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

Preface

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

Contents

Introduction
Background
Wickman and His First Hupmobile
Hibbing Transportation Company
Mesaba Transportation Company
Mesaba Motors Company
Changes and a Move
White Bus Lines
Northland Transportation Company
Great Northern Railway
Automotive Investments, Inc.
Expansion of the NTC
Jefferson Highway Transportation Company
Clifford Griffith (C.G.) Schultz and His Union Bus Company
NTC under the GN Railway
Wilcox, WMC, and Will Coaches (with Eckland bodies)
Reaching toward Chicago
Paul William Tibbetts
Safety Motor Coach Lines
Motor Transit Corporation
Marketing
More Growth for the MTC
More Growth for the NTC
Arriving in Chicago and Its Vicinity
Northland Greyhound Lines
Northland GL of Illinois
Pickwick-Greyhound Lines
YellowaY-Pioneer Stages
Pickwick-Greyhound Lines of Illinois
End of the PG Lines
Two Moves to Chicago
Samuel Insull
MTC and the Insull Empire
Insull, the MTC, and the Southeastern GL
Expansion throughout Wisconsin
Wheeling and Dealing
Westward Ho!
Motor Carrier Act of 1935
Revenue Act of 1936
NGL as an Operating Company
More Growth in Wisconsin
Growth in the UP of Michigan
Even More Growth in Wisconsin
Pool (Interline) Operations
NGL as a Division
NGL until 1956
OGL until 1956
Merger of the OGL into the NGL
GLGL until 1957
Merger of the GLGL into the NGL
Fifth CGL and the End of the NGL
Beyond the NGL, the OGL, the GLGL, and the Fifth CGL
Conclusion
Addendum
Postscript
Very Special Articles
Related Articles
Bibliography

Introduction

            The Northland Greyhound Lines (NGL) was a regional intercity motor-coach carrier in the system of the Greyhound Lines (GL).  It was based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.  It existed from 1929 until -57, when it, along with the Great Lakes GL, a neighboring Greyhound regional operating company, became a part of the new Central Division of The Greyhound Corporation (the Greyhound parent umbrella firm).  That division became known also as the fifth Central Greyhound Lines (CGL).  [The Overland GL, another neighboring regional carrier, had already become merged into the NGL (in 1956, the previous year).]

            The story of the Northland GL is especially interesting and significant – because the people and the events involved in the early part of this story are the same people and events involved also in the origin and the early development of the larger overall Greyhound empire (including its many divisions and subsidiaries) – that is, the Motor Transit Corporation (formed on 20 September 1926), 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).

Background

            The Northland Greyhound Lines traced back to 1914 and to Carl Eric Wickman, who, using an open 1913 Hupmobile touring car, began to haul (for hire) some of his fellow miners between Hibbing, Minnesota, and the adjoining town of Alice, near the heart of the Mesabi Range (of iron-ore deposits).

Wickman and His First Hupmobile

            Erik Wretman was born on 07 August 1887 in Sweden – on a farm, known as Martisgården, near the village of Limbäck, in the parish of Våmhus, in the province of Dalarna.  He was the oldest of five siblings, and he was known also as Martis Jerk.  [Martis is the name of the farm where he lived, and Jerk (pronounced as “yeahrk” with a “Y” sound) is a local dialectal variation of his name Erik.]

            Wretman, at the age of 18, immigrated into the US in 1905, and he adopted the anglicized name of Carl Eric Wickman.  [His father, Karl Viktor Wretman, had worked for a while in the US, where he used the name Wickman, so the son chose likewise to adopt the surname Wickman.]  Although he chose the Anglo-American first name of Carl (perhaps in honor of his father), he expressed a preference to be known as Eric rather than Carl.

            The young Wickman went first to Tucson, Arizona, at the bidding of a friend from home, who had left Tucson before Wickman arrived. 

            Broke and unable to speak or understand English, he nonetheless got a job at a sawmill, where he worked for a while.

            Soon, though, uncomfortable in the hot climate in Arizona, he went next to Minnesota, for he had learned about the large numbers of Swedish (and other Scandinavian) people in Minnesota, where he settled in Hibbing and got a job as a diamond-drill operator in the mines nearby.

            During the spring of 1914 in Hibbing two other men of Swedish descent – Charles Wenberg (a blasting-powder salesman) and Andrew Anderson (also a drill operator) – pooled their funds and bought a 1913 Hupmobile touring car – in the hope and expectation of reselling it at a profit.

            Unsuccessful in selling their car, Wenberg and Anderson (known as “Big Andy”) began to use it in a taxi service in Hibbing and the adjoining town of Alice.

            Meanwhile the mining company had laid off Wickman, so he and a cousin, Carl A.A. “Arvid” Heed, started an auto-repair garage and tire shop in Hibbing.  They also hoped to open an automobile dealership as well.

            Next Wenberg sold his interest in the Hupmobile to Wickman, and then Wickman and Anderson converted the on-demand taxi service into a bus service on a more-or-less fixed route with scheduled (or at least frequent) trips.

            The immediate result was a big success – so big that Wickman and Anderson suddenly got more business than they could handle – and so big that the success invited competition by new rivals.  [That’s open-market free enterprise at work!]

Hibbing Transportation Company

            Wickman and Anderson solved the first problem by drawing in a third man, Arvid Heed, Wickman’s cousin, who had bought a used Buick.

            Late in 1914 the three partners – Wickman, Anderson, and Heed – bought also a 1914 Hupmobile closed sedan – in anticipation of another bitter-cold winter in northern Minnesota (about 75 miles from Canada).  That sedan was said to be the first enclosed automobile (of any make) in that area.

            On 30 May 1915 the partners bought their first two “real buses” – new Whites with 12-passenger bodies – and placed them in service on a new route between Hibbing and Nashwauk, about 11 miles to the west-southwest.

            Rivals continued to come and go, and a few stayed.  Ralph A.L. Bogan ran a Studebaker on a route between Hibbing and Chisholm, about six miles to the north.  When cold weather set in, Bogan quit his Chisholm route, and he next tried to compete on the Nashwauk line.  However, a fare war then followed, but nobody could earn a profit, so Bogan (as the fourth partner) joined Wickman, Anderson, and Heed.

            During 1915 Dominic Bretto, a fireman who had watched the transit operations from his firehouse, joined as the fifth partner.  [The space in the street in front of the firehouse had become an unofficial bus station in Hibbing.]

