Dr. D.B. “Doc” Rushing
©  Copyright, 2009, 2022, Duncan Bryant Rushing

Preface

The Southeastern Greyhound Lines was a regional operating company of the Greyhound Lines.

Contents

Introduction
Preview
Background
Old Dominion Stages
Tennessee Coach Company
Origin of the SEGL
Growth
Relationship with Greyhound
Maverick Greyhound Affiliate
Unusual Sharing Arrangement
Name of the SEGL
J.C. Steinmetz
Colonial Stages South
Joint Venture
Oliver William (O.W.) Townsend
Harold Francis Townsend
More Purchases by the SEGL
Union Bus Company
Clifford Griffith (C.G.) Schultz
Purchase of the SEGL
Meeting Other Greyhound Companies
Southern Limited
Pool (Interline) Operations
Mergers of the TGL and the DGL into the SEGL
Henry Vance (H. Vance) Greenslit
Death of Guy Alexander Huguelet
Merger of the FGL into the SEGL
Seeing-eye (or Sightseeing) Dogs
Merger of the SEGL with the AGL
ACF and ACF-Brill at the SEGL
Recap and Timeline
Beyond the SEGL and the SGL
Conclusion
Very Special Articles
Related Articles
Bibliography

Introduction

          The Southeastern Greyhound Lines (called also Southeastern, SEG, SEGL, or the SEG Lines), was an intercity highway-coach carrier and a regional operating company of the Greyhound Lines (GL).  It was based in Lexington, Kentucky, USA.  It existed from 1926 until -60, when it became merged with – not into but rather with – the Atlantic Greyhound Lines (AGL), a neighboring regional company.  That merger produced the Southern Division of The Greyhound Corporation (the parent umbrella Greyhound firm).  The new division became known also as the Southern Greyhound Lines (SGL).

Preview

          If you wish to see a preview or overview of the history of the Southeastern GL and several closely related matters, please consider turning or scrolling to the “Recap and Timeline” (near the end of this article), which starts on page 32 (in the printed or PDF version).  That will help you to gain a sense of the high points on a timeline before you dive into the details.

Background

          The most early known step leading to the SEG Lines took place in January 1921, when J.E. Kittrell, the Reo dealer in Lexington, visited several Northern and Eastern cities in the US to study intercity bus operations.  He had recognized the potential of such an interurban system – to contribute to the growth and prosperity of Lexington, which had already emerged as the commercial center of the Bluegrass region – and, of course, to increase the sales of his Reo vehicles.

          Soon Kittrell ordered two Reo buses and received them.  He sold one of them to C.M. Canfield, of Richmond, who placed it in service on a route between Richmond and Berea (both to the south-southeast of Lexington).

          Then Kittrell and E. Robinson (E.R.) Webb formed the Reo Bus Line Company, which bought the other bus and on 12 July 1921 started a route between Lexington and Crab Orchard Springs (about 52 miles to the south, between Danville and Mount Vernon).  During the following three years, by 1924, that firm grew to 32 buses and six routes, including one between Louisville and Richmond via Lexington.  At some point Kittrell bought Webb’s partial interest.

          By January 1922 nine interurban carriers, using 17 buses, served Lexington and the surrounding area.  Each of them made about three or four round trips each day, and most of them used Reo sedans, stretched sedans, or buses. 

          On 28 March 1923 two brothers, J.W. Barnes Jr. and H.O. Barnes, started a firm, the Louisville-Lexington Bus Line, connecting the named cities.  [Previously they had worked with their father (under the name of J. Barnes and Sons) on a route between Lexington and Nicholasville (about 13 miles to the south-southwest).] 

          The Barnes brothers competed on that route (but only in part) against two interurban railways – the Kentucky Traction and Terminal Company, between Lexington and Frankfort, and the Louisville Interurban Railroad, between Louisville and Shelbyville; however, the railway firms left a gap of 22 miles between Shelbyville and Frankfort.  

          Then in December 1923 Richard Spurr Webb Jr. (the Studebaker dealer in Lexington) and Guy Alexander Huguelet [a practicing lawyer (1915-30) and an assistant city attorney for Lexington (1924-29)] formed the Red Star Transportation Company, which, using six Studebaker buses, started running between Lexington and Maysville, on the south bank of the Ohio River, about 69 miles to the northeast.   

          Sometime early in 1924 Huguelet and John Swope formed the Thorobred Bus Line Company, which, using Studebaker (and later also some Mack) buses, started running between Lexington and Cincinnati, Ohio, on the north bank of the Ohio River, about 84 miles to the north.

          Then a major step took place in July 1925, when Huguelet, Swope, and Richard Webb formed the Thorobred Transit Corporation and started running between Cincinnati and Corbin via Lexington and Richmond, a distance of about 190 miles.

          Shortly afterward the Thorobred Transit Corporation bought (from Kittrell’s Reo Bus Line) one route between Louisville and Richmond via Lexington and then started running it.  

          The Thorobred Bus Line Company and the Thorobred Transit Corporation were completely separate and different from each other – although both Huguelet and Swope had served as promoters or organizers for each of those two firms. 

          The latter firm took over the route between Lexington and Cincinnati (from the former company), and the former firm, still under the ownership of Huguelet and Swope, started a new route between Louisville and Henderson via Owensboro, along the south (Kentucky) side of the Ohio River to Henderson, across the river from Evansville, Indiana.

          Later, in 1928, the Consolidated Coach Corporation (CCC), the predecessor of the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, bought the Louisville-Owensboro Bus Line, which had competed with the Thorobred Bus Line between the named cities, on the way to Henderson and Evansville.  [The CCC was the original name of the company, which had become founded on 07 October 1926, and which on 09 November 1936 became renamed as the SEGL.]  

          [Early in 1936 the CCC added the Indiana route between Louisville and Evansville via Leavenworth and Tell City, on the north (Indiana) side of the Ohio River, after buying a small unincorporated preexisting carrier.]  

          On 01 October 1926, after Kittrell’s health began to fail, he sold also the rest of his Reo Bus Line to Webb and Huguelet.

          After that acquisition (of the Reo Bus Line by Webb and Huguelet), the four firms of those two men owned a total of 82 vehicles and 760 miles of routes.

          Then a huge and significant step took place on 07 October 1926, when four men – Huguelet, Kittrell, Richard Webb, and Floyd Clay (of Winchester, Kentucky) – formed the Consolidated Coach Corporation (CCC), which then took over five bus properties of those four promoters:

                   Webb and Huguelet contributed their Red Star Transportation Company, Reo Bus Line, and Thorobred Transit Corporation (but, for some reason no longer known, contributed not yet, not until 1929, the Thorobred Bus Line, which ran between Louisville and Henderson);

                   Kittrell gave his Safety Motor Carriers (which ran southwardly from Louisville to Bowling Green, on the way to Nashville, Tennessee);  

                   Clay delivered his White Star Bus Lines (which ran between Winchester and Ashland, on the way to Charleston, West Virginia). 

          Richard Webb served as the first president of the CCC.

          At the outset the CCC had 62 sedans, touring cars, and stretched sedans, 54 “real” buses, 325 employees, and about 1,100 miles of routes.

          The first roster of equipment consisted of 116 pieces – more than half of which were sedans or stretched sedans – in a variety of makes.  There were 54 Studebakers, 36 Reos, 4 Yellow Coaches, 3 Fageol Safety Coaches, and 22 of assorted other makes (including Buick, Cadillac, Pierce-Arrow, Acme, and Garford).  [The name Fageol is properly pronounced as “fad-jull,” rhyming with “fragile” or “satchel.”]

          The Reo Bus Line had contributed 37 of them; Red Star Transportation Company, 35; Safety Motor Carriers, 18; White Star Bus Lines, 16; and Thorobred Transit Corporation, 10.

          On the heavily traveled route between Lexington and Louisville, the CCC competed with two sizable carriers – the Blue Motor Coach Lines and the Barnes brothers’ Louisville-Lexington Bus Line.  The CCC bought the Blue firm, but the CCC had not yet reached an agreement on a price for the Barnes firm. 

          The first equipment bought by the CCC were 19 Studebaker 21-seat buses with Fremont parlor-car bodies, which were apparently used (“pre-owned”) ones that The Studebaker Corporation, the builder, had repossessed.  

          During its early years the CCC continued to increase its fleet, to buy and develop even more routes, and to sell, lease, or abandon several others that did not fit well into its growing route network.  By 1928 it had 80 “real” buses, and by -29 it had 160 of them.  

          In 1927 the CCC still had much competition between Lexington and Cincinnati, so, to increase its competitive advantage, it set out to extend to the south from Corbin to both Knoxville and Chattanooga, both in Tennessee, thus providing single-coach, single-seat, single-ticket service from Cincinnati and Lexington to those gateway cities in Tennessee.  The CCC began to run those extensions in April 1927.

          Further, on 28 August 1927 Richard Webb at age 38 suddenly died of Bright’s disease (a kidney illness, a form of nephritis), and in January 1928 Huguelet succeeded him as the president (albeit temporarily) of the CCC.  

          In 1928, as described above in this same section, the CCC bought the Louisville-Owensboro Bus Line, reaching toward Henderson and Evansville (along the south side of the Ohio River), and even later the CCC belatedly (in -29) bought the Thorobred Bus Line, which allowed the CCC to extend the rest of the way to Henderson, just across the river from Evansville.

          Then a watershed series of events took place.  On 20 February 1929 the Kentucky Securities Corporation, a subsidiary of Samuel Insull’s Middle West Utilities Company, took control of the Consolidated Coach Corporation by buying more than 90 percent of the voting stock of the CCC from Webb’s widow.  That, predictably, led to an infusion of Insull executives into the ranks of the senior management of the CCC – including the displacement of Huguelet as the president.  However, Huguelet remained in charge of operations as the vice president and general manager – until 1935, six years later, when he became restored to the presidency.  [Webb had repeatedly increased his investment in the CCC, thus gaining and accumulating more stock.]  

          Insull’s companies already held also a minority interest in the Motor Transit Corporation, which had become formed on 20 September 1926, and which soon, on 05 February 1930, became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation. 

          [Insull was a British-born US business magnate, innovator, and investor, based in Chicago, who greatly contributed to the creation of an integrated electric-power infrastructure in the US (a forerunner of the present nationwide grid).  He formed holding companies that bought public-utility and railway firms.  Early he had worked as the private secretary of Thomas Alva Edison, then he took part in the organization of the Edison General Electric Company, and later he served as the head of the Chicago Edison Company.]

          During 1929 the CCC bought 11 more carriers, including these six firms with notably helpful and constructive routes, which fit well into the CCC system:

                   the Safety Coach Transit Company, between Corbin and Knoxville;
                   the Thorobred Bus Line (belatedly), between Louisville and Henderson;
                   the Gamble Motor Coach Company, in Tennessee, between Jellico (on the state line between Kentucky and Tennessee) and Knoxville;
                   the Barnes brothers’ Louisville-Lexington Bus Line (also belatedly);
                   the Gold Seal Bus Line, between Louisville and Knoxville via Corbin;
                   and the Tate Motor Coach Corporation, between Knoxville and Bristol (on the state line between Tennessee and Virginia).  

          During 1930 the Consolidated Coach Corporation made three large and hugely significant purchases, which greatly increased its route network, and which took major steps in connecting with the Gulf Coast and the gateway cities of Jacksonville, Lake City, Tallahassee, and New Orleans.  The three firms were the Union Transfer Company (based in Nashville and formed on 03 March 1924), the Alabama Bus Company (based in Birmingham and formed in 1926), and the Capital Coaches (based in Birmingham, affiliated with the Alabama Bus Company, and formed in 1929).  Those three additions extended the CCC Lines from Nashville and Chattanooga to Florence and Birmingham and onward to Montgomery, Dothan, and Mobile, all five in Alabama.  [More about that is available below in the section entitled “Growth.”]  

          At this point the story becomes less about the Consolidated Coach Corporation (that is, the background of the SEGL) and more about the origin of the SEGL, which starts below, three sections later.

          Meanwhile, though, another relevant thread of history had also begun:

Old Dominion Stages 

          In 1929 three early major players in the highway-coach industry organized yet another carrier, based in Roanoke, Virginia, named as the Old Dominion (OD) Stages (using the nickname of the state or Commonwealth of Virginia).  The founders were Arthur Hill (of the Blue and Gray Transit Company, of Charleston, West Virginia), John Gilmer (of the Camel City Coach Company, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina), and Guy Huguelet (of the Consolidated Coach Corporation, of Lexington, Kentucky).  Those three men owned the new firm in three equal shares.  The purpose of the new firm was to run between Knoxville, Tennessee, and Washington, DC, via Bristol, Wytheville, Roanoke, Lexington, Staunton, and Winchester, all the last six in Virginia, along a route that divided between the territories of the Blue and Gray and the Camel City companies.  Service began on the day before Thanksgiving Day in November 1929.  

          [Hill and Gilmer together organized the National Highway Transport (NHT) Company in December 1929 in Charleston, West Virginia, to buy the capital stock of the Blue and Gray and the Camel City concerns; then in July 1931 the NHT Company became renamed as the Atlantic Greyhound Lines (after Greyhound began to buy a minority interest in NHT).  Thus began the Atlantic GL.  More about the AGL is available in my article about that firm.]

          To enable the OD Stages to run the route segment between Knoxville and Bristol (on the way to and from Washington), Huguelet arranged for the Consolidated Coach Corporation (CCC) to assign to the OD Stages the right (between Knoxville and Bristol) that the CCC had gained when, earlier in 1929, it had bought the Tate Motor Coach Corporation. 

Tennessee Coach Company

          However, in May 1932 the OD Stages leased its right to the route segment between Knoxville and Bristol (along US-11W via Rutledge, Bean Station, Rogersville, and Kingsport) to the Tennessee Coach Company (TCC), which then was an independent regional carrier based in Knoxville, and which already ran (in part) between Knoxville and Bristol on its own route (along -11E via Jefferson City, Morristown, Greeneville, and Johnson City).

          Later in 1932 Hill and Gilmer bought the one-third interest of Huguelet in the OD Stages, then they merged OD into their Atlantic GL.  [By that merger the AGL acquired the right to a return of the leased route if or when the TCC ever lost or surrendered the lease.]

          Thus the TCC ran the leased Old Dominion segment (between Knoxville and Bristol) along US-11W in addition to its own original parallel route along -11E.  It took part in through-schedules (interlined pool operations) – that is, the use of through-coaches on through-routes running through the territories of two or more operating companies – in coöperation with the Atlantic GL, the Dixie GL, and the Southeastern GL – including those between Birmingham, Alabama, and Bristol and between Memphis, Tennessee, and Washington.  It did so until 1956, when the TCC joined the National Trailways association, and when the TCC returned its leased right to the OD route (along US-11W) to the Atlantic GL (as the successor in interest of the OD Stages) – as a part of the deal related to the dissociation of the TCC from the Greyhound Lines.  

