the PG Lines).  [Apparently that unwillingness of the Greyhound men – not to throw any more good money after money lost – was a major factor in causing the court (the judge) to direct PG directly into bankruptcy.]

            Those Greyhound officials had anticipated the impending bankruptcy of Pickwick and Pickwick-Greyhound, so they laid their plans.  As soon as Pickwick filed, and as soon as the court ordered Pickwick into bankruptcy, Greyhound lawyers and Greyhound executives immediately approached the trustee in bankruptcy and presented their proposal.

            The trustee, with the approval of the court (that is, the judge), allowed and authorized The Greyhound Corporation, with its established and demonstrated expertise in the motor-coach industry, to wind up the business of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines under the supervision of the trustee.  [There was a need for someone or some firm to wind it up, and Greyhound was obviously the best prepared and best qualified party to do so; of course, Greyhound received lawful and appropriate fees from the trustee (that is, from the bankrupt “estate”) for its services.]

            Thus Greyhound sold most of the routes and most of the coaches and other assets of the PG Lines, but Greyhound kept for itself (openly, lawfully, properly, and with payment to the trustee) several of those routes and some of those coaches in the greatly condensed leftover PG.

            On 07 February 1932 PG discontinued all its operations.

            A large part of the PG route network either duplicated or closely paralleled the routes of the Union Pacific (UP) Stages and the Interstate Transit Lines (ITL), which, as I’ve described in previous sections, were properties (subsidiaries) of the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad.

            The Greyhound Corporation, with the supervision of the trustee and the approval of the court, acting on behalf of the bankrupt “estate” (that is, the PG Lines), took these actions:

                  Greyhound approached those in charge of the ITL and then sold (with proceeds to the trustee) these PG routes and other assets (including intrastate authority) to the ITL:

                        between Chicago and Omaha via Davenport and Des Moines;
                        and between Denver and Los Angeles via Cheyenne and Salt Lake City.

                  Also Greyhound approached those in charge of the UP Stages and then sold to that firm the PG route between Portland and Salt Lake City.

            Further, Greyhound, still acting for the PG Lines, simply abandoned four PG routes, each of which duplicated an ITL route:

                  between Denver and Omaha;
                  between Omaha and Kansas City via Saint Joseph;
                  between Des Moines and Kansas City via Saint Joseph;
                  and between Omaha and Clinton, Iowa, near Davenport (the PG second route across Iowa between Omaha and Chicago).

            Then Greyhound took the lead in bringing about a deal between the ITL and the remainder of the PG Lines – for both of them (ITL and PG) to run between Denver and Kansas City via Topeka – but with coördinated schedules – and with each carrier’s honoring the other’s tickets.

            Remarkably and surprisingly, because of the expertise and diligence of the Greyhound officials, the wheels of the PG Lines started rolling again – late in February 1932 – albeit on a much smaller route system.

            The PG Lines resumed running between Kansas City and Saint Louis (on its original route, on which PG had begun), and the ITL withdrew from that route – largely because the ITL had never held or used intrastate rights there.  Soon, however, The Greyhound Corporation transferred that route to the Southwestern GL (SWGL).  [More about the SWGL will become available in my forthcoming article bearing its name.]

            The PG Lines also resumed running on these four other routes:

                  between Kansas City and Tulsa;
                  between Dallas and Saint Louis via Tulsa;
                  between Denver and Los Angeles via Albuquerque;
                  and between Kansas City (via Fort Scott, Kansas) and Miami, Oklahoma (a small town on the route between Tulsa and Joplin).

            Greyhound likewise took over the sole ownership of both the Illinois GL (which had previously been a subsidiary of Pickwick-Greyhound) and what was left of the PG Lines – including the route between El Paso and Saint Louis – likewise with proper payment to the trustee.  The routes of the Illinois GL and the route between El Paso and Saint Louis (which Wren’s Pickwick Stages had started, as I describe above in the section entitled “Pickwick Stages”) were important to The Greyhound Corporation.  [More about the Illinois GL is available in my article bearing its name.]