            Sometime during 1915 the members adopted the business name of the Hibbing Transportation Company for their partnership.

Mesaba Transportation Company

            On 15 December 1915 the partners wisely incorporated their firm, calling it the Mesaba [sic] Transportation Company.  [Mesaba is an acceptable variation of Mesabi, although the latter form is the preferred and more common one.]

            Sometime during 1916 the new firm extended its Nashwauk line about 23 more miles to the southwest to Grand Rapids, the next sizable town in that direction, about 34 miles from Hibbing.

            The early hired drivers included Clifford “Cliff” Graves, Swan Sundstrom, and Eric’s younger brother Andrew, who had joined Eric from Sweden.

            Graves later served as the president of the Northwest GL, and Sundstrom later served as the longtime president of the Pennsylvania GL and concurrently as the vice president of the Richmond GL.  [More about the Northwest GL will be available in my forthcoming article about that firm, and more about the Pennsylvania GL and the Richmond GL is already available in my two articles bearing their respective names.]

            Further, Bogan, the fourth partner, later served as a vice president (and even later as the executive vice president) of The Greyhound Corporation (under both Wickman and Orville Caesar).  He also managed the Greyhound transit services at the World’s Fairs in Chicago in 1933-34, in Cleveland in 1936-37, and in New York City in 1939-40.  During World War II (WW2) he served as a commissioned officer (a commander) in the US Naval Reserve, and he organized and operated transport services for the federal Office of Defense Transportation (ODT).  [And his first wife was Margaret “Peggy” Wickman, who was the daughter of Eric Wickman.]

            [Sadly and regrettably, in 1956 Bogan, as the executive vice president and a director of The Greyhound Corporation, after a successful and productive career, resigned in disgust after 42 years as a major figure at Greyhound and its predecessor firms – because of the bizarre and stupefying “personnel-development” program that Arthur Genet, a new president of the company, imposed on every employee of the corporation, seeking to measure the capabilities of everyone (except Genet himself).  More about Genet – the first “outside” president of Greyhound – a former railway executive – along with his destructive program (in 1956), his disastrous project (in 1957) that nearly drove Greyhound into bankruptcy, and his dismissal by the board of directors (in 1958) – is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]

            One of the early investors in the Mesaba Transportation Company was another man of Swedish descent, Edwin Carl “Ed” Ekstrom, an accountant who had been born in Ludington, Michigan, but raised in Hibbing.  He bought the shares of Bretto (who had started as the fifth partner) after Bretto suddenly died (in 1917).  Ekstrom later made major and significant contributions to the developing Greyhound empire.  [More about Ekstrom and his activities is already available below in six sections of this article – “White Bus Lines,” “Paul William Tibbetts,” “Safety Motor Coach Lines,” “Motor Transit Corporation,” “Marketing,” and “Wheeling and Dealing” – and in my article about the Great Lakes GL, and even more will be available in my forthcoming article about the Southwestern GL.]

            By the end of 1917 the young firm owned 14 buses, and it ran them on three regular routes based in Hibbing – every 30 minutes to Alice, every hour to Nashwauk, and twice daily onward to Grand Rapids.

            By the end of the next year, 1918, the firm owned and operated 18 buses, and the owners had begun to make plans to start a route from Hibbing via Virginia to Duluth, about 85 miles to the southeast from Hibbing.  However, both Bogan and Sundstrom joined the US Army for duty in the “Great War,” so the leaders temporarily shelved their plan.

            During 1919, after Bogan and Sundstrom returned from the Army, the firm started the route to Duluth, using several Packard stretched sedans and at least one similar White.

Mesaba Motors Company

            On 01 January 1920 Wickman and others formed a second corporation, named as the Mesaba [sic] Motors Company (separate and different from the Mesaba Transportation Company) – not to provide transit services to the public but rather to sell White trucks, modify cars (often Packards) for use as buses, build bus bodies, mount them on truck chassis, and sell the completed buses and converted cars to other carriers (and, of course, to transfer some of them to the Mesaba Transportation Company).  At no time did the Mesaba Motors Company ever operate any equipment to provide transport services – although several previous reports have carelessly claimed otherwise – because of the similarity (and thus confusion) between the two names.

Changes and a Move

            At the start of 1922 four men – Wickman, Heed, Anderson, and Bogan – among others – owned stock in both the Mesaba Transportation Company and the Mesaba Motors Company.

            Sometime during that year, 1922, on a date no longer known, Wickman and Heed made a swap with Anderson and Bogan.  Wickman and Heed transferred their shares in the Transportation Company to the other two men, and Anderson and Bogan transferred their shares in the Motors Company – plus $60,000 in cash – to the other two men.

            Wickman and Heed then moved from Hibbing to Duluth, where they pursued other business interests while continuing to own and direct the Mesaba Motors Company, which remained in operation in Hibbing.

            In 1922 Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company financed the formation of the Eastern Wisconsin Transportation Company (by E.J. “Ed” Stone), which then ran in the Beaver State between Madison and Fond du Lac.  [And in the following year, -23, Wickman’s firm sold a controlling interest in that new carrier to Ed Ekstrom, an accountant, in exchange for Ekstrom’s interest in the Mesaba Motors Company plus some cash.  More about that is available below in two sections of this article – “Wheeling and Dealing” and “More Growth in Wisconsin” – and in my article about the Great Lakes GL.]

White Bus Lines

            By March 1923 the Mesaba Motors Company had acquired a majority (controlling) interest in the White Bus Lines from Harris Spearin, its founder.

            Spearin had started his firm in Duluth (not later than 1920) under the name of The White Bus Line (with the word the and in the singular form) but soon dropped the word the and changed from the singular to the plural form – simply White Bus Lines.

            Spearin’s firm ran on three routes in three directions from Duluth:

                        its original route, between Duluth and Ely, about 113 miles to the north, via Virginia (in competition against the Mesaba Transportation Company between Duluth and Virginia, about 64 miles to the north);
                        between Duluth and Grand Marais, about 110 miles to the northeast, (along the west shore of Lake Superior) via Two Harbors;
                        and between Duluth and Cloquet, about 21 miles to the west-southwest.