          Afterward the TCC continued running between Knoxville and Bristol but only on its own original route along US-11E.  [More about the TCC is available in my article about the TCC.]

          And afterward the Atlantic GL extended from Bristol to Knoxville, thus starting to run the entire original route between Knoxville and Washington that the Old Dominion Stages had begun in the first place – and thus meeting the Southeastern GL in Knoxville from Bristol as well as from Asheville, North Carolina.  [The AGL also met the SEGL in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ashland, Kentucky, along with Atlanta, Savannah, Waycross (in Georgia), and Jacksonville.]   

          Now we return to the history of the Southeastern GL. 

Origin of the SEGL

          The Southeastern Greyhound Lines started in 1926 as the Consolidated Coach Corporation (called also Consolidated, CCC, or the CCC Lines) – as described above, in a prior section (entitled “Background”) – with the participation of Guy Alexander Huguelet, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, and a lawyer of German and French-Swiss descent, who from the outset served variously as the legal counsel, the general manager, the vice president, and (mostly, starting in January 1928) the president.  [Huguelet had begun his career in transport by working (for six years, starting at age 15) in several clerical jobs for two railroad companies (at different times), the Southern Railway and the Atlantic Coast Line, in and around Charleston and in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Later, according to one source, he also worked for the Southern Railway in Washington, DC, and Saint Louis, Missouri.]

          [On 20 September 1926, in the same year in which Guy Huguelet and his associates in Lexington formed the Consolidated Coach Corporation, Carl Eric Wickman, Orville Swan Caesar, and their associates in Duluth, Minnesota, formed the Motor Transit Corporation, which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation (with an uppercase T because the word the was an integral part of the official name of the company).]

          {In the previous year, 1925, two major coach builders had come into existence: 

                   First, the General Motors (GM) Corporation bought a majority interest in John Hertz’s Yellow Coach (YC) Manufacturing Company, then renamed it as the Yellow Truck and Coach (T&C) Manufacturing Company and placed it as a subsidiary of the General Motors (GM) Truck Company, based in Pontiac, Michigan.  [GM in 1909 had bought both the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, of Pontiac, and the Reliance Motor Truck Company, of Owosso, Michigan; then in 1911 GM formed the GM Truck Company to manage the sales of its Rapid and Reliance trucks; next in 1913 GM merged its Rapid and Reliance subsidiaries into the GM Truck Company, and GM consolidated its truck operations in Pontiac and rebranded all its trucks (formerly Rapid and Reliance) as GMC trucks; later, in 1925, GM merged the GM Truck Company into its newly bought and renamed Yellow T&C Manufacturing Company.  In 1944 the parent GM Corporation merged its Yellow T&C Manufacturing Company (formerly a subsidiary) into itself as a division, and GM renamed it as the GMC Truck and Coach (T&C) Division.  At the same time GM changed the brand name Yellow Coach to GM Coach.  (In 1968 the GM Corporation slightly changed the brand name from GM Coach to GMC Coach.)]  

                   Second, the American Car and Foundry (ACF) Company, a maker of railway cars, established the ACF Motors Company, bought the Fageol Motors Company of Ohio (but not the original Fageol Motors Company); then in the next year, 1926, ACF moved its production from the former-Fageol plant, in Kent, Ohio, to an otherwise unoccupied ACF railway-car plant in Detroit.  At first ACF continued to brand its coaches as Fageol Safety Coaches, but it soon slightly redesigned them and rebranded them as ACF, thus ending its duty to pay royalties to the Fageol brothers for the use of the Fageol design and the Fageol brand name.  In 1932 ACF moved its motor-coach plant to Berwick, Pennsylvania, near Allentown, then soon to the Brill plant in Philadelphia, which by that time was also a property of the parent ACF firm.  In 1945 the parent ACF corporation merged its J.G. Brill Company into its ACF Motors Company and then named the resulting firm as the ACF-Brill Motors Company.  [The original Fageol firm continued to operate independently in Oakland, California, until 1939.]}   

          Consolidated, as the name suggests, began as a result of the acquisition and combination (that is, consolidation) of a number of small preexisting bus companies, which extended more-or-less radially on routes reaching outward from Lexington throughout the Bluegrass State – to Frankfort and Louisville (and later onward to Owensboro and Henderson and to Evansville, Indiana), Carrollton, Madison in Indiana, Cincinnati in Ohio, Maysville, Ashland (and onward for a while to Huntington, West Virginia), Paintsville, Pikeville, Hazard, Harlan, Danville, Richmond, Berea, London, Corbin (and later beyond to Knoxville, Tennessee, via Williamsburg, Kentucky, and LaFollette, Tennessee), Middlesboro (and later onward to Knoxville on an alternate route via Tazewell and Maynardville, all three in Tennessee), Somerset (and later onward directly to Chattanooga via Oneida and Dayton, while bypassing Knoxville, all four in Tennessee), Bardstown, Columbia, Glasgow, Scottsville, Burkesville, Tompkinsville, Paducah (for a while), and Bowling Green (and on 09 March 1927 onward to Nashville, Tennessee).   

Growth

          The CCC spread farther to the south and southeast by buying even more preexisting bus operations, including in 1930 the Union Transfer Company (UTC), which had begun on 03 March 1924 in the Volunteer State.  Union, based in Nashville, Tennessee, provided the CCC Lines with the routes connecting Nashville with Knoxville, Chattanooga, Hopkinsville in Kentucky, and Florence and Birmingham, both in Alabama, plus a link in East Tennessee between Knoxville and Chattanooga.

          [A description of those additions in 1930 first appears above in a prior section (entitled “Background.”)]

          Among the other properties bought in 1930 were two firms farther south in Alabama – the Capital Coaches, running between Birmingham and Dothan via Montgomery (the capital of Alabama), and the Alabama Bus Company, running between Chattanooga and Mobile via Birmingham and Montgomery (through the length of the “Heart of Dixie”).

          [In the previous year, 1929, the Old South Coach Lines had come into existence to buy (from the same Alabama Bus Company) a short branch line, with a length of about 59 miles, between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, both in Alabama, then promptly extended about 93 more miles (by application rather than purchase) from Tuscaloosa to Meridian, Mississippi); in 1930 Old South became bought by and merged into the Teche Lines (which about -34 became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines), thus allowing Teche to complete its route between New Orleans and Birmingham.]  

          After the CCC began running through Birmingham, it soon started a direct route between Birmingham and Atlanta, Georgia, via Anniston, Alabama, and Tallapoosa, Georgia, as soon as that part of US highway 78 (US-78) became usable.  

          The CCC and SEG Lines also developed extensive local suburban commuter service based in Atlanta, Birmingham, Louisville, and Nashville.  

Relationship with Greyhound

          From an early date Consolidated coöperated with Greyhound – with through-ticketing of passengers, through-checking of their baggage, and coördinated connecting schedules, all of which provided advantage to each company along with convenience to their customers.  

          The CCC sought (among other carriers) the Greyhound Lines of Georgia, a new and relatively small but significant operation, which by that time had become a single-line company (after initial growth and subsequent paring or pruning), on a route between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida, via Atlanta and Macon, both in Georgia, through the entire length of the Peach State.  [In the name of the Greyhound Lines of Georgia, the words of Georgia were an integral part of the official name of the corporation, not merely a descriptive phrase.]

          That regional Greyhound company in Georgia had started in 1928 as a subsidiary of the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC), the original Greyhound firm (before it became renamed, on 05 February 1930, as The Greyhound Corporation), although that subsidiary was then isolated from the rest of the Greyhound empire in that early time in the development of the company’s route network – isolated except at its southern end, in Jacksonville, which in 1931 the Atlantic GL (AGL), another regional operating company, also reached, from the north and northeast.

          The Greyhound Lines of Georgia was a result of the work of J.C. Steinmetz, whom the officers of the MTC had sent, in 1927, to the Southeast to spearhead the growth of Greyhound in that direction and to provide Greyhound with a gateway for the important (that is, potentially lucrative and therefore profitable) passenger traffic between Florida and the populous Midwest.  [More about Steinmetz and his work is available below in the section entitled “Name of the SEGL.”]

          {On 05 February 1930 the Motor Transit Corporation became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation, and in -30 the company moved its administrative headquarters from Duluth, Minnesota, to Chicago, Illinois, which had begun to emerge as the major gateway for highway travel between the East and the West.  [The firm had already moved its operating headquarters to Chicago.]}

          The Greyhound Corporation in 1931 renamed the Greyhound Lines of Georgia (running between Chattanooga and Jacksonville) as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines and then sold it to the Consolidated Coach Corporation, with which it already made connections in Atlanta and Chattanooga.  Consolidated promptly began to operate the SEG Lines along the route between Chattanooga and Jacksonville, making connections (in Jacksonville and Lake City, both in Florida) for various points throughout the Sunshine State via the Florida Motor Lines (FML), which in 1946 became bought and renamed as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL), and which in -57 became merged into the Southeastern GL.

          Consolidated also made connections in Dothan, Alabama, with the Union Bus Company (the UBC, completely separate and different from the Union Transfer Company, the UTC, based in Nashville), which former Union firm (the UBC, based in Jacksonville) in turn made connections with the Florida Motor Lines in Tallahassee, Lake City, and Jacksonville.  [More about the UBC is available below in the section bearing its name.]

          Thus Consolidated connected the Florida market with Greyhound in the Midwest – in Birmingham (and onward to Memphis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and beyond), in Evansville (and onward to Saint Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and beyond), in Louisville (and onward to Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and beyond), and in Louisville and Cincinnati (and onward to Dayton, Toledo, Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, and beyond).  

Maverick Greyhound Affiliate

          Through the purchase of the first SEG Lines, on 01 July 1931, above, in the previous section, the CCC Lines contractually acquired the lawful rights to use the Greyhound dog trademark, the Greyhound color scheme (blue and white), the Greyhound uniforms, and the Greyhound and Southeastern names.  

          Shortly afterward in that same year, 1931, with the consent of The Greyhound Corporation, Consolidated began using the name of the Southeastern Greyhound Lines as a brand name, trade name, or service name for its entire operation (not just between Chattanooga and Jacksonville but rather throughout its entire CCC system).  It began placing the Greyhound dog, the Greyhound name, and the Greyhound color scheme on all its coaches, and all the drivers and other workers began wearing Greyhound uniforms – even though the official name of the company continued (albeit temporarily) as the Consolidated Coach Corporation.  For that reason (between 1931 and -36) the coaches bore the names of both Greyhound (in large lettering) and Consolidated (in small sublettering).

          On 09 November 1936, however, the Consolidated Coach Corporation became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, Inc.  The home office stayed in Lexington, and the employees and officials continued as before.  

          Thus Southeastern became a maverick or atypical Greyhound company, one of only two major affiliates that have sometimes been called the non-Greyhound Greyhound companies.

          [The other one was the Overland GL (OGL), based in Omaha, Nebraska, which had begun as two related carriers – the Union Pacific (UP) Stages, a highway-coach subsidiary of the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad (also based in Omaha), and the Interstate Transit Lines, another such subsidiary jointly owned by the UP Railroad and the Chicago and Northwestern (C&NW) Railway.  More about the OGL will be available in my forthcoming article about that Greyhound firm.]   

          In 1938 the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, Inc., became listed for trade on the New York Stock Exchange (the “big board”), as not only the first corporation based in Lexington thus listed but also the first bus-operating company anywhere.  [Although The Greyhound Corporation had previously (in 1935) become listed on the big board, that parent firm did not then operate buses at all, for it then was still merely a holding company rather than an operating company, while the subsidiaries and affiliates conducted all the operations.]

          The SEGL stayed under separate ownership (that is, SEG was an independent corporation under independent ownership, not a division or subsidiary of The Greyhound Corporation) until the end of 1950.

          [One subtle but significant consequence of that independent status was that the coaches of those two independent companies bore the full names of the Overland Greyhound Lines and the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, whereas, starting about 1935, the coaches of most of the captive Greyhound divisions and subsidiaries bore the collective or abbreviated name of the “Greyhound Lines.”]

          Southeastern about 1944 introduced one clever twist along with its use of the Greyhound dog trademark (especially as applied to the sides of the coaches), possibly in part a response to the “Battle of Britain” target-like symbol used (during World War II) with the dogs on the sides of the coaches belonging to the divisions and subsidiaries of the parent Greyhound firm.  The SEGL superimposed the dog onto a compass rose in a way that emphasized the letters SE (for southeast) on the rose.  That use continued until the GM Silversides PD-3751 coaches began to arrive (late in 1947) with the standard dogs without the compass roses, and until the last of the 1948 ACF-Brill IC-41 parlor coaches and the last of the 1949 ACF-Brill C-44 suburban coaches arrived with their dogs with the roses on the sides, and until the last of the ACF and ACF-Brill coaches with the compass roses later in due course became repainted without the roses.  [More about the Silversides (and the ACF and ACF-Brill coaches) is available in my article about the Scenicruiser.] 

Unusual Sharing Arrangement

          The Southeastern GL coöperated in an unusual arrangement on its scheduled trips between Nashville and Knoxville with another carrier, the Tennessee Coach Company (TCC), which was then an independent firm based in Knoxville, and which had begun in 1928.  [The TCC first appeared above, in a section bearing its name.]

          The State of Tennessee in 1929 issued a joint certificate (of public convenience and necessity) to the TCC and the Union Transfer Company (a predecessor of the Consolidated Coach Corporation and the Southeastern GL) for service between Nashville and Knoxville via Murfreesboro, Woodbury, McMinnville, Sparta, Crossville, Rockwood, and Kingston, along US-70 (later redesignated in part as US-70S).

          The two carriers – the TCC and the UTC (later the CCC and even later the SEGL) – shared their joint certificate in an unusual way:  One carrier ran in one direction on any given day, and the other carrier ran in that direction on the next day, and vice versa.  That is, they ran in opposite directions, and they changed directions each day.  On one day the TCC ran eastwardly, and the UTC ran westwardly; on the next day the TCC ran westwardly, and the UTC ran eastwardly.

          That plan continued until 1956, when the TCC joined the Trailways trade association (then named as the National Trailways Bus System).  With the approval of the federal Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), Southeastern took over five of the nine daily skeds in each direction, and the TCC took over the four other skeds each way.  [The TCC also started one daily trip each way between Nashville and Knoxville along US-70N via Lebanon, Carthage, Cookeville, Crossville, and Rockwood, joining the Continental Tennessee Lines, based in Nashville, another Trailways member company, on that parallel alternate route.]