            During those processes (but outside the Pickwick bankruptcy) the former-YP route between Chicago and Omaha via Davenport also went to the Interstate Transit Lines, a Greyhound affiliate (but not yet a division or subsidiary), which on 01 December 1943 became a large part of the Overland GL.

            On 05 April 1932 Greyhound renamed its leftover remainder of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines as the first Western Greyhound Lines, which ran in part between Kansas City and Los Angeles via Albuquerque – in time to complete a second Greyhound corridor (in addition to the route via El Paso and Saint Louis) between Southern California and the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933‑34 (the International Exposition of a “Century of Progress”).

            Seeking efficiency in its operations, on 01 October 1933 the Greyhound parent firm transferred that route (and the other related assets) to two of its other regional operating companies.  The segment between Los Angeles and Albuquerque went to the Pacific GL, and the segment between Albuquerque and Kansas City, along with the other former PG routes to the east and north of El Paso and Albuquerque, went to the Southwestern GL (SWGL).  [Greyhound had already transferred (to the SWGL) the former-PG route between Kansas City and Saint Louis.]  Greyhound then dissolved the empty corporate shell of the first Western GL (the remnant of what had previously been the PG Lines).  [More about the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines, the Pacific GL, and the Southwestern GL will become available in my forthcoming articles bearing their respective names.]

            Thus ended both the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines and the first Western GL.

Survival during the Great Depression

            During the Great Depression, after the stock-market crash on the infamous Black Tuesday (29 October 1929), most families, individual people, business firms, and other organizations alike generally found it hard (in various degrees) to survive financially.  Sadly and regrettably, many did not succeed.  Most families now repeat heartbreaking stories about the hardships and losses of their ancestors and their neighbors and families (and their employers and sometimes their own business firms) related to that harsh and difficult time.

            The Greyhound Corporation survived those challenges, as did the Union Pacific (UP) Stages and the Interstate Transit Lines (ITL), although it was not easy for them to do so.

            Sometime during the first half of 1932, the parent UP Railroad, striving for the efficiency (and therefore the survival) of its two motor-coach firms, consolidated the management of the two separate corporations.  UP moved the home office of its UP Stages from Portland to Omaha and combined it with that of the ITL.  Russell Walsh, the founder and longtime president of the ITL, continued in his post and took charge of the UP Stages as well.

            The Depression and the absence of regulation of the interstate motor-coach business (until later) invited cut-rate operations along many main routes throughout the US.  During 1932 the UP Railroad, citing unnamed “California operators,” began its own cut-rate service between Omaha and Los Angeles under the name of the Coast-to-coast Stage Lines.  A single trip started from each end on alternate days (that is, “every other day”).  However, that service did not continue long enough to attract any further attention.

            On 01 February 1934 the ITL bought and took over the routes and the coaches of the Crandic Stages from the Iowa Railway and Light Company.  The Crandic Stages had been the highway counterpart of an electric interurban railroad firm, known as the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway Company, which also was a subsidiary of the Iowa Railway and Light Company.  [Crandic is an acronym for Cedar Rapids and Iowa City (CR and IC).]  Crandic ran not only between the two named cities but also between Des Moines and Omaha and between Des Moines and Sioux City.

            Previously, on 01 April 1930, the ITL had bought (from the Crandic Stages) a single route and its intrastate authority between Marshalltown (about 53 miles northeast of Des Moines) and Cedar Rapids, thus closing a gap (about 69 miles long) in its local rights across Iowa.

            Further, on 17 September 1934 the ITL bought two routes from a carrier with a mouthful of a name – the Kansas City, Clay County, and Saint Joseph (KCCC&SJ) Auto Transit Company – between Kansas City and Excelsior Springs and between Kansas City and Saint Joseph via Parkville.  That purchase did not involve any equipment.  It appears to be the last purchase of routes by the ITL in the Midwest.

            In the Far West, meanwhile, in October 1931 the ITL started its service (with interstate rights only) between Las Vegas and Boulder City, Nevada, and onward to the nearby construction site of Boulder Dam.  [Construction had begun early in 1931.]  In July 1936 the ITL gained intrastate rights also by buying the Southern Nevada Stages.  After the completion of Boulder Dam, late in ‑36, the ITL extended that line to Lake Mead.  [In 1947 the Boulder Dam became renamed as the Hoover Dam, in honor of President Herbert Hoover, who in ‑28 had signed the federal legislation to authorize the project.]