            The White Bus Lines, which had come under the control of Wickman and Heed (through their Mesaba Motors Company), owned also a minority (noncontrolling) interest in the Gopher Transportation Company, from which in December 1923 the White firm bought the rights to a route between Duluth and Minneapolis via Saint Paul, about 162 miles (altogether) to the south.  Thus the White Bus Lines first ventured beyond the area of Hibbing and Duluth.

            In the spring of 1924 White extended its Grand Marais line along the west shore of Lake Superior to Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, about 189 miles to the northeast from Duluth.  Thus Wickman’s White Bus Lines became an international motor-coach carrier.  [Port Arthur in 1970 became renamed as Thunder Bay.] 

            On 18 July 1924 the White firm bought the Biwabik Transportation Company, thus ending its competition between Ely and Virginia (the northern part of the route between Duluth and Ely) and reducing its competition between Duluth and Virginia (the southern part of that route).

            In the next month, August 1924, the White firm bought another route, between Saint Paul and Taylor’s Falls, about 49 miles to the north-northeast, which the Gopher Transportation Company had started, but which Hiram Bollum’s Twin City Motor Bus Company had run since December 1923.

            That left (in the second half of 1924) three carriers on the route between Duluth and Virginia – White and two rivals – the Range Rapid Transit Company and the Mesaba Transportation Company, which Wickman and his four partners (in the Hibbing Transportation Company) had formed (on 15 December 1915).  [In 1922 Wickman and Heed had ended their ownership interests in the Mesaba Transportation Company by swapping with Anderson and Bogan for their interests in the Mesaba Motors Company (plus $60,000 in cash) – as described above at the start of this section.]  

            In a civilized and businesslike move, those three carriers began to coördinate their schedules with one another (on the route between Duluth and Virginia).

            {The Range Rapid Transit Company had started in 1919 as a partnership, consisting of Pat Boyle, Claude Mather, and three Fitzgerald brothers (Ed, Ralph, and Roy), who bought a bus and started running it between Eveleth and Leonidas, about two miles to the west.  The members incorporated their firm in 1921, when they added a route between Eveleth and Virginia, about 11 miles to the north.  In the next year, 1922, the Range company added a route between Virginia and Duluth, using Packard stretched sedans.  The first driver was Roy Fitzgerald, who, along with two (Ed and Ralph) of his four brothers, long and often took part early in the motor-coach industry – interacting with the developing Northland and Greyhound empires – at least as late as 1955, when those three Fitzgerald brothers sold to The Greyhound Corporation their Southern Limited [thus providing two significant bridge routes from Chicago, Illinois, to Evansville, Indiana, and to Paducah, Kentucky, in which places the Southern Limited had met the Dixie GL (DGL) and the Southeastern GL (SEGL)].  More about the Southern Limited is available in my article about the SEGL, and more about the DGL and the SEGL is available in my two articles bearing their respective names.}

            Meanwhile in 1923 Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company financed the formation of the Gray Motor Stage Line (by Ralph Bogan and Swan Sundstrom), using the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Blue Goose Lines – to run in the Beaver State between Janesville and Watertown.  That was the first of three uses of the name Blue Goose Lines by Bogan and Sundstrom.  [More about that is available in my article about the Great Lakes GL.]

            And in 1924 Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company financed the formation of the Detroit-Toledo Transportation Company (by Bogan and Sundstrom), which also used the brand name of the Blue Goose Lines.  [More about that too is available in my article about the Great Lakes GL.]

            Then in 1925 Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company financed the formation of the Blue Goose Lines (by Bogan and Sundstrom), running first in Indiana between Indianapolis and Evansville and soon between Indianapolis and Kokomo (and later onward to Detroit, Michigan, via Fort Wayne).  [Again, more about that is available in my article about the Great Lakes GL.]

            Eventually all three of those Bogan-Sundstrom routes – between Janesville and Watertown, between Detroit and Toledo, and between Detroit and Evansville – became segments of the growing Greyhound route network. 

            Further, also in 1925 Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company financed the formation of the Southland Transportation Company (by Harris Spearin, who in 1923 had sold his White Bus Lines to Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company), between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky.  [In 1928 the Motor Transit Corporation, before it became renamed (in 1930) as The Greyhound Corporation, bought the Southland firm and placed it in the Greyhound Lines, Inc., of Ohio (the GLI of Ohio), which thus completed its route between Detroit and Louisville, where, as well as in Cincinnati, it made connections to and from the South and Southeast – by meeting the Consolidated Coach Corporation, which in 1931 began to use the name of the Southeastern Greyhound Lines.  In 1941 the GLI of Ohio, including its route between Detroit and Louisville via Cincinnati, became a major part of the new Great Lakes GL.  More about that is available in my articles about the Great Lakes GL and the Southeastern GL.

Northland Transportation Company

            Wickman by 1924 had begun to want to develop a large motor-coach system throughout a large regional area.  That is, he did not feel content with just a small firm within a relatively small area.

            However, he knew that he needed ample financial resources – cash and credit – with which to build such an organization.

            Wickman made contacts and assembled a syndicate in Duluth:

                        Glenn Traer, of the investment-banking firm of Lane, Piper, and Jaffray;
                        Richard Griggs, a vice president of the Northern National Bank and the treasurer of the affiliated Northern Trust Company;
                        and several other bankers and financial executives.

            The syndicate then bought (from Wickman and Heed) controlling interests in the White Bus Lines and the Mesaba Motors Company and then merged the latter into the former.

            Thus ended the Mesaba Motors Company.

            Then on 19 December 1924 the syndicate formed a corporation – the Northland Transportation Company (NTC) – which then took over the White Bus Lines (including the merged assets of the former Mesaba Motors Company).  The authorized capitalization of the new firm was one million dollars.  The group then dissolved the two leftover empty corporate shells.

            The word Northland in the name of the new corporation suggests the scope of the ambitious nature of the dream or intent of Wickman and his associates.

            The members of the syndicate – that is, the finance men – encouraged Wickman to inquire about a possibility of buying either the Range Rapid Transit Company or the Jefferson Highway Transportation Company – or both – and then perhaps to begin to negotiate with either or both of them.