          For a short time during the 1930s, while the TCC operated in coöperation with the Southeastern GL, several of the coaches of the TCC (Yellow Coach Z long-nosed streamliners) appeared (with the consent of Greyhound) in the Greyhound livery, complete with dogs and lettering for the Tennessee Greyhound Lines (which never existed at all as a separate entity).  

          [Again, more about the TCC is available in my article about the TCC.]

Name of the SEGL

          During the autumn of 1927 the officers of the Motor Transit Company (MTC), the original parent Greyhound firm (before it became renamed on 05 February 1930 as The Greyhound Corporation), sent J.C. Steinmetz to Atlanta to buy one or more bus lines to gain access to Florida for the Greyhound system in the Midwest.  The obvious and most practical route to and from Miami and the rest of the East Coast of Florida was through the gateway of Jacksonville, and the obvious and most practical route between Jacksonville and the Midwest gateways (Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Saint Louis) was through Atlanta via Chattanooga.

          Steinmetz (acting on behalf of the MTC), in his first move, early in 1928, gained control of the Peach Belt Lines, which had become incorporated on 16 March 1927, and which ran between Atlanta and Macon, on the way to Jacksonville and the rest of Florida.

          Steinmetz promptly bought majority (controlling) interests in several more small independent firms, all of which he built into a network, which he named as the Dixie Safety Coach Lines (borrowing from the name of the Fageol Safety Coaches). 

          One of his additions was the McGuire Bus Lines, which ran between Atlanta and Rome, which was (and still is) most of the way to Chattanooga.  

          Shortly afterward, in the spring of 1928, Steinmetz extended his Dixie Safety Coach Lines from Atlanta beyond Rome to Chattanooga, where it made two helpful and important connections:

                   with the Consolidated Coach Corporation (CCC), which offered connections to Lexington and Cincinnati (and onward to Dayton, Toledo, and Detroit and to Columbus and Cleveland);
                   and with the Union Transfer Company (UTC), which offered connections to Knoxville (and beyond) and to Nashville (and onward to Saint Louis, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and beyond).  

          About the same time (in the spring of 1928), the Dixie Safety Coach Lines started running also between Atlanta and Athens and between Atlanta and Augusta.  Then later it extended from Augusta to Jacksonville, on a somewhat circuitous route (via Savannah), albeit without intrastate authority (that is, with interstate authority only) between Augusta and Jacksonville.    

          [On 25 October 1930 the CCC bought the UTC, which already ran between Nashville and Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and the CCC soon extended from Hopkinsville to Evansville, Indiana, where the Dixie GL offered connections to Saint Louis (and onward to Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, and beyond).]

          Next the southward growth of the Dixie Safety Coach Lines took place in steps as the roads became improved – from Macon to Cordele, then to Valdosta, then to Lake City, Florida, and finally to Jacksonville (duplicating a preexisting route of the Union Bus Company, which coöperated with Greyhound, and which the SEGL bought on 31 December 1941.)  

          The arrival of the Dixie Safety Coach Lines in Lake City and Jacksonville enabled it to meet the Florida Motor Lines (FML), which offered connections to Miami and the rest of the Sunshine State, and which on 01 January 1946 The Greyhound Corporation bought and then renamed as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL). 

          The Motor Transit Corporation (MTC), the original parent Greyhound firm, bought the remaining minority interests in all the firms that made up the Dixie Safety Coach Lines, and on 01 November 1928 the MTC renamed the Dixie Lines as the Greyhound Lines of Georgia (GLG).   

          By the spring of 1929 the GLG had made through-ticketing tariff agreements with the CCC, so the work of Steinmetz (and his job with the MTC) then ended. 

          However, Steinmetz continued – for the rest of his working years – to take part in the transport industry in Atlanta and elsewhere.  [More about him is available below in the next section.]  

          During 1929-31 the MTC and The Greyhound Corporation, acting under its new name, pared and pruned the route network that Steinmetz had built – to concentrate on a single corridor between Chattanooga and Jacksonville via Atlanta and Macon – including several parallel branches.  The parent firm sold several routes to other firms, including these:

                   It sold the route between Atlanta and Columbus (in Georgia, on the way to Montgomery, Alabama) to the Hood Coach Lines (which in 1934 Hood sold to the Teche Greyhound Lines, thus enabling Teche to complete its route between New Orleans and Atlanta via Montgomery).  [The TGL had already completed its route between New Orleans and Birmingham.]

                   It also sold the routes between Atlanta and Athens and between Atlanta and Augusta to the Georgia Motor Lines (which in 1933 became a part of the Southeastern Stages, based in Atlanta, which has long coöperated with Greyhound, and which in 2022 still runs those two routes, along with several others radiating eastwardly, northeastwardly, and southeastwardly from Atlanta). 

                   It further (in March 1931) sold its route between Augusta and Jacksonville to the National Highway Transport Company, which in July -31 became renamed as the Atlantic Greyhound Lines.  Now neither Greyhound nor any other firm provides direct service (or even any convenient or reasonable connecting indirect service) in that market.  [For many decades, on the other hand, before Greyhound began to make its massive reductions in its service (starting not later than 1990), Greyhound had previously run many direct schedules between Augusta and Jacksonville, including through-coaches between Chicago and Jacksonville, between Detroit and Miami, and between Detroit and Saint Petersburg.]

          Sometime during the first half of 1931, in a large and significant step, The Greyhound Corporation renamed the Greyhound Lines of Georgia (formerly known as the Dixie Safety Coach Lines) as the first Southeastern Greyhound Lines.

          Then on 01 July 1931 the parent Greyhound firm sold the entire ownership of the Southeastern GL – the first Southeastern GL, which ran between Chattanooga and Jacksonville – to the Consolidated Coach Corporation.  One term of that sale and purchase allowed the CCC to use the name of the Southeastern GL – not merely between Chattanooga and Jacksonville but rather throughout all of the CCC’s operations and throughout all of its territory.  Thus the CCC acquired the right to use the Greyhound dog trademark, the Greyhound color scheme (blue and white), the Greyhound uniforms, and the Greyhound and Southeastern names – as mentioned above in a prior section entitled “A Maverick Greyhound Affiliate.”

          Promptly the CCC began to use the brand name of the SEGL throughout its system; then on 09 November 1936, with the consent of The Greyhound Corporation, the CCC became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, Inc. 

J.C. Steinmetz

          J.C. Steinmetz, who features in the previous section, was a true pioneer in the motor-coach business, and he led a colorful and interesting life and career.

          John C. Scheer Steinmetz bore in part the maiden name of his mother, but he and others consistently referred to him as merely J.C. Steinmetz (at least during his adult years).

          On 26 May 1903 he was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Nicholas Steinmetz and Helene Scheer Steinmetz.  Nicholas was a native of Esch, in a German-speaking part of Luxemburg, and Helene was a native of Thionville, France, about 21 miles from Esch.  Nicholas and Helene had married in 1897 in Esch, where they then first lived.  Next in 1901 they moved to France, perhaps to Thionville, and they immigrated sometime early in -03 into the USA, where John (J.C.) was born (in Saint Paul).

          Without ever graduating from high school, Steinmetz as a young man married a young woman from Saint Paul and moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he first sold insurance for a bank, and then he entered the transport business by owning and running a one-car and one-man operation.

          Soon, though, on 12 January 1926, at age 22 and in Milwaukee, Steinmetz incorporated a small financially troubled bus firm, which he had previously bought (from the trustee) while it was in bankruptcy proceedings.  He named it as the American Coach Lines, and he started running it between Milwaukee and Saint Paul (his hometown), a distance of about 330 miles.

          Steinmetz and his new property apparently succeeded well, for he and it attracted the attention of the officers of the Motor Transit Corporation (which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation).

          The officers of the MTC hired Steinmetz (and likely bought his bus line), and in the autumn of 1927 they sent him to Atlanta – to buy one or more bus lines to gain access to Florida for the fledgling Greyhound system in the Midwest.  Thus he developed the Dixie Safety Coach Lines, which later became renamed as the Greyhound Lines of Georgia, which in turn became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, which The Greyhound Corporation then sold to the Consolidated Coach Corporation – as described above in the preceding section.  

          In the spring of 1929 both the work of Steinmetz for the MTC and his job with the MTC ended – after the Greyhound Lines of Georgia made through-ticketing tariff agreements with the Consolidated Coach Corporation – and he promptly set out on his next venture.  A news item on 12 June 1929 in The Atlanta Constitution referred to him as not only the district manager of Greyhound but also the first president (and one of the first directors) of the newly formed Georgia Highway Transportation Association.  Then a news item on 06 September 1929 (not quite three months later) in the same newspaper referred to him as the manager of the Intercity Coach Lines, which already operated (in some of the suburbs of Atlanta beyond the ends of some of the streetcar lines of the Georgia Power Company). 

          Steinmetz apparently continued with the Intercity Coach Lines for the next eight years, until 1937, when he founded his next enterprise, the Suburban Coach Company, which soon replaced the Intercity Coach Lines. 

          Then in 1946, shortly after WW2, he founded the Suburban Cab Company, starting with a fleet of 20 new Packard taxicabs. 

          Also in 1946 Steinmetz and Hyman Baron bought the Atlanta Northern Railway, which ran electric interurban railcars between Atlanta and Marietta.  In the next year, -47, they converted from steel wheels on steel rails to rubber-tired wheels on public roads, and they renamed their firm as the Atlanta Northern Lines.  The bus operation competed against the Southeastern GL on that suburban route. 

          In 1948, however, Steinmetz and Baron sold their Atlanta Northern Lines to the Southeastern GL.

          Through the years Steinmetz bought several city-bus firms in Georgia, including those in Rome and Augusta, he advised several such systems as far away as Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, and he held minority ownership interests in several of them. 

          Next Steinmetz in 1951 sold his Suburban Coach Company to the Atlanta Transit Company, which was then in the process of taking over the local city-transit system of the Georgia Power Company.  

          Then in 1953 he formed yet another suburban operation, the Interurban Transit Company, which ran into other suburbs of Atlanta. 

          Further, in 1954 Steinmetz entered a different segment of the transport industry – hauling mail in six-wheel trucks on routes connecting various pairs of towns and cities in the Southeast – and owning and operating highway post offices (HPOs or “hypos”), using Fageoliners, which were products of the Twin Coach Company (which was a property of the Fageol brothers, Frank and William).  [Steinmetz ran, among others, the HPO route between Nashville and Knoxville, and the Tennessee Coach Company provided maintenance for his hypos at the two endpoint cities.]

          [A Fageoliner looked much like a self-propelled Fruehauf trailer – for a good reason – because in essence it consisted of a modified body of a Fruehauf van trailer mounted onto a six-wheel straight-truck chassis with an under-floor Fageol engine and a manual gearbox.  A few Fageoliners went into service as buses, some of them did so as household-goods moving vans, and others did so as highway post offices.  The US government bought one batch of 500 of them as “convertible” ones for the armed forces – convertible from 32-seat buses into cargo vans or 18-litter troop ambulances.]

          After the US Post Office began to shift more first-class mail onto scheduled airliners and ended the truck routes and the HPO routes, Steinmetz then converted his Fageoliners into horse vans, which he then offered for sale to horse owners, breeders, haulers, and trainers.  

          During 1937, in a diversion not related to transport, Steinmetz served also as the campaign manager and principal fundraiser of the first of the seven political campaigns of William Hartsfield, a longtime mayor of Atlanta, for whom the commercial airport in Atlanta (ATL) is named in part (the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport). 

          Eventually, in 1975 and at age 72, Steinmetz retired.Finally, in 1994 and at age 91, he died in Atlanta after a full life and career. 

          Again, another relevant thread of history had also begun:  

Colonial Stages South

          In 1929 the Interstate Transit, Inc., based in Cincinnati, Ohio, using the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Colonial Stages, running a fleet of new Mack BK coaches, started an ambitious route system, which soon reached both Saint Louis and New York City.  However, it held and used only interstate authority, for it did not hold any intrastate authority from any state along its routes, and it generally ran only one round trip per day over any of its route segments, so, especially in 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, its future did not look bright.  [The Interstate Transit, Inc., was completely separate and different from the Interstate Transit Lines, which was a joint property of the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad and the Chicago and Northwestern (C&NW) Railway, and which in 1943 became the eastern half of the Overland Greyhound Lines (OGL).  More about the OGL will be available in my forthcoming article about that Greyhound company.]

          Nonetheless, in 1930 the Interstate Transit, Inc., bought from O.W. Townsend his Atlantic-Pacific (AP) Stages, which he had just founded, about 1929.  His AP Stages had already begun to run between Saint Louis and Los Angeles, so the purpose of that purchase was to allow the buyer to extend its route from Saint Louis to Los Angeles via Kansas City, Denver, and Albuquerque – and to complete the AP route between Los Angeles and New York City.  The newly combined firm then became renamed as the Colonial Atlantic-Pacific Stages (CAPS).  One result of that deal was that Townsend moved from Saint Louis to Philadelphia, where he served as the regional manager of the eastern end of the CAPS. 

          During 1931 the CAPS started also a route between Cincinnati and Jacksonville in direct competition against the Southeastern GL – also with interstate authority only – except between Atlanta and Macon – because it had bought the Central Georgia Bus Lines, including its intrastate authority. 

          Not surprisingly, though, in 1931 the CAPS – overextended, undercapitalized, and battered by the Great Depression – went into receivership and a reorganization of its debts in bankruptcy, and in -32 it went into a complete liquidation, during which several other firms bought (from the trustee in bankruptcy) some of the routes and other assets, including the rolling equipment, of the CAPS.

          One of those other firms was a brand-new one (formed specifically to buy the routes and some of the rolling stock of the CAPS), named as the Colonial Short Line (CSL) Company (a member of William Vanderbilt’s Short Line network). 

          The investors of the CSL were the principals of the Great Eastern Stages (GES), which was also a member of the Short Line network, plus a few more participants in other bus firms.  CSL transferred the east-west routes of the CAPS to the GES (to reduce the competition of the GES).

          However, the officials of the CSL chose to keep the CAPS route between Cincinnati and Jacksonville, so they created a subsidiary, named as the Colonial Stages South (CSS), which not only resumed service between Cincinnati and Jacksonville but also extended northwardly from Cincinnati on three more routes to Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland – likewise in direct competition against Greyhound.       

          [One might wonder whether the owners of the CSL had learned anything from the failure and bankruptcy of the CAPS.  The president of the CSL was Paul Wadsworth, who was an old hand in the bus industry.  Wadsworth had previously served as the general manager of the CAC Bus Company, which (on 27 April 1928) became the Great Lakes Stages (GLS), which eventually became a major part of the Central GL (CGL) of New York; then he had soon (in March 1930) founded the Great Eastern Stages (GES), which The Greyhound Corporation later (in February 1935) bought after the GES also fell into irreversible financial trouble.  More about Wadsworth, CAC, GLS, GES, and the CGL of New York is available in my article about the Central GL.]