            Until 1934 both the ITL and the UP Stages had used mainly Mack and ACF coaches; during that year, however, both carriers shifted their loyalty.  First they bought 20 Whites and 21 Yellow Coaches in 1934, then 10 more Whites in ‑35, and then 30 more Yellows in ‑36.  Afterward their equipment consisted almost entirely of various models of Yellow Coach and GM Coach (after the change in the brand name, in 1943, from YC to GM Coach).  [The notable exception was an unknown number of wartime Aerocoaches during WW2, while carriers found it necessary to buy whatever they could get.]

            The federal Motor Carrier Act of 1935 extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) over common carriers on highways – with trucks and coaches alike.  Promptly the ICC announced that railway-owned motor-coach carriers could not obtain new authority to serve points not on the passenger lines of the parent railways (and that truck carriers could not obtain new authority to serve points not on any of the lines of the parent railways).  [The federal Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, under the interstate-commerce clause of the Constitution of the US, had created the ICC to regulate the railways (especially the shipping rates at first).]

            Because of that policy of the ICC, the ITL and the UPS did not seek to expand their route networks any farther – because the routes of the ITL and the UPS duplicated or paralleled essentially all of the main passenger-hauling rail lines of the UP Railroad (and the applicable ones of the C&NW Railway, which owned a one-third interest in the ITL).

            During the 1930s and into the ‑40s both the ITL and the UPS continued to operate in coöperation with the Greyhound Lines, especially by coördinating their schedules, by routing passengers onto each other, and by selling tickets for each other.

A Large Purchase by the Hound

            On 05 November 1943 The Greyhound Corporation made a contract with the UP Railroad and the C&NW Railway – for the purchase of a one-third interest in each of the ITL and the UP Stages.  The closing of the deal took place shortly afterward.

            Then on 01 December 1943 the ITL and the UPS together began to run under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Overland Greyhound Lines (OGL), using the Greyhound dog and the blue-and-white livery.  Coach operators and other uniformed workers, mainly porters, began to wear Greyhound uniforms and Greyhound badges (where applicable).  Still, though, the names of the corporations (the ITL and the UPS) remained unchanged (until later).

            The headquarters of the OGL stayed at the same place, in Omaha, and Russell Walsh continued as the president of each of the two corporations (the ITL and the UPS), which began to use their new common brand name, trade name, or service name.  However, in January 1944 the UP Railroad added Eric Wickman and Orville Caesar to the two boards of directors (of the ITL and of the UPS) – to represent the Greyhound interest in its one-third fractional properties (of the ITL and of the UPS).

            During 1945‑46 the combined OGL received 25 new GM PGA-3702s and an unknown number of new Aerocoaches, and during 1947‑48, with the consent of The Greyhound Corporation, the OGL received 150 new GM PD‑3751 Silversides (which were the first diesel-powered equipment for the ITL, the UPS, or the OGL).  [In 1943 the GM Corporation had changed the brand name from Yellow Coach to GM Coach.]

            Then in 1951‑52 the ITL received 50 new GM PD‑4103s (“Henry Js”) in five groups (from May ‑51 through March ‑52).  They bore side numbers (fleet numbers) in the range of O‑1400-1449.  They were the first coaches of either the ITL or the UPS to wear the O prefix in their side numbers (in anticipation of the forthcoming full purchase by Greyhound, later in 1952).  Although the sale and purchase of the Henry Js took place in the name of the ITL, some of them became transferred to the UP Stages.

            Until that time – after the adoption of the trade name of the Overland GL – all the coaches of the ITL and the UPS bore the full name of the Overland Greyhound Lines, whereas the coaches of the other Greyhound regional operating companies (except the Southeastern GL) bore the foreshortened name of the “Greyhound Lines.”  That’s because the ITL and the UPS had not yet become divisions or subsidiaries of The Greyhound Corporation; instead they were “affiliated” companies.  [The same principle applied to the equipment of the Southeastern GL (SEGL) until 01 January 1951, when the SEGL, also previously an “affiliated” company, became a division of The Greyhound Corporation, when Greyhound bought 100 percent of the SEGL and turned it into a division.  More about the SEGL is available in my article bearing its name.]