            The Jefferson Highway carrier bore the name of the Jefferson Highway, which ran between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, via Kansas City, Missouri; Des Moines, Iowa; and Minneapolis, Saint Cloud, and Bemidji, all three in Minnesota.  The Jefferson concern ran during that era on these four routes:

                        between Minneapolis and Hibbing via Aitkin and Grand Rapids;
                        between Minneapolis and Bemidji via Saint Cloud and Wadena (in part along the Jefferson Highway);
                        between Minneapolis and Fargo, North Dakota, via Saint Cloud, Sauk Centre, and Fergus Falls (in part along the Jefferson Highway);
                        and between Wadena and Fargo via Detroit Lakes.

            That is, the Jefferson Highway company ran within a triangle defined by Minneapolis, Hibbing, and Fargo, all to the north and northwest of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul).  Clearly, that firm was much larger than Wickman’s Northland Transportation Company during that early time.

            Wickman did not then buy either the Rapid or the Jefferson Highway firm, but he did continue to negotiate with their owners.

            However, in April 1925 Wickman did buy another firm – one which led to major and significant consequences.  He bought the bus operations of the White truck dealer in Superior, Wisconsin, across the Saint Louis River (and across the state line) from Duluth.  The dealership, known as the Superior White Company, ran both a local route across the river, linking the two city-transit firms, and an intercity route between Superior and Ashland, Wisconsin, about 65 miles to the east.

            After Wickman (through the NTC) bought those bus operations, he promptly resold the local route (and its buses) to the holding company that owned both city-transit (streetcar) firms (in Duluth and in Superior).

            During Wickman’s purchase he also hired Orville Swan “Sven” Caesar, a former truck mechanic who had managed the bus operations for the Superior White Company. 

            [Caesar was of Swedish and Norwegian descent.  His father was born in Sweden, and his mother was born in Norway; his parents married in Wisconsin, and Orville was born in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.  Orville dropped out of high school but became trained as a mechanic at a Studebaker dealership in Minneapolis.  For a short while he and his brother, Victor, owned an agency in Superior, Wisconsin, selling Dodge and Studebaker cars and trucks.  In 1922 he and Victor sold their agency, and Orville became the manager of the bus operations of the Superior White Company.  Orville’s nickname Sven is a popular Norwegian name, which means “squire” or “young man”; it’s also short for “Svensk,” which means “Swede” or “Swedish” in the Swedish language.]

            Caesar instantly became Wickman’s sidekick and right-hand man, who eventually succeeded Wickman as the president and later as the chairman of the board of directors of The Greyhound Corporation.  Thereafter Wickman functioned as the strategist, who planned the course, and Caesar served as the tactician, who ran the show.

Great Northern Railway

            Ralph Budd, the legendary and influential president of the Great Northern (GN) Railway, based in Minneapolis, recognized that the GN Railway (GNR) needed the benefit of highway-coach passenger service – to supplant or supplement some of the passenger trains of the GNR.  [In 1919, when Budd became the president of the GN, at the age of 40, he was said to be the youngest railway president in the US.]

            Facing the decreasing ridership of the GNR passenger trains and the resultant decreasing revenues (after Henry Ford’s introduction of his Model T, in 1908), Budd sought not to start a new highway carrier but rather to buy a successful preexisting one (one with “grandfathered” routes, discussed below in the next section).

            Thus Budd identified and approached Wickman as the most successful motor-coach executive (with the most successful motor-coach carrier) within the service area of the GN Railway (connecting Chicago with Oregon and Washington).

            On 15 May 1925 Wickman (with the consent of his syndicate, in Duluth) agreed not only to sell the Northland Transportation Company (NTC) but also to move to Minneapolis and to manage the NTC on behalf of the GN Railway.  Within a week the closing of the sale took place.  The reported price was $500,000, for which the GNR received 90 percent of the ownership of the NTC.  The syndicate retained the other 10 percent.

            Budd and his firm got the benefit of the expertise and experience of Wickman along with his company, and Wickman got the unmatched benefit of his access to the railroad’s financial capital and its political influence.

            Both Wickman and Caesar moved to Minneapolis, where they managed the NTC (for the GN Railway) and started growing it by using railroad money.

            [Likewise in 1929 the executives of the Pennsylvania Railroad approached those in charge of the Motor Transit Management Company (which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as the Greyhound Management Company) – to gain the advantage of the expertise and experience of those who specialized in operating a successful system of intercity motor coaches.  That move soon led to the formation of the Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines (PennGL) and the partial ownership of the PennGL by the “Pennsy” Railroad.  More about that is available in my article about the Pennsylvania GL.]

Automotive Investments, Inc.

            Having sold the Northland Transportation Company to the GN Railway, the financiers in Duluth, with the agreement of Wickman, soon formed another corporation, the Automotive Investments, Inc., based in Duluth, to buy more preexisting highway-coach carriers that would fit into Wickman’s plans and dreams outside the limits of the service area of the GNR (and therefore outside the limits of the service area of the NTC as a property of the GN).

Expansion of the NTC

            In the second half of May 1925, when the GNR took possession of the Northland Transportation Company (NTC), the latter ran on these six routes:

                        three former-White routes, which Wickman had bought in March 1923;
                        two former-Gopher routes, which Wickman had bought in December 1923 and August 1924;
                        and one former-Superior route, which Wickman had bought in April 1925.

            On 01 June 1925, however, pursuant to previous negotiations, the NTC bought most of the routes, coaches, and other assets of the Range Rapid Transit Company.  The routes involved were those between Virginia and Duluth and between Virginia and International Falls, on the Rainy River and on the border between Minnesota and Ontario (in Canada).  The reported price was $250,000 (half of the amount which the GNR had reportedly paid for the NTC).  The Range company had started the route to Duluth in 1922 and the one to International Falls in 1924.

            [On that same date, 01 June 1925, the owners of the Range company sold the remainder of the buses and routes – between Aurora and Hibbing via Virginia, between Eveleth and Virginia, and between Eveleth and Leonidas – to the Mesaba [sic] Railway Coach Company.  The buyer was a subsidiary of an electric interurban railway, which was then under protection in receivership.  The railway firm had created its coach subsidiary early in that same year (1925).  It appears that the parent railway firm was in a struggle to survive by making a transition from steel wheels on steel rails to rubber tires on public roads.  The receiver approved the purchase (of the three routes and nine buses) for a total of $70,000.]