          The president of the Colonial Stages South (as a subsidiary of the Colonial Short Line Company) was Nieuport Estes, who, during the formation of the CSS, contributed a preexisting firm, his Georgia–Florida Motor Lines (completely separate and different from the Florida Motor Lines), running between Macon and Miami via Jacksonville.  

          During 1931 Estes, acting on behalf of the CSS, made two more purchases:

                   the Coastal Transportation Company, running between Charleston, South Carolina, and Jacksonville;
                   and one route, between Jacksonville and Tallahassee, from the Motor Transportation System of the South, which was the motor-coach subsidiary of the Seaboard Air Line Railway (which eventually became a large part of the CSX Railroad).

          Predictably, the CSS never became a strong company, partly because all of its routes duplicated existing routes of other carriers, including several more firmly established ones (mainly the Southeastern GL and the Union Bus Company).

          During the summer of 1932, before the position of the CSS became even worse, the CSS transferred its route between Charleston, South Carolina, and Miami to the Atlantic GL and the Florida Motor Lines – dividing it between the two transferees, of course, at Jacksonville.  It apparently sold also its route between Jacksonville and Tallahassee, likely to the Union Bus Company (UBC).

          Even after those dispositions the CSS still did not earn a profit with its remaining routes – that is, the ones between Jacksonville and the Midwest gateways (Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland) – so it took three more steps during 1933:

                   First, the CSS ended its operations farther northwardly than Chattanooga.  [In May 1933 The Greyhound Corporation bought the CSS routes farther northwardly than Cincinnati and then divided them between the first Central GL and the GLI of Indiana (which latter firm in -34 became a major part of the rapidly growing Pennsylvania GL); further, the parent Greyhound firm bought also the CSS route between Cincinnati and Chattanooga and then sold it to the Consolidated Coach Corporation (to minimize the competition of the CCC on that route).  More about the Central GL and the Pennsylvania GL is available in my two articles bearing their respective names.]

                   Second, on 01 March 1933 the CSS leased its one remaining route (between Chattanooga and Jacksonville) to the Union Bus Company.

                   Third, on 01 June 1933, barely three months later, the CSS and the Union Bus Company cancelled the lease, and then the CSS sold all its assets to a new firm, the Colonial Lines, which, for that special purpose, the UBC had just incorporated as a subsidiary. 

          Watch closely those last two steps:  The UBC took a lease on the route of the CSS (between Chattanooga and Jacksonville) and started operating it, then the UBC (through a new subsidiary) bought that route outright and continued running it.

          Thus ended the operation of the Colonial Stages South.

Joint Venture

          That last move, the purchase of the CSS by the Colonial Lines (as a property of the UBC), placed the UBC (through its Colonial Lines) and the Southeastern GL in direct competition with each other along the corridor between Chattanooga and Jacksonville, but not enough passenger traffic existed there to support or justify more than one carrier, so the two presidents of the SEG Lines and of the UBC (and of its Colonial Lines) worked out a solution.  

          In July 1933 Guy Huguelet (the president of the SEGL) and C.G. Schultz (the president of the UBC and of its Colonial Lines) incorporated the Southeastern Management Company (SEMC).  The purpose of the new firm (the SEMC) was to operate their routes in the corridor between Chattanooga and Jacksonville – through their respective carriers (the SEGL and the Colonial Lines) – by coordinating and directing the activities of the two firms.

          The SEGL and the UBC jointly owned the SEMC in two equal shares.  Huguelet served as the president of the new firm, and Schultz served as the vice president.

          The SEMC coördinated its operations by assigning the two carriers to run alternate scheduled trips (first one carrier, then the other, and so on).  That arrangement continued until the end of 1941, when the SEGL bought the UBC.

          The terms of the contract between the SEGL and the UBC (along with the Colonial Lines) included a mutual covenant for the two sides to refrain from seeking to compete with each other along the corridor between Chattanooga and Jacksonville. 

Oliver William (O.W.) Townsend

          O.W. Townsend, who appears above (in the section about the Colonial Stages South), was a native of Nebraska and a colorful, ambitious, and visionary man.  He began in the highway-coach industry on 01 June 1924 at age 30.  He had previously worked as a traveling salesman, based in his hometown, Hastings, Nebraska, for the Burroughs Adding-machine Company, then he owned and operated an automobile dealership.  He next founded the Highway Transit Company, which used the trade name, brand name, or service name of the Cornhusker Stage Lines.

          [Townsend started using the name of the Highway Transit Company more than two years before Carl Eric Wickman, Orville Swan Caesar, and their associates, in Duluth, Minnesota, on 20 September 1926 formed the similarly named Motor Transit Corporation (the original Greyhound umbrella parent firm), which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation.  I wonder whether the name of Townsend’s Highway Transit Company influenced Wickman’s choice of the name of his firm as the Motor Transit Corporation.]   

          Although his full name was Oliver William Townsend, he consistently referred to himself in business as O.W. Townsend, although some of his friends knew him as Ollie, and some of his relatives and others knew him as Red.

          The Cornhusker Stage Lines, based in Hastings, began by running from Hastings to Grand Island, about 25 miles to the north on US-34 and -281, using two touring cars.  In the next month, July 1924, Townsend added two buses.  Soon he added routes from Hastings to other points in Nebraska.  Before long he began a route between Hastings and Lincoln (the capital of the Cornhusker State), on the way to Omaha, Des Moines, the Quad Cities (of Iowa and Illinois) and Chicago.

          In 1927 the Cornhusker Stage Lines became one link in the chain of independent carriers that, acting separately but coöperatively, operated under the collective name of the YellowaY Lines (in a successful attempt to reach from coast to coast). 

          Soon, under the YellowaY name, Townsend ran his Cornhusker coaches across Nebraska between Chicago, Illinois, and Denver, Colorado, and maybe onward to Salt Lake City, Utah.    

          In 1928 Townsend sold some (but not all) of his rights (in the routes of the Cornhusker Stage Lines) to the newly formed American Motor Transportation Company, based in Oakland, California, which bought also most of the other independent YellowaY member firms, and which then operated them as the YellowaY-Pioneer System.  [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.]

          In 1929 the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC) bought the YellowaY-Pioneer System, and on 05 February 1930 the MTC became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation.  

          [More about YellowaY, Pioneer, YellowaY-Pioneer, the American Motor Transportation Company, and Buck Travis will be available in my forthcoming article about the Pacific GL.]   

          Townsend in 1929 sold his remaining property (including the remaining routes) in the Cornhusker Stage Lines to the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad.  The railway firm merged the coach property into its new Interstate Transit Lines, which on 01 December 1943 [along with the Union Pacific (UP) Stages, another bus subsidiary of the UP Railroad] began operating under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Overland Greyhound Lines (OGL), after The Greyhound Corporation began to buy a minority interest in each of those two bus concerns of the railroad.  [More about the OGL will be available in my forthcoming article about that Greyhound firm.]

          On 01 October 1952 the parent Greyhound company, having bought all of the remaining ownership in each of those two bus carriers, then merged them together, under the name of the Overland Greyhound Lines, as a division of The Greyhound Corporation.  [In a separate article, entitled “Division versus Subsidiary,” I discuss the differences between divisions and subsidiaries of corporations.]

          Meanwhile, even before Townsend sold the remainder of Cornhusker to Interstate (that is, not later than 1929), he began another carrier – the Atlantic-Pacific Stages, running between Saint Louis, Missouri, and Los Angeles, California, via Kansas City, on the state line between Kansas and Missouri; Denver, Colorado; and Albuquerque, New Mexico.  In 1930 he sold it to the Interstate Transit, Inc., a completely separate and different firm (different from the Interstate Transit Lines) with a confusingly similar name, operating as the Colonial Stages.  Afterward the last company became renamed as the Colonial Atlantic-Pacific Stages (CAPS), and it succumbed in 1932 during, and as a casualty of, the Great Depression.  [More about that is available above in the section entitled “Colonial Stages South.”]

          [During 1928 or -29 Townsend started also a long branch line between Saint Louis and Birmingham, Alabama, via Memphis, Tennessee, and then the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines, in a copycat fashion, started a service along the same route.  Next Townsend sold his branch line to Pickwick, and then he sold the remainder of his AP Stages to the Interstate Transit, Inc., as described above.  More about the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines will be available in my forthcoming article about that short-lived Greyhound operating company.]

          In 1931 and -32 Townsend lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, acting as the regional manager of the eastern end of the CAPS (on behalf of the trustee in bankruptcy, who had taken over the firm).

          After the second and final failure of the CAPS, Townsend moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, lawfully buying and taking with him 25 of the newer coaches, Mack BKs, then he bought a controlling interest in the Teche Lines (TL) and began making deals with The Greyhound Corporation.

          About 1934 the Teche Lines became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines (TGL), in -39 The Greyhound Corporation finished buying the entire ownership of the TGL (as a wholly owned subsidiary), and in -41 the parent Greyhound firm merged the TGL into itself as a division.

          Townsend continued for many years as the president of the TGL, even after it became a division of its parent firm.

          [More about O.W. Townsend is available in my article about the Teche GL.]

          In 1932 Henry Vance Greenslit (known usually as H. Vance Greenslit) joined the management of the TL (by an invitation from Townsend), and he then long (1932-68) served as an executive in not only the TL and the TGL but also elsewhere in the Greyhound system.  [During a short time in 1930 in Saint Louis, Greenslit had served as the corporate secretary of Townsend’s AP Stages.]  Greenslit in New Orleans first served as the vice president of the TL and then the TGL.  In -49 Townsend became the chairman of the board of directors of the TGL, and Greenslit succeeded Townsend as the president.  In -54, when The Greyhound Corporation merged the TGL, along with the Dixie GL, into the SEGL, Huguelet became the chairman of the board of the expanded SEGL, and Greenslit moved to Lexington, where he succeeded Huguelet as the president of the SEGL. 

Harold Francis Townsend

          O.W. Townsend had a brother, Harold Francis Townsend, who also worked in transit management.  He served as a manager for the SEG Lines in Birmingham, Alabama, starting in 1930, then in February -42 the SEGL transferred him from Birmingham to its headquarters, in Lexington, Kentucky.

          However, about 1943 an official of the Atomic Energy Commission (of the US) contacted Harold and then hired him to move to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the new “Secret City,” where he next served as the director of the American Industrial Transit Company (AITC), an agency of the federal government on the compound of the “Clinton Engineer Works” (CEW).  Harold created the bus system and then managed it.  The AITC provided bus services, including school buses, for the workers and residents, throughout Oak Ridge (the new city) and into surrounding areas.  The Tennessee Coach Company, however, provided commuter service between Oak Ridge and Knoxville (the nearest relatively large city).  

          [The CEW was a huge military installation (consisting of about 58,900 acres) of the Corps of Engineers of the US Army, which provided the facilities for the Manhattan Project – which in turn produced enriched uranium for use in the world’s first nuclear weapons, including the two dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which persuaded the Japanese officials to surrender and thus to end World War II.  At the peak of the CEW, in May 1945, about 82,000 people worked there, and about 75,000 people (many of the workers and many of their families, including Harold and his family) lived inside the perimeter fence of the military compound.]  

          Harold remained in that job until he retired, at age 54 and in 1957, when he, along with his wife and their daughter, moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 

          According to an obituary for Harold in the Fort Lauderdale News, both Harold and his brother O.W. had acted as “pioneers” in the motor-coach industry. 

          Further, that item in the newspaper said that Harold had worked in the business in Hastings, Duluth, Chicago, Saint Louis, and New Orleans – all before he hired on as a manager for the CCC in Birmingham. 

          Also, an item in the Beatrice (Nebraska) News reported on 15 July 1926 that Harold had returned to “his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota,” after a visit in Beatrice with his widowed mother.

          The sequence of those cities strongly suggests his movement as he climbed the career ladder in the bus business during those early years.  It appears that Harold may have worked first in 1924 or -25 (at age 21 or 22) in Hastings (after his studies at the Hastings College) for O.W. and his Cornhusker Stage Lines, then about 1926 in Minneapolis for the Northland Transportation Company (a precursor of the Northland Greyhound Lines), then about 1927 or -28 in Duluth and Chicago for the Motor Transit Corporation (which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation), then about 1929 or -30 in Saint Louis for O.W. and his AP Stages, then for a while early in 1930 in New Orleans (after O.W. sold his AP Stages and moved to Philadelphia) – maybe on O.W.’s behalf to check out New Orleans as a potential place for O.W. in the future (exactly whither O.W. moved, in -32, after he left Philadelphia).  Then later in 1930 Harold, at age 27, hired on as a manager for the CCC in Birmingham.  [In 1931 the CCC began to use the brand name of the Southeastern GL, and in -36 it became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines.]  This interpretation may be badly wrong, but it certainly fits the information in the newspapers.  [More about the Northland GL will be available in my forthcoming article about that Greyhound firm.]

          During 1926 both Harold and Wickman were in Minneapolis, and it’s quite possible and understandable that Harold may well have gone there to work for Wickman in Minneapolis (and later in both Duluth and Chicago).  [On 19 December 1924 Carl Eric Wickman and his collaborators in Duluth had created and incorporated the Northland Transportation Company (NTC), which functioned as a precursor of the Northland Greyhound Lines.  Then on 15 May 1925 the Great Northern Railway bought the NTC and hired Wickman to manage it from a headquarters in Minneapolis.  However, on 01 August 1929 the railroad company sold the NTC to Wickman’s Motor Transit Corporation (MTC).  The MTC then placed the NTC (as a subsidiary) under a new holding company, which it named as the Northland Greyhound Lines (NGL); in 1935 Greyhound merged the NTC into the NGL.  Again, more about the Northland GL will be available in my forthcoming article about the NGL.]

          [In Duluth on 20 September 1926 Carl Eric Wickman, Orville Swan Caesar, and their associates formed the Motor Transit Corporation (later known as The Greyhound Corporation); soon they moved their operating headquarters to Chicago, and later they moved their administrative headquarters also to Chicago.] 

          Thus it appears that Harold Townsend may have worked alongside Wickman, Caesar, and their associates in Minneapolis, Duluth, and Chicago during the start of the Greyhound empire.  

          Harold died in Fort Lauderdale at age 74 on 27 May 1977, after 20 years of retirement in the Sunshine State. 

More Purchases by the SEGL

          Through the years the CCC and the SEGL bought many routes and many other smaller companies.