            At the Overland GL, as I mentioned above, the first coaches to bear a prefix letter were the PD‑4103s, starting in 1951, and the first ones to bear the short name of the “Greyhound Lines” were the PD‑4104s, starting in ‑53, after Greyhound bought the full ownership of the ITL and the UPS.

An Even Larger Purchase by the Hound

            On 01 October 1952 The Greyhound Corporation bought (from the UP Railroad and the C&NW Railway) the remainder of the shares in both the ITL and the UPS, thus gaining the entire ownership of those two carriers.

            Greyhound promptly merged the ITL and the UPS together as a division, named as the Overland Greyhound Lines (OGL), of the parent umbrella Greyhound firm.  Russell Walsh, the founder of the ITL and the longtime president of both the ITL and the UPS, began to serve as the president of the OGL as a Greyhound division; he continued in that post until his death, on 16 January 1955.  He had been the only president of the ITL.

            During 1953‑54 the OGL received a total of 45 new GM PD-4104 Highway Travelers, and during 1954‑56 the OGL received a total of 83 new GM PD-4501 Scenicruisers.  Those were the only new coaches delivered to the OGL (after it became a division of the parent Greyhound firm) – because of a major event that took place on 01 August 1956.

            One of those Scenicruisers, O‑1773 (PD‑4501‑771), is now a property of Tom McNally, of Peoria, Illinois, who beautifully restored her, both cosmetically and mechanically.  She now wears the gold-stripe livery of a Super Scenicruiser (that is, the scheme applied to the Cruisers as they emerged from the repowering and rebuilding, during 1961‑62) and the side number of 8149 (her last number in the Greyhound fleet).  I’ve had the pleasure of riding her and the great joy and honor of driving her as well.  Thanks very much, Tom!

Pool (Interline) Operations

            The Overland GL ran along many relatively short routes plus three truly long ones within its own territory:

                  between Salt Lake City and Portland via Boise and Pendleton;
                  between Kansas City and Salt Lake City via Denver and Cheyenne;
                  and between Chicago and Los Angeles via Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and San Bernardino, California.

            The OGL also offered seasonal service between Salt Lake City and West Yellowstone, Montana, the western gateway to the Yellowstone National Park.

            Further, the OGL took part in three interlined through-routes (using pooled equipment in coöperation with other Greyhound companies) – that is, the use of through-coaches on through-routes running through the territories of two or more Greyhound regional operating companies.  The interlined routes of the OGL were these:

                  between Chicago and San Francisco via Omaha, in coöperation with the Pacific GL (between Salt Lake City and San Francisco via Reno);
                  between Saint Louis and San Francisco via Kansas City, Denver, and Cheyenne, in coöperation with the Southwestern GL (between Saint Louis and Kansas City, which had been the original route of the Pickwick–Greyhound Lines), and with the Pacific GL (between Salt Lake City and San Francisco via Reno);
                  and between Omaha and Minneapolis via Fairmont, in coöperation with the Northland GL (between Fairmont and Minneapolis).

Overland GL in 1956

            The Overland GL in 1956 had reached as far to the west as Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, California, and as far to the east as Chicago, Illinois.  In the West it went as far to the north as Spokane, Washington, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and as far to the south as Los Angeles and San Bernardino.  In the Midwest it went as far to the north as Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Fairmont, Minnesota, and as far to the south as Salina, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri.

            It had met (to the west) the Pacific GL and the Northwest GL; (to the north) the Northland GL; (to the east) the Great Lakes GL, the Eastern Canadian GL, and the second Eastern GL (formerly the second Central GL and the Pennsylvania GL); and (to the south) the Great Lakes GL and the Southwestern GL.

Northland GL in 1956

          The Northland GL in 1956 had reached as far to the north as Sweetgrass, Montana, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; as far to the east as Saint Ignace in Michigan, Milwaukee in Wisconsin, and Chicago; as far to the south as Chicago, Dubuque in Iowa, and Sioux City in Iowa; and as far to the west as Sweetgrass, Great Falls, Helena, and Butte, all four in Montana.