            Later in that same month, on 19 June 1925, the NTC bought the Boulevard Transportation Company from Paul Tibbetts, who was then the mayor of Wayzata, about 13 miles west of Minneapolis.  That firm then ran these four routes:

                        between Minneapolis and Mound, about 10 miles to the west;
                        between Minneapolis and Madison via Wayzata and Willmar, about 160 miles to the west;
                        between Minneapolis and Worthington via Shakopee and Mankato, about 176 miles to the southwest;
                        and between Minneapolis and Fairmont via Shakopee and Mankato, about 132 miles to the south-southwest.

Between Shakopee and Mankato there was also an alternative loop via New Prague, Montgomery, and Cleveland.

            [An unknown founder had begun the Boulevard company in 1921 – on two routes in Minnesota – connecting Minneapolis with Wayzata and with Carver via Shakopee – plus two routes in Wisconsin – connecting Milwaukee with Racine and with Waukesha – and two routes in Nebraska and Iowa – connecting Omaha with Fremont and with Sioux City.  However, all the routes outside Minnesota had become either sold or discontinued by the summer of 1924.]

            Also in 1925, on a date no longer known, the NTC bought the Interstate Transportation Company, which had started in May 1923, and which in -25 ran along these two routes:

                        between Minneapolis and Mora (named for a town in Sweden, near the childhood farm home of Eric Wickman), about 70 miles to the north;
                        and between Minneapolis and Marshall via Norwood, Olivia, and Redwood Falls, about 158 miles to the west-southwest.

[Later, in 1928, the NTC extended its Marshall line to Watertown, South Dakota, about 79 miles (to the northwest) from Marshall, and even later, in 1933, the Northland GL of Illinois, which then owned that line, started a new route between Minneapolis and Butte, Montana.  The new route to Butte was about 1,172 miles long – via Marshall, Minnesota; Watertown and Aberdeen, South Dakota; Jamestown and Bismarck, North Dakota; and Billings and Bozeman, Montana – with connections in Butte to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Spokane and Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and other points in the Pacific Northwest.  More about that is available below in the section entitled “Westward Ho!” – and even more will be available in my forthcoming article about the Northwest GL.]

            The year 1925 in Minnesota was a time of waiting, watching, and hedging.  The state government had asserted its regulatory authority over intrastate motor-coach operations, including the granting of certificates “of public convenience and necessity” to use specified routes.  The enabling statute set a “grandfather” deadline of 06 January 1925.  Any applicant operating in good faith on that date had a right to apply for a certificate on the route or routes involved.  The statute also set an application deadline of 13 May 1925.

            While waiting for the decisions by the state agency – which then bore the unwieldy name of the Minnesota Railroad and Warehouse Commission – several or many potential buyers of routes or carriers bought options for purchases (for prices specified or for prices calculable by specified methods) from the applicants (potential sellers).  As the commission made and announced its decisions on the applications, then the buyers of the options decided whether to exercise the right to buy the subject routes or carriers.  [In 1967 the Minnesota state legislature changed the name of the Railroad and Warehouse Commission to the Public-utility Commission (PUC).]

            Sometime in 1925 (during the hedging) the NTC bought an option for the purchase of the Eagle Transportation Company (ETC), which had recently, perhaps in the previous year, -24, begun to run between Duluth and Hibbing; later the ETC received its certificate, and the NTC exercised its option and bought the ETC.

            During that time, on 08 August 1925, the NTC bought two other options – one for the Red Line Bus Company (the entire firm) and one for most of the routes of the Jefferson Highway Transportation Company (previously mentioned above in the section entitled “Northland Transportation Company”).  Those two carriers were under common control.  The Red Line firm was a property of the Motor Truck Service Company, which belonged to Edgar Zelle, and Zelle himself personally had recently bought control of the Jefferson Highway firm.

            The origin and development of the Red Line company are unclear, but it apparently ran as early as 1918; however, in 1925 it ran between Minneapolis and Staples via Saint Cloud and Brainerd, about 159 miles to the northwest.

            The grandfather application of the Red Line Bus Company (for its only route) was the very first one that the state commission processed and approved.

            Then the NTC promptly exercised its option by buying the Red Line firm, and the commission next approved NTC’s purchase of Red Line, so the NTC merged the assets of Red Line into the NTC and then dissolved the newly empty Red Line corporate shell.

            Then the grandfather application of the NTC (for certificates for its routes) was the second one that the commission processed and approved.  The certificates covered 10 routes and 66 coaches.

            Sometime afterward the commission approved also the grandfather application of the Jefferson Highway firm for its routes.

            During Wickman’s previous inquiries and negotiations about the possibility of a purchase of the Jefferson Highway company by the NTC – as his financiers (in Duluth) had prompted him to do (as described above in the section entitled “Northland Transportation Company”) – he learned that the target firm was in financial trouble.  It appears that its expansion during 1923-24 may not have been planned well enough or done well enough.  It operated at a loss during 1924, and it became unable to pay some of its debts.  It may well be that Wickman decided against buying the company because of the growing debts (of Jefferson), which the NTC would have needed to pay.  [If the NTC had bought the Jefferson firm, then a rule of law would have required the buyer to assume the liabilities of the bought firm as well as its assets.]

            However, late in June 1925 Zelle bought an option on all of the shares of the voting stock of the Jefferson Highway firm, then five weeks later, on 08 August 1925, he sold an option to the NTC for a purchase of most of the Jefferson company’s routes and most of its coaches (as mentioned above in this section).  With Zelle’s proceeds of his sale of the option to the NTC, he bought the entire Jefferson company from its two owners (Emery Bryant and Ivan Ansell).

            After the commission’s approval of the grandfather application of the Jefferson firm for its routes, the NTC exercised its option to buy (from Zelle) most of Jefferson’s routes and most of its rolling equipment.

Jefferson Highway Transportation Company

            The early story of the Jefferson Highway Transportation Company is a fast-paced and interesting one.  Emery Bryant, a former pharmacist and (more recently) a jitney operator in Minneapolis, started the firm in September 1919 on a route, along the Jefferson Highway, between Minneapolis and Osseo, about 12 miles to the northwest.  He soon extended his Osseo line northwardly via Elk River to Milaca, about 65 miles from Minneapolis. 

            Sometime during 1919-21 Bryant started another new route, one between Minneapolis and Mora, about 70 miles to the north.

            By the end of 1921 Bryant started one more new route, also along the Jefferson Highway, between Minneapolis and Saint Cloud, about 69 miles to the northwest.