          The Hood Coach Lines in November 1934 sold three major routes to the Consolidated Coach Corporation and the Union Bus Company, acting jointly – one route between Atlanta and Macon and one between Macon and Jacksonville via Waycross, Georgia, both going to Consolidated (which in 1936 became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines) – plus a third route, between Macon and Savannah, both in Georgia, going to Union (which in 1941 became bought by and merged into the SEGL).  That provided to Consolidated and Union (and therefore later to Greyhound) not only a new route between Macon and Savannah and a parallel alternate route between Atlanta and Macon but also a quicker alternate route between Macon and Jacksonville (about 50 miles shorter than the older route via Valdosta, Georgia, and Lake City, Florida).   

          After that last sale the Hood firm, no longer holding any other route, went out of business.

          In 1941 the Southeastern GL gained four more important and strategic routes by buying two preexisting firms in the Deep South – the Dixie Coaches (running between Florence and Birmingham and between Florence and Mobile via Tuscaloosa, all four in Alabama) and the Union Bus Company (running between Macon and Savannah and between Jacksonville and Dothan, Alabama, via Lake City, Tallahassee, and Marianna, all three in Florida).   

          SEG and Union had become closely affiliated with each other shortly after the routes of the two firms began to intersect in Jacksonville and Lake City – to the extent that the UBC coaches began to appear in the SEG livery, including the dogs, with the names of both the Southeastern Greyhound Lines (in large lettering) and the Union Bus Company (in small sublettering) – and to the extent that the UBC began to operate coaches which SEG provided to the UBC (even new White and ACF coaches that SEG had bought specifically for the UBC).

          In my personal collection I have, among other artifacts, a timetable folder from 1933 for the UBC.  The front cover, printed with navy-blue ink, features a bold line drawing of the nose of a 1930 White 65 (with a FitzJohn body) with “Jacksonville” on the destination sign.  Large letters (on the folder) name the Union Bus Company, and medium letters describe the UBC as operating the Blue Bus Lines, Colonial Stages South, and Tamiami Trail Tours.  Slightly smaller letters further mention the UBC as “affiliated with” the Southeastern Greyhound Lines.

          [Laddie Hamilton, the former owner of the Dixie Coaches, became the district manager of the SEGL in Tuscaloosa, and Clifford (C.G.) Schultz, the former owner of the Union Bus Company, became a vice president and a director of Southeastern.  Schultz long continued as such and eventually became the single largest shareholder in SEG.  In 1950 he became a director of The Greyhound Corporation (in anticipation of the purchase of Southeastern by the parent Greyhound firm).  More about Schultz and his Union Bus Company is available below in the next two sections.] 

          Several times, starting in 1946, the SEGL sought to buy the Cherokee Motor Coach Lines, which was a relatively small carrier based in Chattanooga.  It ran almost entirely within Tennessee, along two corridors with several loops, branches, and parallel routes.  One corridor ran between Chattanooga and a cluster of four small towns to the north-northeast – Kingston, Harriman, Oak Ridge, and Oliver Springs – on two parallel routes – one via Dayton, on the west side of the Tennessee River, and one via Decatur, on the east side of the river.  The other corridor ran to the west-northwest between Chattanooga and Columbia via Monteagle, Winchester, Tullahoma, Shelbyville, and Lewisburg, with branches to Pulaski, Fayetteville, McMinnville, and Huntsville (in Alabama).  

          Honoring objections by rival carriers, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) repeatedly denied the petitions by the SEG Lines – except that in 1949 the ICC finally allowed SEG to buy the Cherokee route (including its intrastate rights) between Chattanooga and Columbia – but not any of the rights or routes between Chattanooga and the group of four towns to the north-northeast (Kingston, Harriman, Oak Ridge, and Oliver Springs).  [The SEGL already held unlimited rights between Chattanooga and Monteagle, as did the Dixie GL (on its route between Memphis and Chattanooga, along US-64, via Somerville, Selmer, Waynesboro, Lawrenceburg, Pulaski, Fayetteville, Winchester, and Monteagle.]

          That concession and acquisition enabled the SEGL to divert some of its skeds (usually about half of them) on a loop via Sewanee, Winchester, and Tullahoma – between Monteagle and Manchester – that is, between Chattanooga and Nashville.  Greyhound continued using that loop on some of its skeds (a decreasing number of them) until about 2003.  

          Further, for a while the SEGL operated the remainder (between Tullahoma and Columbia) of the Cherokee route between Chattanooga and Columbia and its branches (except the one between Winchester and McMinnville, from which it soon withdrew).  Sometime during 1953 SEG discontinued its service between Tullahoma and Columbia (and the branches).

          Another major acquisition took place late in the life of Southeastern:  In 1949 SEG bought the Alaga Coach Lines, which had run between Columbus, Georgia, and Panama City, Florida, via Dothan, Alabama.  SEG allowed Alaga to continue operating separately as a wholly owned subsidiary of the SEG Lines until the end of 1950, when Alaga became merged into SEG (and when Greyhound bought the SEGL and merged it into itself.  [Alaga is an acronym for the abbreviations of the names of Alabama and Georgia.]  

          Yet again another relevant thread of history had also begun:

Union Bus Company

          Sometime in 1924 (likely during the second half of -24), during both the “Roaring 20s” and the Florida land boom, Clifford (C.G.) Schultz, an attorney, moved from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Tampa, Florida, where he entered the infant and rapidly developing motor-coach industry.  He bought a single small open-sided White 15-45 bus, and he started by driving it himself.  His first customers were land developers and their salesmen, for whom he drove their prospective buyers for tours of the properties for sale on the Davis Islands (in Hillsborough Bay, connected with Tampa Bay) and elsewhere. 

          Success quickly caused Schultz to buy several touring cars, including some stretched ones, and he began to hire drivers for them. 

          Further, seeing more opportunities, apparently pursuing his original intent, soon he wisely identified two intercity markets in Florida with much potential – between Tampa and Jacksonville (two major urban areas) and between Jacksonville and Lake City – and farther westwardly to Tallahassee, the capital city, and beyond (to Marianna, toward Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans, with connections to the north, northwest, and west).

          In the following spring, in 1925, Schultz started his first scheduled service on intercity routes – one between Tampa and Jacksonville via Wildwood and Ocala and one between Tampa and Brooksville (on the way toward Ocala and Jacksonville via an alternate parallel route); later in -25 he extended from Brooksville to Ocala via Inverness, thus completing a second route between Tampa and Jacksonville.  [The two parallel routes joined or divided at Ocala, and they coincided with each other between Ocala and Jacksonville.]

          In 1924, when Schultz started his sales tours for the developers and their salesmen, he named his one-man proprietorship as the Blue Bus Lines; however, about -25, perhaps when he started his first intercity routes, he named his growing firm as the Union Bus Company, yet he continued (albeit temporarily) to use the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Blue Bus Lines.

          Schultz started rolling his intercity business by using not only his first small bus but also some of the touring cars that he had previously used in his sales tours, based in Tampa.  [More about that is available below in the next section.]  

          However, soon, likely in 1925, Schultz bought a fleet of 20 International “real” 32-seat buses with Lang enclosed parlor-car bodies. 

          While Schultz continued to build his highway business based in Tampa, he also continued to contemplate his next target market – the one between Jacksonville and Lake City and onward to the west, but acting on that plan needed to wait until he moved to Jacksonville. 

          After 1926, though, the Florida land boom sharply contracted, so Schultz reduced his activity in the real-estate industry, and he eventually withdrew from it.  [That is, the bubble had burst, so he moved on.] 

          Then sometime in or about the second half of 1927 or the first half of -28, Schultz moved from Tampa to Jacksonville, where he next established his route between Jacksonville and Lake City (about 60 miles to the west along US-90).  He did so by buying several one-man operations.  Of course, he also continued running his two routes between Tampa and Jacksonville.  

          The paving and other improvements of the roads allowed Schultz in 1928 to extend his route from Lake City to Tallahassee and in -29 to go onward to Marianna, where he met the Teche Transfer Company for connections to Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, and the West.  [In 1930 the Teche Transfer Company became renamed as the Teche Lines, and in -34 it became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines.] 

          Schultz developed also several branch or feeder routes in northern Florida to the south of US-90 (south of his route between Jacksonville and Tallahassee). 

          After 1931 Schultz appeared to use the trade name of the Blue Bus Lines less often than before; instead he increasingly referred to his firm merely as the Union Bus Company (UBC). 

          On 01 October 1932 the UBC leased and started running two routes from Barron Collier’s Tamiami Trail Tours (which later became the Tamiami Trailways) – its main direct route between Tampa and Miami (along the Tamiami Trail, US-41, via Sarasota, Fort Myers, and Naples) – and a circuitous alternate route between Tampa and Punta Gorda (on the Tamiami Trail and between Sarasota and Fort Myers) – via Lakeland, Bartow, and Arcadia.  [Collier’s firm was then also in the trucking business, but the UBC leased only the bus routes.]

          Late in 1933 the UBC extended northwardly from Marianna to Dothan, Alabama, thus venturing into its first interstate operation.  In Dothan it met the Southeastern GL, thus making connections for Montgomery, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville, Saint Louis, Louisville, Knoxville, and beyond.  [More precisely, the UBC then (in 1933) met the Consolidated Coach Corporation during the time (1931-36) while the CCC lawfully used the name of the SEGL (as described above, in the section entitled “The Name of the SEGL,” starting on page 10 (in the printed or PDF version).]

          Then in November 1934 the UBC bought a detached route in Georgia between Macon and Savannah.  [More about that is available above in the section entitled “More Purchases by the SEGL.”]

          On 10 April 1935 the UBC, to support its participation in the SEMC (in coöperation with the SEGL), bought Dalton’s Bus Line, running between Chattanooga and Calhoun, Georgia, thus removing competition and clearing restrictions over that part of one of its (and SEGL’s) routes between Chattanooga and Atlanta.  [More about the SEMC is available above, in the section about “A Joint Venture,” starting on page 16 (in the printed or PDF version).]

          By 1935 the UBC had become increasingly involved with its growing interstate operations with the SEGL, partly through the Southeastern Management Company, so Schultz decided to divest all of the UBC intrastate routes in Florida. 

          At the same time, by 1935, the executives of the Florida Motor Lines (FML) had begun to seek or develop more, better, and shorter routes between Jacksonville and the various cities along the Gulf Coast of Florida.

          Therefore on 01 July 1935 the FML bought from the UBC its routes radiating from Gainesville to Jacksonville, Tampa, Ocala, Lake City, and Dunnellon. 

          Further, to allow the UBC to continue to concentrate on its northwardly interstate business, the UBC also withdrew from its leased operation of the two routes of the Tamiami Trail Tours (between Tampa and Miami).

          That left the UBC with only its interstate routes – that is, between Jacksonville and Dothan via Lake City, Tallahassee, and Marianna and between Jacksonville and Chattanooga (through its Colonial Lines in coöperation with the SEGL) – plus the detached route (in Georgia) between Macon and Savannah. 

          On 26 November 1935 the UBC merged its subsidiary Colonial Lines into itself and then dissolved the empty leftover corporate shell (of the Colonial Lines).  [The UBC had formed the Colonial Lines, which in turn, on 01 June 1933, had bought the rights to the route of the foundering Colonial Stages South between Chattanooga and Jacksonville, as described above, in the section about the CSS.] 

          Thus the UBC succeeded the Colonial Lines as one of the two carriers, along with the SEGL, under the administration of the SEMC along the corridor between Chattanooga and Jacksonville.  [Again, more about that is available above in the section entitled “Joint Venture,” starting on page 16 (in the printed or PDF version).]  

          On 31 December 1941 the SEGL bought the UBC from Schultz, and the buyer, as agreed, paid the seller by issuing to him new stock in the SEGL.  Thus Schultz became one of the major shareholders in the SEGL, and he got a seat on the board of directors of the SEGL, along with a job and a title with the SEGL – a vice president, based in Jacksonville.  In 1943 a newspaper in Lexington, Kentucky, described Schultz as the “First VP” (that is, the most senior VP).  [During the following years Schultz invested even more in the stock of the SEGL, and he eventually became the single largest such shareholder and the chairman of the board; later, in 1950, in anticipation of the purchase of the SEGL by The Greyhound Corporation (on 31 December 1950), Schultz got a seat on the board of the parent Greyhound firm; even later he became a member of the executive committee of that latter board.]

          When that sale and purchase took place (in 1941), the UBC added 50 coaches to the fleet of the SEGL.

Clifford Griffith (C.G.) Schultz

          Clifford Griffith (C.G.) Schultz, the founder of the Union Bus Company, was another colorful, successful, and interesting pioneer in the motor-coach industry.  He was born on 09 May 1890 in Alta, Iowa, near Storm Lake, where his father worked as a lawyer and (for several years) as the district attorney.

          In 1908 Clifford’s parents moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his father continued to practice law, and Clifford entered the Iowa State College (later renamed as the Iowa State University), in Ames. 

          At the train station in Ames, Clifford met Mae Genevieve Wangler, a native of Waterloo, Iowa, and a fellow student, whom he married in 1925, after a 17-year courtship (and after 17 years of parental disapproval from both sides). 

          About 1910 Clifford joined his parents in Minneapolis, where he continued his education at the University of Minnesota, and then he graduated from that school in 1912 with both BA and MA degrees. 

          Next he attended the Harvard School of Law, graduated in 1915, returned to Minneapolis, and started the practice of law with his father.  [He had wanted to become a physician, but his father persuaded him to become a lawyer instead; he had a reputation for his exceptional intellect and his careful attention to detail.] 

          However, World War I interrupted Schultz’s civilian career.  He entered the US Army in 1917 and then served in France as a second lieutenant in the field artillery.  He returned from Europe in 1919, after taking part in the Meuse-Argonne offensive (which was the bloody and frightful 47-day campaign that finally caused Germany to surrender and thus to end the war).  He had seen and endured certain events in the war so unpleasant, sickening, and disturbing that he steadfastly and categorically refused to discuss his wartime service with anyone.

          Back at home in Minneapolis, however, while again working in his father’s law firm, Schultz counseled and represented the Jefferson Highway Transport Company, which was one of the early intercity-coach carriers – and the first one to run between Minneapolis and Hibbing (the origin of the Greyhound empire).  Jefferson had started in Minneapolis in September 1919.  By 1924 Schultz had become the corporate secretary and treasurer of the Jefferson firm.  [That carrier, now under the name of the Jefferson Lines, still operates, still based in Minneapolis; the firm bears the name of the Jefferson Highway, which ran (and still runs) between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, via Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis.]

          While serving as an official of the Jefferson corporation, Schultz saw the potential and opportunities in the bus business.

          Later in 1924 he withdrew from his practice of the law, resigned from his post in the Jefferson company, and moved to Tampa, Florida, where he started his own one-man one-bus firm, driving first a small open-sided bus (a White 15-45, not much more than a large touring car), to haul the prospective buyers of the land developers who sought to sell swampland during the Florida land boom of the 1920s, as described above, in the previous section, entitled “Union Bus Company.”