            It had met (to the west) the Northwest GL; (to the north) the Western Canadian GL and the Eastern Canadian GL; (to the east and south) the Great Lakes GL and the second Eastern GL (formerly the second Central GL and the Pennsylvania GL); and (to the south) the Overland GL.

Merger of the OGL into the NGL

          On 01 August 1956 the parent Greyhound firm merged the OGL into the NGL.  [Much more about the NGL is available in my article bearing its name.]

            Greyhound moved the administrative headquarters functions of the OGL from Omaha to Minneapolis, which had long been the home of the NGL.

            Thus ended the Overland GL.

Great Lakes GL in 1957

            By 1957 the Great Lakes GL (GLGL) had reached as far to the north as Sault Sainte Marie, on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; as far to the east as Port Huron and Detroit, both in Michigan, and Columbus, Ohio; as far to the south as Louisville and Paducah, both in Kentucky, and Evansville, Indiana; and as far to the west as Davenport, Iowa, and Saint Louis and Louisiana, both in Missouri.

            It had met the Eastern Canadian GL (in Saint Ignace, Port Huron, and Detroit); the Northland GL (in Saint Ignace and Chicago); the new second Eastern GL (in Chicago, Toledo, and Columbus); the Atlantic GL (in Columbus and Cincinnati); the Southeastern GL (in Cincinnati, Louisville, Evansville, Paducah, Saint Louis, and Effingham and Springfield, each of the last two in Illinois); the Southwestern GL (in Saint Louis and Louisiana), and the Overland GL (in Chicago, Dubuque, and Davenport).

Merger of the GLGL into the NGL

          On 01 September 1957, in yet another step of consolidation, as I mentioned above (in a previous section), Greyhound merged the GLGL into the NGL.

            Greyhound moved the administrative headquarters functions of the GLGL from Detroit to Minneapolis, which had long been the home of the NGL.

            Thus ended the Great Lakes GL.

Fifth CGL and the End of the NGL

            The parent Greyhound firm then renamed the twice-expanded NGL as the Central Division of The Greyhound Corporation (known also as the Central GL, making the fifth of six uses of that name), the third of four huge new divisions (along with Eastern, Southern, and Western).  [More about the GLGL is available in my article bearing its name, and more about the six uses of the name of the Central GL (CGL) is available in my article bearing the name of the CGL.]

            Thus ended the Northland GL, and thus began the fifth Central GL.

Beyond the OGL, the NGL, the GLGL, and the Fifth CGL

        Later, about 1969, The Greyhound Corporation reorganized again, into just two humongous divisions, named as the Greyhound Lines East (GLE) and the Greyhound Lines West (GLW); even later, about 1975, it eliminated those two divisions, thus leaving a single gargantuan undivided nationwide fleet and a likewise undivided nationwide management and administrative organization (as I first mentioned above in a previous section). 

            [More about the continuing history of the GLI (all the way to 2023) is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”] 

Conclusion

          The Overland GL made a major, significant, and lasting contribution to the present Greyhound route network.

Addendum

          Sadly and regrettably, in 2004, during a time of incompetent and unconscionable leadership at the top of the Greyhound Lines, Inc. (GLI), while Laidlaw International (an operator of trash trucks and school buses) owned the GLI, the formerly great and formerly respected carrier abandoned its through-route between Seattle and Minneapolis – that is, it abandoned the uncounted thousands of riders who had depended on Greyhound.  For many decades Greyhound previously had consistently run three through-coaches every day in each direction between Seattle and Chicago via Minneapolis, then suddenly and abruptly Greyhound withdrew from that market.  Now in 2023 Greyhound offers one daily trip in each direction between Seattle and Spokane, and the Jefferson Lines offers one daily connecting trip in each direction between Spokane and Minneapolis.  Northwestern Trailways also offers one daily trip in each direction between Seattle and Spokane.

            Lo, how the mighty has fallen!