            Sometime early in 1922 he apparently dropped his line to Mora but extended his parallel Milaca line to Aitkin, about 126 miles from Minneapolis, on the way to Grand Rapids and Hibbing.  [In 1923 the Interstate Transportation Corporation (ITC) restarted a route between Minneapolis and Mora, and in -25 the NTC bought the ITC.]

            By May 1922 Bryant extended his Saint Cloud line north-northwestwardly to Little Falls, about 99 miles from Minneapolis, and by March 1923 he extended that line northwardly to Brainerd, about 131 miles from Minneapolis.

            Further, during the spring of 1923 he bought three small one-man firms with single routes:

                        between Minneapolis and Saint Cloud, along the Jefferson Highway, about 69 miles from Minneapolis;
                        between Minneapolis and Fergus Falls, beyond Saint Cloud, about 179 miles altogether from Minneapolis, on the way to Fargo, North Dakota;
                        and between Aitkin and Grand Rapids, on the way to Hibbing.

            By the end of 1923 Bryant had extended his Fergus Falls line (via Saint Cloud) about 59 more miles northwestwardly to Fargo, North Dakota, on the state line, about 238 miles from Minneapolis.

            During 1923 he expanded the fleet of the Jefferson Highway firm from about 18 coaches to about 40 of them, including 11 new Fageol Safety Coaches.  [The correct English pronunciation of the French name Fageol (in the US) is “fad-jull,” rhyming with “fragile” or “satchel.”]

            On 19 April 1924 the Jefferson firm reached Bemidji via Saint Cloud and Brainerd, about 225 miles altogether from Minneapolis.

            Then on 26 May 1924, apparently after buying the Long Prairie Bus Line, the Jefferson firm reached Bemidji also via Sauk Centre (between Saint Cloud and Fergus Falls) and Wadena, about 242 miles altogether from Minneapolis.

            Sometime during the second half of 1924 Jefferson added also an alternate route between Minneapolis and Fargo – by creating a branch line between Fargo and Wadena (on the new line between Minneapolis and Bemidji via Sauk Centre.

            Further, sometime during 1923-24 the Jefferson Highway firm extended about 34 more miles from Grand Rapids to Hibbing, about 213 miles altogether from Minneapolis.  Thus Jefferson provided the first direct single-seat bus ride (that is, without a transfer) between Minneapolis and Hibbing.

            On some date (no longer known) during 1919-24, Bryant took in another investor, Ivan Ansell, along with some more financial capital.

            Sadly and regrettably, as I mentioned above in the previous section, the Jefferson Highway firm, at some point during its expansion in 1923-24, rolled out of control – to the extent that it produced no profit during 1924, and it became unable to pay some of its debts.

            As I described at the end of the previous section, the NTC exercised its option to buy most of Jefferson’s routes – the ones to the north and northwest of Minneapolis – and most of its rolling equipment – and the NTC exercised its option to buy the Red Line firm, consisting of one route and eight coaches.

            However, the Jefferson firm on 14 April 1921 had also taken over a route between Minneapolis and Rochester – about 90 miles to the southeast – by buying the Touring Car Bus Company and its two Packard automobiles, which may or may not have been stretched ones.

            Nonetheless, after the sale of all of Jefferson’s other routes (to the north and northwest of Minneapolis), Jefferson, under Zelle’s leadership, gradually extended its route southwardly from Rochester, and it reached Kansas City, Missouri, by 1929.

            In 1966 Jefferson bought the Crown Coach Company, based in Joplin, Missouri, and Jefferson continued to reach southwardly.  [The Crown firm had been an affiliate of The Greyhound Corporation, in which Greyhound had held a minority (noncontrolling) ownership interest.]

            The same Jefferson firm still runs in 2022, now under the abbreviated name of the Jefferson Lines – as far to the south as Pine Bluff and Texarkana, both in Arkansas.  It now reaches also as far to the east as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as far to the west as Spokane, Washington, and as far to the north as Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Bemidji, Grand Rapids, Hibbing, and Virginia, all four in Minnesota (in what had previously been the territory of (first) the Northland Transportation Company and (later) the Northland Greyhound Lines).

Clifford Griffith (C.G.) Schultz
and His Union Bus Company

            In 1919 Clifford Griffith (C.G.) Schultz was a young lawyer (and a 1915 graduate of the Harvard School of Law) who worked in his father’s law firm in Minneapolis.  He had just returned from Europe and from active duty in the US Army as a commissioned officer in the field artillery during the “Great War.” 

            During that year, 1919, Emery Bryant, the founder of the Jefferson Highway Transportation Company, hired Schultz to advise him and to represent him and his new firm.

            Sometime shortly afterward Bryant appointed Schultz to serve as the corporate secretary and treasurer of Bryant’s new firm.

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

            In 1924, likely in the second half of that year, -24, Schultz 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 and 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.

            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. 

            Thus Schultz founded his Union Bus Company (UBC), which soon grew and flourished.  He started two parallel routes between Tampa and Jacksonville, both in Florida, then in steps he grew his firm westwardly from Jacksonville to Lake City, Tallahassee, and Marianna, all in Florida, and then northwardly from Marianna to Dothan, Alabama, thus venturing into his first interstate operation.  He started also several other routes in northern Florida.

            The UBC met the Teche GL (TGL) in Marianna, it met the Southeastern GL (SEGL) in Jacksonville, Lake City, and Dothan, and it met the Florida Motor Lines (FML, which in 1946 became the Florida GL, FGL) in Tampa, Jacksonville, Lake City, and Tallahassee – and at various other points along its routes.  Eventually the UBC sold its two routes between Tampa and Jacksonville, along with several others, to the FML.

            On 31 December 1941 the Southeastern GL 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, the home of the SEGL, 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.

            All of that took place because Schultz had caught a spark of interest in the infant motor-coach industry while serving in Minneapolis as the legal counsel and the corporate secretary and treasurer of the Jefferson Highway Transportation Company.

            [More about the TGL, the FML, and the FGL is available in my articles about the TGL and the FGL, and more about Schultz, his UBC, and the SEGL is available in my article about the SEGL.]

            Now let’s return to the Northland Transportation Company.