          Soon, however, he bought several touring cars and hired drivers for them, and then, likely early in 1925, he bought a fleet of 20 state-of-the-art intercity coaches – 1925 Internationals with Lang parlor-car bodies.  

          One of his next steps was to enter into a business relationship with the Florida Travel Bureau, which was an agency of the government of the Sunshine State.  With one or more of his new International coaches, he hauled travelers and other visitors around the Tampa area in support of the tourism and real-estate industries.   

          Further, Schultz entered also the intercity-coach business and soon affiliated his company with the Consolidated Coach Corporation (as described in the previous section), which in 1936 became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, and which in turn bought Schultz’s Union Bus Company on 31 December 1941 (as likewise described in the previous section).

          Clifford had a strong reputation – and was highly regarded and respected – for not only his business acumen but also his graciousness, generosity, and civic and benevolent activities.  [Some compared him with President Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge.]   

          Henry Frederick Schultz and his wife, Caroline Maria “Carrie” Griffith Schultz, Clifford’s parents, moved to Jacksonville from Minneapolis sometime in 1929 or -30, shortly after Clifford and Mae moved to Jacksonville from Tampa (in 1927 or -28).  The two families lived next door to each other in Jacksonville for several years. 

          At some point early in Clifford’s Union Bus Company, his father invested into the firm a sum of cash, said to be about $10,000.

          In January 1958 Clifford and Mae set out on a 14-week cruise around the world aboard the ocean liner MV Kungsholm, sailing from New York City.  [That ship was the third of four vessels by that same name in the fleet of the Svenska Amerika Linien (Swedish American Lines), homeported in Gøteborg (Gothenburg), in Sweden.]

          [Previously, in 1955, the Schultz couple had made a similar round-the-world cruise aboard the same ship.]

          Several weeks later in 1958, on the evening of the day of the departure of their ship from Bangkok, Thailand, after a port visit there, Clifford suffered a heart attack while the ship was underway at sea.  Upon arrival in the next scheduled port, Manila, in the Philippine Islands, the local authorities moved him to a hospital in Manila.  Several days later, on 21 March 1958 and at age 67, Clifford died in that hospital.  His funeral and burial took place in Jacksonville on 21 April 1958.  [The month-long delay had occurred because of the transport of his body aboard the SS President Cleveland, a passenger steamship of the American President Lines.] 

          Now we again return to the history of the Southeastern GL:

Purchase of the SEGL

          On the last day of 1950 the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, Inc., ceased to be an independent entity with its own separate corporate existence, and on the next day, the first day of -51, the Southeastern GL became a division of The Greyhound Corporation, the parent Greyhound firm, after the latter acquired not merely a controlling interest but rather 100 percent of the shares of the capital stock outstanding in the former.

          The SEGL then owned 630 coaches, and it held about 7,500 route-miles. 

          Because Greyhound used only single-letter prefixes in the coach numbers, and because the Southwestern GL already used the letter S (since 1948, when Greyhound introduced the prefix letters), someone at the Greyhound headquarters, in Chicago, assigned to the SEGL the next available unassigned letter (next in alphabetic order), which was M.  Soon the prefix letter M appeared on all the coaches throughout the SEGL.  The first new coach with a letter M at the SEGL was M-100 (GM PD-4103-364), which arrived in May 1951.  [Greyhound assigned prefix letters only to the operating divisions of its own corporation. More about prefix letters for Greyhound operating companies is available here (in “Growing Up at Greyhound, ” which is chapter 2 of my autobiography).]

Meeting Other Greyhound Companies

          By that time, 1950-51, the SEGL met the Atlantic GL to the east, the Florida GL to the southeast, the Teche GL to the southwest, the Dixie GL to the west, and the Capitol GL, the Central GL, the Great Lakes GL, and the Pennsylvania GL to the north. 

Southern Limited

          In 1954 The Greyhound Corporation bought the Southern Limited, which ran from Chicago to Evansville via Danville, Illinois, and Terre Haute, Indiana, with a branch from Paris, Illinois, between Danville and Terre Haute, to Paducah, Kentucky, and then assigned those routes to the Pennsylvania GL (which soon became a part of the new Eastern GL), then transferred them to the Great Lakes GL (which soon became a part of the new Central GL), then to the old Central GL (which also soon became a part of the new Eastern GL).

          Then SEG formed a new pool, using the Scenicruiser, between Chicago and Saint Petersburg via Evansville, Nashville, Birmingham, Montgomery, and Tallahassee, with the new Central GL between Chicago and Evansville, using the route via Terre Haute acquired through the purchase of the Southern Limited.

Pool (Interline) Operations

          The SEG Lines took part in many major interlined through-routes (using pooled equipment in coöperation with other Greyhound companies – and sometimes other carriers as well) – that is, the use of through-coaches on through-routes running through the territories of two or more Greyhound regional operating companies – including those between Chicago and Birmingham, Chicago and Mobile, Chicago and Atlanta, Chicago and Miami, Chicago and Saint Petersburg, Detroit and Nashville, Detroit and Birmingham, Detroit and Mobile, Detroit and New Orleans, Detroit and Atlanta, Detroit and Jacksonville, Detroit and Miami, Detroit and Saint Petersburg, Cleveland and Memphis, Cleveland and New Orleans, Cleveland and Atlanta, Cleveland and Miami, Cleveland and Saint Petersburg, Toronto and Miami, Toronto and Saint Petersburg, Saint Louis and Nashville, Saint Louis and Jacksonville, Saint Louis and Miami, Dallas and Knoxville, Dallas and Atlanta, Memphis and Norfolk, Memphis and Washington, and Memphis and New York City.  

Mergers of the TGL and the DGL into the SEGL

          On 01 October 1954 The Greyhound Corporation merged two other divisions, two neighboring regional operating companies, the Teche GL (TGL) and the Dixie GL (DGL), into the Southeastern GL.  The three fleets of the three divisions became combined into a single fleet, and the coaches became renumbered into a new scheme (without regard to their sources), still using the prefix letter M.  

          [On 01 April 1920 in Louisiana the Teche Transfer Company came into existence; on 09 December 1930 it became renamed as the Teche Lines; about 1934 it became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines; and on 31 December 1941 it became a division of The Greyhound Corporation.]

          Teche had been based in New Orleans, Louisiana.  It ran from New Orleans to Natchez, Mississippi; through Hammond, Louisiana, to Jackson, Mississippi, on the way to Memphis, Saint Louis, and Chicago; through Hattiesburg and Meridian, both in Mississippi, to Birmingham, Alabama; through Mobile and Montgomery, both in Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia, to Atlanta, Georgia; through Mobile to Marianna, Florida, on the way to Tallahassee and the rest of the Sunshine State; and westwardly through Baton Rouge and Lafayette to Lake Charles, all three in Louisiana and on the way to Houston, the rest of Texas, and the rest of the West); plus along several regional and feeder routes in the southern part of the Pelican State.  The TGL met the Dixie GL to the north, the Southwestern GL to the west, and the Atlantic GL, the Florida GL, and the Southeastern GL to the east and northeast.  

          [Teche (pronounced as “tesh”) is a word of French origin, a word (téche) for “snake” – due to a legend (about a large snake in the region) that the natives had told to the early French traders and explorers – from the name of the Bayou Teche in the swamp country in coastal Louisiana.]  

          Dixie had been based in Memphis, Tennessee.  It ran from Memphis to Saint Louis in Missouri; Paducah in Kentucky; Evansville in Indiana; Nashville and Chattanooga, both in Tennessee; Columbus and Vicksburg, both in Mississippi; Florence and Birmingham, both in Alabama; Jackson in Mississippi and on the way to New Orleans; and Springfield and Effingham, both in Illinois and on the way to Chicago; plus along branch lines to Jonesboro, Arkansas, and in West Tennessee.  The DGL in 1931 had completed a Greyhound through-route between Chicago and New Orleans by connecting with other regional companies to the north and to the south.  The DGL met the Southeastern GL to the east, the Teche GL to the south, the Southwestern GL to the west, and the Capitol GL, the Central GL, the Great Lakes GL, and the Pennsylvania GL to the north.

          [In Memphis in 1925 James Frederick Smith started the Smith Motor Coach Company, which in -30 The Greyhound Corporation bought and renamed as the Dixie Greyhound Lines (DGL).]

          The combined fleet of the newly expanded SEGL contained 912 coaches – 581 from the SEGL, 211 from the TGL, and 120 from the DGL.  The SEGL then renumbered the entire fleet; it finished that process on 01 July 1955. 

          After that merger the newly expanded SEG Lines served 12 states along 13,227 route-miles of highways – from Cincinnati, Saint Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Lake Charles – to Savannah and Jacksonville – from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean.

          [More about the TGL and the DGL is available in my individual articles about those two Greyhound divisions.]

Henry Vance (H. Vance) Greenslit

          H. Vance Greenslit joined the management of the Teche Lines in 1932, as described above, at the end of the section about O.W. Townsend.

          In 1954, when The Greyhound Corporation merged the Teche GL, along with the Dixie GL, into the SEGL, Guy Huguelet (formerly the president of the SEGL) became the chairman of the board of the expanded SEGL, and Greenslit (formerly the president of the TGL) moved to Lexington, where he succeeded Huguelet as the president of the SEGL.

          Then in 1960, when The Greyhound Corporation merged the SEGL with the Atlantic GL, thus creating the Southern GL (SGL), then Greyhound transferred Greenslit to Atlanta, the headquarters of the SGL, as the first president of the SGL.  About -63 Greyhound transferred Greenslit to Chicago, the corporate headquarters, in a senior-executive position.  In 1968 Greenslit, at age 65, retired from Greyhound, and he returned from Chicago to New Orleans, where he had first lived during 1932-54.  He took part in many civic and charitable activities, including his having founded the Goodwill Industries of New Orleans.  [More about the Teche GL is available in my article about the TGL.]

          Both Greenslit (a lawyer) and Townsend had come from the same hometown – Hastings, Nebraska.

Death of Guy Alexander Huguelet

          On 23 July 1955, at age 64, Guy Alexander Huguelet, the major founder and longtime president of the Consolidated Coach Corporation and the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, died in a hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, because of complications after surgery.  He had taken part in many civic and charitable activities; he had also served on the board of trustees of the University of Kentucky and on its executive committee (including one term as the chairman of that committee).  

          When The Greyhound Corporation merged the Dixie GL and the Teche GL into the Southeastern GL, on 01 October 1954, the parent Greyhound firm promoted Huguelet to serve as the chairman of the board of directors of the SEGL, and it appointed H. Vance Greenslit, the former president of the Teche GL, to succeed Huguelet as the president of the SEGL.

          Huguelet had announced that he would retire sometime “late in 1955.”

Merger of the FGL into the SEGL

          On 01 October 1957 The Greyhound Corporation merged also the Florida GL (FGL), one more neighboring regional operating company, into the SEGL.  Afterward the SEGL owned 1,122 coaches, and it held about 15,500 route-miles.  The SEGL renumbered the FGL coaches into the numbering scheme that it had created during the mergers of 1954 (the mergers of the DGL and the TGL into the SEGL).  

          The Florida GL had been based in Jacksonville, Florida.  It ran throughout the Sunshine State – from Jacksonville, Lake City, and Tallahassee – through Orlando, Tampa, and Saint Petersburg – to Miami and Key West – especially along the East Coast, between Jacksonville and Miami via Saint Augustine, Daytona Beach, Melbourne, Vero Beach, Fort Pierce, Stuart, West Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale – including suburban, local, and commuter service from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and to Homestead (near the tip of the mainland on the Dixie Highway, US-1, on the way to Key West via the Overseas Highway.  The FGL met the Atlantic GL and the Southeastern GL to the north.

          [In January 1926 the firm of Stone and Webster, a multistate public-utility management-service company, formed the Florida Motor Lines (FML) and merged into it several motor-coach properties that it had previously bought and operated in the Sunshine State; on 01 January 1946 The Greyhound Corporation bought the FML, then in the next month Greyhound renamed it as the Florida Greyhound Lines.  More about the FGL is available in my article about the FGL.]

Seeing-eye (or Sightseeing) Dogs

          In 1957, as the second version of the GM PD-4104 replaced and displaced the ACF-Brill IC-41 coaches of the Southeastern GL, Greyhound moved the retired IC-41s to a storage lot at the Greyhound shop on New York Avenue NE in Washington, DC.

          As the next tourist season approached in Washington, the management of the new DC Transit System (DCTS), which in 1956 had replaced the Capital Transit Company, felt a need to acquire more coaches (as inexpensively as possible) for its charter and sightseeing operations (in addition to its basic city-transit function), partly in anticipation of expanding its tour and charter activities (by competing more aggressively against its rivals).

          Thus the managers of the DCTS contacted Greyhound, carefully selected 10 copies of the 1948 (that is, the youngest) version of the IC-41 parlor coach and bought them (for a total of the scrap value of only $8,000), repainted and refurbished them in one of their own shops, then put them back to work.

          Those 10 IC-41s were M-2167, -2169, -2170, -2171, -2197, -2201, -2202, ‑2213, -2224, and -2232; the DCTS renumbered them as 3-12.

          Some of those cars continued to operate in and around Washington well into the 1960s, thus running almost as many years as they had for the SEG Lines, although not nearly as many miles as they had before.

Merger of the SEGL with the AGL

          On 01 November 1960, in another round of consolidation, Greyhound further merged the Southeastern GL with – not into but rather with – the Atlantic GL (AGL), yet another neighboring operating company – thus forming the last of four huge new divisions, the Southern Division of The Greyhound Corporation (known also as the Southern GL (SGL), along with Central, Eastern, and Western).  The Southern GL reached as far to the north as Springfield and Effingham, both in Illinois, Columbus in Ohio, Wheeling in West Virginia, Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC; as far to the east as the Atlantic Ocean; as far to the south as Miami and Key West; and as far to the west as Cincinnati, Louisville, Evansville, Saint Louis, Paducah, Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Lake Charles – from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico and into it.  

          [In December 1925 the Camel City Coach Company, a predecessor of the Atlantic GL, became formed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; in September 1928 the Blue and Gray (B&G) Transit Company, the other predecessor of the Atlantic GL, became formed in Charleston, West Virginia; in December 1929 in Charleston the National Highway Transport (NHT) Company became formed – to buy the capital stock of the Camel City Coach Company and the Blue and Gray Transit Company; early in 1931 the NHT Company, which had already formed operating ties to Greyhound and had begun negotiations with the Dog, began using the brand name of the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, then in July 1931 the NHT Company became renamed as the Atlantic Greyhound Lines.]   