Postscript

          King Gustav V of Sweden on 18 April 1940 conferred on Carl Eric Wickman a knighthood (first-class) in the Swedish Royal Order of Vasa for his “service to society.”  The ceremony took place during a dinner party in Chicago in honor of Wickman (first known as Erik Wretman, born in Sweden on 07 August 1887), who was the principal founder and longtime leader of the Greyhound Lines.

Very Special Articles

         Please check also my very special cornerstone articles at this website:

                   “Northland Greyhound Lines” (NGL):  It tells not only the history of the NGL but also the origin and the early years of the overall Greyhound Lines, starting in 1914 in Hibbing, Minnesota.  [The people and the events involved in the early part of the story of the NGL are the same people and events involved also in the origin and the early development of the larger Greyhound empire (including its many divisions and subsidiaries).]
                   “Greyhound Lines after WW2”:  It describes:
                            the major mergers and consolidations (1948-75);
                            the changes in leadership at the top;
                            the move from Chicago to Phoenix (in 1971);
                            the sales of the Greyhound Lines, Inc. (GLI, in 1987, 1999, 2007, and 2021);
                            the purchase (in 1987) of the Trailways, Inc. (TWI, previously known as the Continental Trailways) and the merger of the TWI into the GLI;
                            the sad and regrettable deterioration in the level of service of the formerly great and formerly respected (but now utterly disgraced and discredited) Greyhound Lines;
                            and the latest development of Greyhound under the ownership of FlixMobility (a German firm) and under the oversight of Flix North America (with a recent Turkish immigrant as the chief executive).
                   “The Scenicruiser”:  It covers the background, conception, evolution, development, design, creation, production, rebuilding, repowering, and operation of the GM PD-4501, the famous, beloved, unmatched, and iconic Scenicruiser (an exclusive coach built for Greyhound alone, which served in the fleet from 1954 until about 1975).
                   “Growing Up at Greyhound”:  It tells about my growing up at Greyhound — as the title says — while my father worked as a longtime (37-year) coach operator for the Greyhound Lines, starting in 1940.

Related Articles

            Please see also my articles about the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, the Capitol Greyhound Lines, the Central Greyhound Lines, the Dixie Greyhound Lines, the Florida Greyhound Lines, the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines, the Illinois Greyhound Lines, the New England Greyhound Lines, the Northland Greyhound Lines, the Northwest Greyhound Lines, the Ohio Greyhound Lines, the Pacific Greyhound Lines, the Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines, the Richmond Greyhound Lines, the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, the Southwestern Greyhound Lines, the Teche Greyhound Lines, the Valley Greyhound Lines, The Greyhound Corporation, the Tennessee Coach Company, and the Scenicruiser.

Bibliography

          Coachbuilt.com.

          Insull, Samuel, and Larry Plachno (editor), The Memoirs of Samuel Insull.  Polo: Transportation Trails, 1992.  ISBN 0‑933449‑16‑X.

          Jackson, Carlton, Hounds of the Road.  Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 1984.  ISBN 0‑87972‑207‑3.

          Jon’s Trailways History Corner, an online Trailways history by Jan Hobijn (known also as Jon Hobein) at http://cw42.tripod.com/Jon.html.

          Meier, Albert, and John Hoschek, Over the Road.  Upper Montclair: Motor Bus Society, 1975.  No ISBN (because of the age of book).

          Motor Coach Age, ISSN 0739‑117X, a publication of the Motor Bus Society, various issues, especially these:

                  March 1954;
                  March 1955;
                  November 1955;
                  November 1956;
                  Fall 1960;
                  April 1965;
                  February 1966;
                  April 1966;
                  July 1967;
                  December 1967;
                  October 1972;
                  December 1979;
                  July-August 1990;
                  March-April 1991;
                  January-February 1992;
                  October-December 1995;
                  October-December 1996;
                  January-March 2001.

          Online schedules and historical data at www.Greyhound.com.

          Rushing, Duncan Bryant, Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines.  New Albany: Fidelity Publishers, forthcoming.

          Schisgall, Oscar, The Greyhound Story.  Chicago: J.G. Ferguson Publishing Company, 1985.  ISBN 0‑385‑19690‑3.

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Posted at 01:42 EDT, Wednesday, 03 May 2023.

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