NTC under the GN Railway

            The Northland Transportation Company, under the ownership of the Great Northern Railway, received from the State of Minnesota its own certificates (“of public convenience and necessity”); it also bought outright three other motor-coach properties (Range, Boulevard, and Interstate), and it exercised its rights under its options to buy three more (Eagle, Red Line, and Jefferson) – all six in 1925 – all as described above in the section entitled “Expansion of the NTC.”

            Next the NTC went through a time of pruning its routes and selling several of them – to ensure that the NTC would operate profitably within the service area of the GN Railway.  [Several of the retained routes were not within the area of the GNR, so there must have been some persuasive or acceptable reasons, no longer known, for which the leaders of the NTC and the GNR agreed to keep those routes and to run them.  It may have been that Wickman and Caesar simply wanted to keep them and use them in a potential post-GN existence and operation, for that’s exactly what later happened.]

Wilcox, WMC, and Will Coaches
(with Eckland Bodies)

            Two Eckland brothers, Charles and Peter, were natives of Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, about seven miles west-southwest of downtown Minneapolis, and they were the third and fourth among six children of a pair of immigrants from Sweden.  Charles and Peter, both their parents, and two of their three sisters all (at various times) worked in one or more of the nearby wagon or carriage plants.

            In 1905 Charles, at age 29, and Peter, 26, established their own carriage works, which they named as the Eckland Brothers Company, in a building in or near downtown Minneapolis.  They started making various types of commercial wagons, along with replacement bodies for aging streetcars.  Soon they earned a reputation for the high quality of their upholstery and finishing.  By 1910 they began to build custom coachwork for automobiles.

            The brothers built their first bus body in 1912, and they were said to have been the first in the area to specialize in elongating (“stretching”) the wheelbases of high-end touring cars (often Packards).

            Meanwhile in Minneapolis in 1906 Harry Eugene Wilcox, at age 33, began to build experimental cars in the repair shop of the door-and-window factory of his father, John Finley Wilcox.

            Later in 1906 Harry and his brother, Ralph, incorporated the Wilcox Motor Car Company, using an investment of $100,000 by their father.  Soon the new firm began to produce and sell cars under the brand name of Wolfe (the name of Harry’s salesman, Maurice Wolfe, who had designed the first one).

            In 1909 Harry changed the brand name of his products from Wolfe to Wilcox, and he began to build and sell trucks as well as cars. 

            At some time no longer known, Harry reportedly became the first person to drive from Minneapolis to Chicago (presumably in a Wilcox-made vehicle).

            Then in 1911, with an additional investment of $1,000,000 by his father, Harry reorganized his firm and slightly renamed it as the H.E. Wilcox Motor Car Company.  Harry also took in a sizable investment (of an unknown amount) by C.H. Davidson, a businessman, of Carrington, North Dakota.

            Soon the demand for Wilcox trucks exceeded the demand for Wilcox cars, so Harry began to concentrate on building his trucks in two sizes – with capacities of one ton and three tons.  Harry later discontinued building cars.

            Because of the change in the emphasis from cars to trucks, Harry again renamed his company – as Wilcox Trux, Inc.

            The demand for Wilcox trucks continued to grow, as did Harry’s plant and its production levels.  By 1918 Harry built trucks in six sizes – from three-quarters of a ton to five tons – with six-cylinder engines rated from 80 horsepower to 105.

            In 1922 Harry’s firm built its first purpose-built bus chassis, and soon it built increasing numbers of them.  All of them used six-cylinder (rather than four-cylinder) engines; most of them were Waukesha, and some of them were Continental.  The large buses seated 29 passengers, and they were said to have a top speed of about 62 m.p.h.

            Not surprisingly, most Wilcox bus chassis became mated to bodies built by the Eckland Brothers Company.

            When the GN Railway bought the NTC (in 1925) – and even after the NTC bought six other properties (also during -25) – most of the fleet of the NTC consisted of Whites and Fageol Safety Coaches – plus several Macks, at least one Yellow Coach (model Y), and a few other makes.

            However, during 1925, while Eric Wickman and Orville Caesar contemplated the impending growth of the Northland Transportation Company, they began to collaborate with Harry Wilcox and the Eckland brothers – to create a new design for a new parlor coach for the growing NTC (and for other potential buyers).  Wickman and Caesar had felt pleased with their Fageol Safety Coaches, so the new product bore a recognizable similarity to the Fageol products (but without the distinctive signature ventilation ports on top of the hood of the Fageol design).  It also included some of their special engineering features.  The new coaches had six-cylinder Waukesha engines, and the radiator shells bore not the Wilcox name but rather the Northland name.

            During June 1926 the NTC received nine copies of the new coach, which was known as the Wilcox GW.

            Sometime during 1926, on a date no longer known, Carl Herman Will, the vice president, the sales manager, and a part owner of the Wilcox Trux, Inc., acquired a controlling interest (from Harry Wilcox, the founder) in the Wilcox corporation, renamed it as the C.H. Will Motors Corporation, and continued to build bus chassis and to sell them – with Eckland bodies – to the NTC and to a small number of other carriers as well.  When the next model, the GX, appeared (in June 1927), the brand name was no longer Wilcox but rather WMC (as in “Will Motors Corporation”).  [It appears that Wickman’s MTC probably provided some financial help with Will’s purchase of the Wilcox firm, likely in the form of a minority (noncontrolling) investment, believed to be about 30 percent.]

            When Will introduced the new WMC model GY (in September 1927), it introduced a new structural and dimensional feature.  It decreased the wheelbase by two inches (from 241 to 239), and it positioned the engine nearly two feet farther forward (farther than on the GX and previous models) – well above the front axle.  The practical result of that change was that – within the common legal length limit of 33 feet – the body could be nearly two feet longer and could accommodate one more row of seats, thus increasing the seating capacity from 29 to 33.  Other builders, including both White and Yellow, quickly followed suit.  [Will also increased the overall width of the GY from 92 inches to 96.]

            In January 1928, starting with the new model GN, the brand name became changed from WMC to simply Will.  The name Will continued until the end of operations, in January 1931.  {During 1929 several Will GN chassis got not Eckland bodies but rather Bender bodies (built in Cleveland, Ohio) – for assignment to the first Eastern GL.  [More about the first Eastern GL is available in my article about the Central GL.]}

            Meanwhile, however, on 30 March 1927, the Motor Transit Corporation – which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation – bought (from Carl Will) enough more of the stock outstanding (in his Will corporation) to make a controlling interest.  That is, the MTC bought the Will company from Carl Will – or at least bought control of it.  The MTC kept Carl as the president and general manager, and the coaches continued in production (and branded as Will) – until the next sale.