          Thus ended both the Southeastern GL and the Atlantic GL, and thus began the Southern GL. 

          The SEGL arrived with 873 coaches, and the AGL brought 400, so the Southern GL started with 1,273 coaches, and it held about 24,000 route-miles. 

          The Greyhound Corporation renumbered all the coaches in a new four-digit fleetwide numbering scheme, which continued temporarily to use the prefix letter M (for the SGL).  However, when the new GM PD-4106s began to arrive, in February 1961, they did not bear prefix letters (throughout the entire fleet nationwide), and the letters then started to disappear from the older cars.   [The first 4106 for Greyhound was 6201 (GM PD-4106-002), assigned to the Southern GL.]  

          The Atlantic GL had been based in Charleston, West Virginia.  It ran from Charleston throughout the Mountain State and to Cincinnati and Columbus, both in Ohio; Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; Richmond, Roanoke, and Norfolk, all three in Virginia; through the Carolinas; to Bristol and Knoxville, both in Tennessee; Atlanta, Augusta, and Savannah, all three in Georgia; and Jacksonville in Florida.  The AGL met the new Eastern GL to the north, the new Central GL to the northwest, and the Southeastern GL to the west and south – along with the Richmond GL in Washington, DC, and in Norfolk and Richmond, both in Virginia.  The AGL also had run extensive local suburban commuter service based in its hometown (Charleston) and in Portsmouth, Ohio; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Sumter, South Carolina; and [in conjunction with the Queen City Coach Company (the Queen City Trailways)] in Charlotte, North Carolina.  [More about the AGL is available in my article about the AGL.]

ACF and ACF-Brill at the SEGL

          From 1935 through -49 the Southeastern GL bought a total of 662 coaches from the ACF Motors Company and the ACF-Brill Motors Company.  [The name of the builder (and therefore the brand name of the coaches as well) became changed in 1944 from ACF to ACF-Brill.]  The ACF models in the SEGL were the H-9-P (53 of them), H-15-P (3), 37-P (48), 37-PB (16), 29-PB (100), 37-PBS (94), and 31-S (2); the ACF-Brill models were the IC-41 (279), C-36 (5), and C-44 (62).  [More about the manufacturing firm of the ACF and ACF-Brill coaches will be available in my forthcoming article about them.]

          Southeastern bought more ACF and ACF-Brill products than did any other customer.  It owned the largest fleet of 29-PB coaches (100 of the 225 built), the largest fleet of IC-41 coaches (279 of the 1,375 built), and the largest fleet of C-36 and C-44 suburban cars (67 of an unknown number of suburban cars from among 1,546 of the C-36 and 1,089 of the C-44, consisting of mostly city-transit cars). 

          {Incidentally, the ACF-Brill Motors Company built all of its C-44 suburban and city-transit coaches in Nashville – at the Vultee aircraft plant (inside an aircraft hangar) on the southwest corner of Berry Field (previously used for the wartime construction of the Vultee A-31 Vengeance dive bomber and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter).  That arrangement came about because in 1946 the Convair empire (the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation) had bought The Brill Corporation (which included the ACF-Brill Motors Company) from the parent ACF company, and because Convair had a surplus of manufacturing capacity at the Vultee plant in Nashville, whereas ACF-Brill had a shortage of manufacturing capacity at its plant (the old Brill plant) in Philadelphia.  [ACF-Brill built all its C-36s in Philadelphia.]  More about the IC-41, C-36, and C-44 in the SEGL is available in a section entitled “New Buses!” in my article entitled “Growing Up at Greyhound” – which is also chapter 2 of my autobiography, entitled Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines.}

          Southeastern owned 20.4 percent of the total production of the IC-41 in the US.  One IC-41 in every five (in the US) was an SEG coach.  [In Canada CCF-Brill also built the IC-41.]

          There may have been more than one reason for which for 12 years, from 1935 until -47, Southeastern bought so many ACF and ACF-Brill products and no Yellow or GM product – a reason in addition to the success, durability, dependability, desirability, and profitability of the ACF and ACF-Brill coaches.

          In 1935 the SEG Lines owned as many as 37 Yellow Coach (YC) long-nose parlor cars (along with many Whites and a few leftover Macks and Studebakers).

          However, according to a strong legend, which may or may not be true, at a trade convention of the intercity-coach carriers, a Yellow Coach salesman, possibly with a tongue lubricated with alcohol, made some uncomplimentary comments about Southerners or about the Kentucky men from SEG, characterizing them as hicks, rubes, bumpkins, or hillbillies – within the hearing of one of the SEG executives.   

          As I wrote (above), that story may or may not be true, but it’s obvious and undeniable that Southeastern did not elect to buy even one more Yellow or GM product – until late in 1947, when the SEGL received its first diesel-powered equipment, the GM Silversides PD-3751 coaches – while every one of the other Greyhound companies bought large quantities of various models of YC and GM coaches, almost exclusively.  

          [However, the SEGL did receive six Yellow Coach PG-2902s – not by choice but rather by assignment.  During the early days of WW2, after motor coaches and vehicles of other types (and other products built of steel or aluminum) became severely scarce and strictly rationed, the US Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) allotted those small gasoline-powered cars to SEG – first two, then three more, then one more.  SEG tended to use them on narrow, curvy, hilly routes in eastern Kentucky.]  

          After Southeastern received its 75 Silversides (during 1947-48), and after it received its ACF-Brill C-44 suburban cars (1947-49), as long as it continued to exist (that is, until 1960, when it became one part of the Southern GL), it also continued to buy only diesel-powered GM parlor coaches – the PD-4103 (75 of them), 4104 (55), 4501 (130), and then more of the 4104 (245 more).  [More about the PD-4501, the magnificent Scenicruiser, is available in my article entitled “The Scenicruiser,” and more about Yellow Coach, GM Coach, and the GMC T&C Division (of the GM Corporation) will be available in my forthcoming article about those subjects.]  

Recap and Timeline

          Because the history of the Southeastern GL (and the related carriers and related people) is so complex and interconnected, it’s helpful to review the high points (but, I hope, not too many details not germane to the big picture) of that history – and to place it on a timeline – thus:

         1920

          On 01 April 1920 in Louisiana the Teche Transfer Company came into existence.  [On 09 December 1930 it became renamed as the Teche Lines, about 1934 it became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines, on 31 December 1941 it became a division of The Greyhound Corporation, and on 01 October 1954 it (along with the Dixie GL) became merged into the SEGL.] 

         1921 

          In January 1921 J.E. Kittrell, the Reo dealer in Lexington, Kentucky, visited several Northern and Eastern cities in the US to study intercity bus operations. 

          Soon Kittrell bought two Reo buses; he sold one to another man, then he and E.R. Webb formed the Reo Bus Line Company, which bought the second bus and started running it between Lexington and Crab Orchard Springs.  Later Kittrell bought Webb’s partial interest.  

         1922

          By January 1922 nine interurban carriers, using 17 buses, served Lexington and the surrounding area. 

         1923  

          On 28 March 1923 two Barnes brothers formed the Louisville-Lexington Bus Line, connecting the named cities.

          In December 1923 Guy Huguelet (a lawyer) and Richard Webb (the Studebaker dealer in Lexington) formed the Red Star Transportation Company, which started running between Lexington and Maysville, using six Studebaker buses.

         1924

          On 03 March 1924 the Union Transfer Company (UTC) became formed, running between Knoxville and Chattanooga and from Nashville to Hopkinsville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Florence.  [On 25 October 1930 the UTC became a part of the Consolidated Coach Corporation, which on 09 November 1936 became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines.]

          Sometime early in 1924 Huguelet and John Swope formed the Thorobred Bus Line Company, which started running between Lexington and Cincinnati, using Studebaker (and later also some Mack) buses. 

          Sometime in 1924 (likely during the second half of -24), during the Florida land boom, Clifford Schultz bought a single small open-sided bus, and he started by driving it himself.  His first customers were land developers and their salesmen, for whom he drove their prospective buyers for tours of the properties for sale in the swampland around the Tampa area.  He first referred to his firm as the Blue Bus Lines. 

          Success quickly caused Schultz to buy several touring cars and to hire drivers for them. 

          Seeing more opportunities, apparently pursuing his original intent, soon he identified two intercity markets in Florida with much potential – between Tampa and Jacksonville and between Jacksonville and Lake City – and farther westwardly from Lake City to Tallahassee and beyond.

          On 01 November 1924 Schultz incorporated his firm as the Union Bus Company (UBC), different from the Union Transfer Company (UTC), based in Nashville.  He and his corporation continued temporarily to use the trade name or brand name of the Blue Bus Lines.  [On 31 December 1941 the SEGL bought the UBC from Schultz.]  

         1925

          Early in 1925 Schultz bought a fleet of 20 International “real” 32-seat buses with Lang enclosed parlor-car bodies.

          In the spring of 1925 Schultz started his first scheduled service on intercity routes – one between Tampa and Jacksonville via Wildwood and Ocala and one between Tampa and Brooksville (on the way toward Ocala and Jacksonville via an alternate parallel route); later in -25 he extended from Brooksville to Ocala via Inverness, thus completing a second route between Tampa and Jacksonville.  [The two parallel routes joined or divided at Ocala; between Ocala and Jacksonville the two routes coincided with each other.]

          In July 1925 Huguelet, Swope, and Richard Webb (different from E.R. Webb) formed the Thorobred Transit Corporation (different from the Thorobred Bus Line Company), which new firm ran between Cincinnati and Corbin via Lexington, and which bought and took over (from Kittrell’s Reo Bus Line) a route between Louisville and Richmond via Lexington.

          The Thorobred Transit Corporation took over the route between Lexington and Cincinnati from the Thorobred Bus Line Company.

          The Thorobred Bus Line Company (the slightly older firm) started a new route, along the south (Kentucky) side of the Ohio River, from Louisville via Owensboro to Henderson, across the river from Evansville.

          In Memphis in 1925 James Frederick Smith started the Smith Motor Coach Company, which in -30 The Greyhound Corporation bought and renamed as the Dixie Greyhound Lines (DGL). 

          In December 1925 the Camel City Coach Company, a predecessor of the Atlantic GL, came into existence in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

         1926

          On 26 January 1926 the firm of Stone and Webster, a multistate public-utility management-service company, formed the Florida Motor Lines (FML) and merged into it several motor-coach properties that it had previously bought and operated in the Sunshine State.  [On 01 January 1946 The Greyhound Corporation bought the FML, then in the next month Greyhound renamed it as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL).]

          In 1926 the Alabama Bus Company came into existence, running between Chattanooga and Mobile via Birmingham and Selma, between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, and (on an unlikely route) between Centreville and Sylacauga via Calera, all just south of Birmingham.  [In November 1930 the SEGL bought the Alabama Bus Company.]

          On 20 September 1926 in Duluth, Minnesota, Carl Eric Wickman, Orville Swan Caesar, and their associates formed the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC, the original Greyhound umbrella parent firm), which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation. 

          On 01 October 1926, after Kittrell’s health began to fail, Kittrell sold also the rest of his Reo Bus Line to the Thorobred Transit Corporation.

          On 07 October 1926 four men – Huguelet, Kittrell, Richard Webb, and Floyd Clay – formed the Consolidated Coach Corporation (CCC), which then took over five bus properties of those four promoters: 

                   Webb and Huguelet contributed their Red Star Transportation Company, Reo Bus Line Company, and Thorobred Transit Corporation (but not their Thorobred Bus Line Company – not yet);
                   Kittrell delivered his Safety Motor Carriers (between Louisville and Bowling Green, on the way to Nashville);
                   Clay gave his White Star Bus Lines (between Winchester and Ashland). 

          Richard Webb served as the first president of the CCC.

          During 1926 the CCC bought several more preexisting firms – to extend its route network and to reduce or eliminate its competition on several routes. 

         1927

          On 09 March 1927 the CCC extended southwardly from Bowling Green to Nashville.

          In April 1927 the CCC still had much competition between Lexington and Cincinnati, so, to increase its competitive advantage, it extended to the south from Corbin to both Knoxville and Chattanooga, thus providing single-coach, single-seat, single-ticket service from Cincinnati and Lexington to those gateway cities in Tennessee (and back).

          On 28 August 1927 Richard Webb at age 38 suddenly died, and in January -28 Huguelet succeeded him as the president (albeit temporarily) of the CCC. 

         1928

          In 1928 the CCC bought the Louisville-Owensboro Bus Line, thus reducing competition between Louisville and Owensboro (on its route between Louisville and Henderson). 

          During 1928 J.C. Steinmetz, acting for the MTC, created and expanded the Dixie Safety Coach Lines, which provided a corridor through the entire length of Georgia between Chattanooga and Jacksonville (via Atlanta and Macon), and which (on 01 November 1928) the MTC renamed as the Greyhound Lines of Georgia (as a subsidiary, not a division, of the MTC).

          In 1928 the Tennessee Coach Company, based in Knoxville, came into existence, running first between Knoxville and Chattanooga and between Knoxville and Johnson City.   

          Because of the continuing improvements to the roads (including paving them), the Union Bus Company extended its original east-west route from Lake City to Tallahassee in 1928 and thence onward to Marianna in -29.

          In September 1928 the Blue and Gray (B&G) Transit Company, a predecessor of the Atlantic GL, came into existence in Charleston, West Virginia.

         1929

          On 20 February 1929 the Kentucky Securities Corporation took control of the Consolidated Coach Corporation by buying more than 90 percent of the voting stock of the CCC from Webb’s widow.  The buyer replaced Huguelet as the president, but Huguelet remained in charge of operations as the vice president and general manager – until 1935, six years later, when he became restored to the presidency.  [Webb had repeatedly increased his investment in the CCC, thus accumulating more common (voting) stock.]

          During 1929 the CCC bought 11 more preexisting carriers (including, belatedly, the Thorobred Bus Line), each of which fit well into the CCC
route system.

          In 1929 the State of Tennessee issued a joint certificate (of public convenience and necessity) to the Tennessee Coach Company (TCC) and the Union Transfer Company (UTC), which latter firm later (in -30) became a part of the CCC, which in turn even later (in -31 and -36) became the SEGL.  The two carriers – the TCC and the UTC (later the CCC and eventually the SEGL) – shared their joint certificate in an unusual way – they switched directions each day.  That is, they ran in opposite directions, and they changed directions each day. 

          Sometime during 1929 the Interstate Transit, Inc., based in Cincinnati, using the brand name of the Colonial Stages, started an ambitious route system, which soon reached between Saint Louis and New York City, in an attempt to connect the West Coast and the East Coast with each other. 

          In 1929 the Capital Coaches (a firm affiliated with the Alabama Bus Company), based in Birmingham, became formed, and it started running between Birmingham and Dothan via Montgomery.  [In November 1930 the SEGL bought the Capital Coaches.]

          In 1929 Arthur Hill (of the Blue and Gray Transit Company, of Charleston, West Virginia), John Gilmer (of the Camel City Coach Company, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina), and Guy Huguelet (of the Consolidated Coach Corporation, of Lexington, Kentucky), organized yet another carrier, based in Roanoke, Virginia, named as the Old Dominion (OD) Stages (using the nickname of the state or Commonwealth of Virginia).  The purpose of the new firm was to run between Knoxville, Tennessee, and Washington, DC, via Bristol, Wytheville, Roanoke, Lexington, Staunton, and Winchester, all the last six in Virginia, along a route that divided between the territories of the Blue and Gray and the Camel City companies.  Service began on the day before Thanksgiving Day in November 1929.   

          In December 1929 in Charleston, West Virginia, the National Highway Transport (NHT) Company became formed – to buy the capital stock of the Camel City Coach Company and the Blue and Gray Transit Company.  [In July 1931 the NHT Company became renamed as the Atlantic Greyhound Lines.]

         1930

          On 05 February 1930 the Motor Transit Corporation, still based in Duluth, Minnesota, became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation.

          During 1930 the CCC made three large and hugely significant purchases – the Union Transfer Company (UTC), the Capital Coaches, and the Alabama Bus Company.  They extended the CCC Lines southwardly from Nashville and Chattanooga to Florence and Birmingham and onward to Montgomery, Dothan, and Mobile.  The UTC provided also a route between Nashville and Hopkinsville, on the way to Evansville.  The CCC soon extended northwardly from Hopkinsville to Henderson and then across the Ohio River to Evansville. 

          Then the CCC started a new route between Birmingham and Atlanta.   

          Late in 1930 the Interstate Transit, Inc., using the brand name of the Colonial Stages and running between Saint Louis and New York City, bought from O.W. Townsend his Atlantic-Pacific (AP) Stages, which, about 1929, he had just founded.  The AP Stages had already begun to run between Saint Louis and Los Angeles.  The newly combined firm, based in Cincinnati and running between Los Angeles and New York City, then became renamed as the Colonial Atlantic-Pacific Stages (CAPS).  Next Townsend moved to Philadelphia, where he managed the eastern end of the CAPS.  [In 1932 Townsend bought a controlling interest in the Teche Lines, which about 1934 became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines.]

         1931

          Early in 1931 the National Highway Transport (NHT) Company, which had already formed operating ties to Greyhound and had begun negotiations with the Dog, began using the brand name of the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, then in July 1931 the NHT Company became renamed as the Atlantic Greyhound Lines.

          The Greyhound Corporation renamed the Greyhound Lines of Georgia as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines and then, on 01 July 1931, sold it to the CCC, which promptly began operating the SEG Lines along the route between Chattanooga and Jacksonville. 

          That purchase allowed the CCC to meet the Florida Motor Lines (FML) in both Lake City and Jacksonville and thus to make connections to Miami and the rest of Florida.  [On 01 January 1946 The Greyhound Corporation bought the FML and in February renamed it as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL).]

          Through its purchase of the original SEG Lines, the CCC acquired the right to use the Greyhound dog trademark, the Greyhound color scheme (blue and white), the Greyhound uniforms, and the Greyhound and Southeastern names.

          Shortly afterward, with the consent of The Greyhound Corporation, the CCC began using the trade name, brand name, or service name of the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, although the official name of the company continued (albeit temporarily) as the Consolidated Coach Corporation. 

          Sometime early during 1931 the CAPS started also a route between Cincinnati and Jacksonville in direct competition against the SEGL.

          Later in 1931 the CAPS went into receivership and a reorganization of its debts in bankruptcy, and then in -32 it went into a complete liquidation, during which several other firms bought (from the trustee) some of the routes and other assets of the CAPS. 

           A brand-new firm, the Colonial Short Line Company, using the brand name of the Colonial Stages South (CSS), not only bought the CAPS route between Cincinnati and Jacksonville and resumed service on it but also extended northwardly from Cincinnati on three more routes to Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland – in direct competition against the Greyhound Lines. 

          Then the CSS bought also a route between Jacksonville and Tallahassee (in direct competition against the Union Bus Company) plus a firm running between Charleston, South Carolina, and Jacksonville, in direct competition against the Atlantic Greyhound Lines (AGL).  

         1932

          In May 1932 the OD Stages leased its right to the route segment between Knoxville and Bristol (along US-11W via Rutledge, Bean Station, Rogersville, and Kingsport) to the Tennessee Coach Company, which then was an independent regional carrier based in Knoxville, and which already ran (in part) between Knoxville and Bristol on its own route (along -11E via Jefferson City, Morristown, Greeneville, and Johnson City).  

          Later in 1932 Hill and Gilmer bought the one-third interest of Huguelet in the OD Stages, then they merged OD into their Atlantic GL.  [By that merger the AGL acquired the right to a return of the leased route if or when the TCC ever lost or surrendered the lease.]

          In 1932 O.W. Townsend moved from Philadelphia to New Orleans; he lawfully bought (from the trustee of the bankrupt CAPS) and took with him 25 nearly new Mack BK coaches; next he bought a controlling interest in the Teche Lines (TL) and started making deals with The Greyhound Corporation.  Townsend served as the president of the TL and then the Teche Greyhound Lines (TGL).  [About 1934 the Teche Lines became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines.]  Soon in 1932 Townsend hired H. Vance Greenslit as the VP of his firm.  [During a short time in -30 in Saint Louis, Greenslit had served as the corporate secretary of Townsend’s AP Stages.]  Greenslit in New Orleans served as the vice president of the TL and then the TGL. 

         1933

          On 01 March 1933 the CSS leased its route between Chattanooga and Jacksonville to the Union Bus Company (UBC).  That action placed the UBC in direct competition against the SEGL, as had been the CSS.  However, that corridor did not have enough passenger traffic to support or justify more than one carrier.

          In May 1933 The Greyhound Corporation bought the CSS routes between Chattanooga (through Cincinnati) and Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland.  The parent Greyhound firm then distributed the routes northwardly from Cincinnati to the GLI of Indiana (which in -34 became a major part of the Pennsylvania GL) and the first Central GL (which in -35 became renamed as the first Ohio GL, which in turn in -41 became one of the three major components involved in the creation of the Great Lakes GL.  Also Greyhound sold the route between Cincinnati and Chattanooga to the CCC (which had begun to use the brand name of the SEGL but had not yet adopted the corporate name of the SEGL).

          On 01 June 1933 the CSS and the UBC cancelled their lease contract, and then the CSS sold all its assets (mainly its route between Chattanooga and Jacksonville) to a new firm, the Colonial Lines, which (for that specific purpose) the UBC had just incorporated as a subsidiary. 

          In July 1933 Guy Huguelet (the president of the CCC) and C.G. Schultz (the president of the UBC and of the Colonial Lines) incorporated the Southeastern Management Company (SEMC).  Their purpose was for the new firm (the SEMC) to operate the routes in the corridor between Chattanooga and Jacksonville via Atlanta and Macon – through their respective carriers (the SEGL and the Colonial Lines) – by coordinating and directing the activities of their firms. 

          The SEMC coordinated its operations by assigning the two carriers to run alternate scheduled trips (first one carrier, then the other, then the first one again, and so on).  That arrangement continued until the end of 1941, when the SEGL bought the UBC. 

          Late in 1933 the UBC extended its original east-west route from Marianna to Dothan, where it met the SEGL.  Dothan was the third connection point between the UBC and the SEGL (after Jacksonville and Lake City). 

         1934

          About 1934 the Teche Lines became renamed as the Teche Greyhound Lines. 

          In November 1934 the UBC bought a detached route (in Georgia) between Macon and Savannah.

         1936

          On 09 November 1936 the CCC (the corporation itself) became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, Inc. 

         1938

          In 1938 the SEGL became listed for trade on the New York Stock Exchange. 

         1941

          In 1941 the Southeastern GL gained four more important and strategic routes by buying two more preexisting firms in the Deep South – the Dixie Coaches (running between Florence and Birmingham and between Florence and Mobile via Tuscaloosa, all four in Alabama) – and the Union Bus Company (running between Macon and Savannah and between Jacksonville and Dothan, Alabama, via Lake City, Tallahassee, and Marianna, all three in Florida).

         1946

          On 01 January 1946 The Greyhound Corporation bought the Florida Motor Lines (FML), then in the next month Greyhound renamed the FML as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL).

         1949

          In 1949 O.W. Townsend retired from the presidency of the TGL and became the chairman of the board of directors of the TGL; H. Vance Greenslit succeeded Townsend as the president of the TGL.   

          In 1949 SEG bought the Alaga Coach Lines, which ran between Columbus, Georgia, and Panama City, Florida, via Dothan, Alabama.  SEG allowed Alaga to continue operating separately as a wholly owned subsidiary of the SEG Lines until the end of 1950, when Alaga became merged into SEG (and when Greyhound bought the SEGL and merged it into itself. 

         1950

          On 31 December 1950 The Greyhound Corporation, having acquired all of the remaining minority interest in the SEGL (in addition to its majority interest), merged the SEGL into itself as a division, effective on the next day (the first day of 1951).  The SEGL then owned 630 coaches, and it held about 7,500 route-miles.  Greyhound assigned the prefix letter M (in the fleet numbers of the coaches) to the SEGL.

         1954

          In 1954 The Greyhound Corporation bought the Southern Limited, which ran from Chicago to Evansville via Danville, Illinois, and Terre Haute, Indiana, with a branch from Paris, Illinois, between Danville and Terre Haute, to Paducah, Kentucky, and then assigned those routes to the Pennsylvania GL (which soon became a part of the new Eastern GL), then transferred them to the Great Lakes GL (which soon became a part of the new Central GL), then to the old Central GL (which also soon became a part of the new Eastern GL).

          Then SEG formed a new pool, using the Scenicruiser, between Chicago and Saint Petersburg via Evansville, Nashville, Birmingham, and Tallahassee, with the new Central GL between Chicago and Evansville, using the route via Terre Haute acquired through the purchase of the Southern Limited.

          On 01 October 1954 The Greyhound Corporation merged the DGL and the TGL into the SEGL; Huguelet became promoted to the chairman of the board of directors of the newly enlarged SEGL, and Greenslit moved from New Orleans to Lexington, where he succeeded Huguelet as the president of the SEGL.  Afterward the SEGL owned 912 coaches, and it held 13,227 route-miles.  The SEGL merged all the coaches into a single fleet and renumbered them into a new scheme (without regard to their sources), still using the M prefix letter. 

         1956

          In 1956 the Tennessee Coach Company (TCC) joined the Trailways trade association (then known as the National Trailways Bus System) – after 27 years of sharing (with the UTC, CCC, and SEGL) a joint certificate for service between Nashville and Knoxville.  The SEGL then took over five of the nine daily skeds in each direction, and the TCC took over the four other skeds each way.  The TCC and Greyhound also cancelled their lease contract for the route between Knoxville and Bristol along US-11W, which reverted to the Atlantic GL (as the successor in interest of the property in that route).  [The TCC continued to run on its own parallel route between those two cities along -11E.]

         1957

          On 01 October 1957 The Greyhound Corporation merged the Florida GL into the SEGL.  Afterward the SEGL owned 1,122 coaches, and it held about 15,500 route-miles.  The SEGL renumbered the FGL coaches into the numbering scheme which it had created during the mergers of 1954. 

         1960

          On 01 November 1960 The Greyhound Corporation merged the SEGL and the Atlantic GL with each other, thus creating the Southern Division (of the parent firm), known also as the Southern GL (SGL).  Thus ended both the SEGL and the AGL. 

          In 1960 Greyhound transferred H. Vance Greenslit from Lexington to Atlanta, the headquarters of the SGL, as the first president of the SGL. 

         1963

          About 1963 Greyhound transferred Greenslit to Chicago, the corporate headquarters, in a senior executive position.    

         1968

          In 1968 Greenslit at age 65 retired from Greyhound, and he returned from Chicago to New Orleans, where he had first lived during 1932-54. 

Beyond the SEGL and the SGL

          When the Southern GL came into existence, in 1960, the headquarters functions became gradually transferred from Lexington, Kentucky, and Charleston, West Virginia, to Atlanta, Georgia, and its suburbs – except the accounting department, which stayed in Lexington (for all of the SGL).

          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. 

          When the GLE arose, many of those administrative functions became shifted from Atlanta to Cleveland, Ohio; later yet those functions migrated to Chicago, Illinois, then to Phoenix, Arizona, when, in 1971, The Greyhound Corporation moved its headquarters from Chicago to an impressive brand-new 20-story building in Phoenix (one which the Del Webb organization had just built).  

          [More about the continuing history of the GLI (up to 2022) is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]  

Conclusion

          The Southeastern Greyhound Lines had a unique and distinctive history; it occupied a special position, and it fulfilled an extremely important function.

          It made a major, significant, and lasting contribution to the present route network of the Greyhound Lines.

          The successes and the uniqueness of the SEG Lines have prompted one author – Ken Hixson, of Lexington, Kentucky, the son of a longtime driver (coach operator) for the SEGL – to describe that company as, in the words of the title of one of his books, the Pick of the Litter.  

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 Overland Greyhound Lines, the Pacific Greyhound Lines, the Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines, the Richmond Greyhound Lines, the Southwestern Greyhound Lines, the Teche Greyhound Lines, the Valley Greyhound Lines, The Greyhound Corporation, and the Tennessee Coach Company.

Bibliography 

          Backfire, the corporate newspaper for the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, all issues, from January 1938 through February 1956.

          Hixson, Kenneth, Pick of the Litter.  Lexington: Centerville Book Company, 2001.  ISBN 0-87642-016-1.

          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 the book).

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

                   August 1977;
                   October-November 1977;
                   July-August 1990;
                   April-June 1995;
                   October-December 1996;
                   October-December 1997;
                   October-December 1998;
                   July-September 2003.

          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.

          Schultz, Clifford Griffith II, a grandson of Clifford Griffith Schultz, personal correspondence, 2021.

          Schultz, Frederick Henry Jr., a grandson of Clifford Griffith Schultz, personal correspondence, 2021.

          Schultz, Nancy Reilly, the daughter-in-law of Clifford Griffith Schultz, interviews and personal correspondence, 2021.

          Sifford, Charlotte Townsend, the daughter of Harold Francis Townsend and a niece of Oliver William Townsend, interviews and personal correspondence, 2021.

          Trimble, Vance, Overnight Success.  New York City: Crown Publishers, 1993.  ISBN 0-517-58510-3.

          Online schedules and historical data at http://www.greyhound.com.

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Posted at 21:39 EDT, Thursday, 02 June 2022.

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