            On 21 November 1929 the MTC and the General Motors (GM) Corporation entered into a complex contract, which included the purchase of the C.H. Will Motors Corporation.  Under the terms of that deal, the Will plant wound down during 1930 and ground to a halt about the end of that year (-30).  Will completed the last few coaches, of the model NC, and delivered them in January 1931.  About half of the chassis produced during 1930 received Lang bodies (built in Cleveland, Ohio), and many of those became assigned to the first Eastern GL.  [Again:  More about the first Eastern GL is available in my article about the Central GL.]

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

            Shortly after the purchase of the Will concern by GM, workers of the Yellow T&C firm made an extensive examination of a Will coach, possibly a GN, in the T&C facilities in Pontiac, Michigan, at the headquarters of T&C.  Soon T&C began to adopt some of the better features of the Will design – just as the Will coaches had previously adopted some of the better features of the Fageol coaches.

            [In 1943 the GM Corporation converted its Yellow T&C Manufacturing Company (previously a subsidiary) into a division and renamed it as the GMC Truck and Coach (T&C) Division (of the GM Corporation).  At the same time GM changed the brand name of its coaches from Yellow Coach to GM Coach.  If you wish, please read my article about the differences and similarities between divisions and subsidiaries of corporations.  More about the original T&C company and the later T&C division will be available in my forthcoming article entitled “GMC Truck and Coach (T&C) Division.”]

            During 1925-29 the NTC bought about 25 Yellow Coaches of the model Y; then, starting in 1930, a stream of the Yellow Coach model Z flowed to the NTC (and to the various regional operating companies of the MTC and The Greyhound Corporation).  GM continued to deliver many newer models to Greyhound through the era of the GM Buffalo PD-4107 (that is, through 1967).

            Pursuant to another term of the deal between GM and the MTC, GM turned over the facilities in Minneapolis to Carl Will, who then founded another company, which continued to build automotive heaters and related hardware under the trade name of Tropic-Aire.  Those heaters had already become the first automotive heaters anywhere in the US to use electric blowers and circulating hot water (from the cooling systems of the engines), which were first, in October 1926, installed aboard the coaches of the NTC and the various elements of the MTC.  However, it’s interesting to note that Orville Caesar had created and developed the concept of that approach to automotive heating, and Caesar himself personally obtained and held the patents (for the apparatus) from the US Patent Office.

Reaching toward Chicago

            Meanwhile the Terminal Motor Bus Company, based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, started running not later than 1922 – between Saint Paul and Saint Paul Park, about 11 miles to the south-southeast, on the east bank of the Mississippi River.

            Next it became extended in steps to the southeast:

                        sometime in 1923 to Red Wing, Minnesota, where it crossed to the southwest bank of the Mississippi River, and onward to Lake City, about 61 miles from Saint Paul, almost halfway to La Crosse, Wisconsin;
                        in August 1924 to Wabasha, about 76 miles from Saint Paul;
                        in December 1924 to Winona, about 106 miles from Saint Paul;
                        and in June 1925 back to the northeast bank of the Mississippi River at La Crosse, about 136 miles from Saint Paul.

            Then in August 1925 Claude Mather and the three Fitzgerald brothers (Ed, Ralph, and Roy) announced that they had bought the Terminal company for $100,000 with the intent to develop it into a route between the Twin Cities (Saint Paul and Minneapolis) and Chicago, Illinois.  [Mather and the Fitzgerald brothers (along with Pat Boyle) had just (on 01 June 1925) sold their Range Rapid Transit Company to the Northland Transportation Company (for a reported price of $250,000).  More about the Range firm is available above in the three sections entitled “White Bus Lines,” “Northland Transportation Company,” and “Expansion of the NTC.”]

            In 1925 the roads between La Crosse and Madison (each in Wisconsin and on the way to Chicago) had not yet become passable or operable – not well enough to support a reliable bus service – not yet. 

            However, at least one carrier – the Intercity (or “Inter-City”) Transportation Company, using the brand name of the Intercity (or “Inter-City”) Bus Line – had already begun to run between Madison, Wisconsin, and Rockford, Illinois, along one of the potential routes between Madison and Chicago.

            In September 1925 six men – Mather, the three Fitzgerald brothers, Wickman, and Hiram Leonard Bollum – formed a partnership, which then bought the Intercity (or “Inter-City”) concern.  The partners named their firm as the Royal Rapid Transit Company.  [Please note the similarity between the names of the Range Rapid Transit and Royal Rapid Transit firms; I mention the Range firm above, three paragraphs previously.]  The Fitzgerald brothers moved to Madison to run their new property.  They also started a route between Madison and Dubuque, Iowa, via Dodgeville, Wisconsin, about 92 miles altogether, using a pair of Yellow Coach Ys.  Soon afterward they started as well a route between Rockford and Dubuque.  Sometime later the Royal firm started a route between La Crosse and Madison, extended from Rockford to Chicago, and even later started a direct shortcut route (bypassing Rockford) between Madison and Chicago via Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

            Still, though, the MTC – that is, its operating subsidiaries – had not yet reached completely between the Twin Cities and Chicago – because of the difficult gap (so far) – between La Crosse and Madison – not until 02 July 1928 – although the Royal firm continued to run there.

            {Hiram Bollum had run his Twin City Motor Bus Company since December 1923, connecting Minneapolis and Saint Paul along University Avenue (in direct competition against the streetcars on that same route; through the years he and Wickman collaborated with each other on several joint projects.  [Bollum was a son of Norwegian immigrants, and his wife (Carol Johnsen Bollum) was a daughter of Danish immigrants.]}

            In March 1926, however, three men – Eric Wickman, Hiram Bollum, and Paul Tibbetts – created a corporation – the Twin City and Southern (TC&S) Bus Company – using capital funds from the Automotive Investments, Inc., Wickman’s acquisition arm in Duluth.  TC&S was a holding company (rather than an operating company), which apparently took over the Terminal Motor Bus firm.  [Tibbetts had sold his Boulevard Transportation Company (on 19 June 1925) to the NTC.]

            Further, in August 1926 the TC&S company bought also the Mohawk Stage Line, Inc., which had run (since about 1922) in an area in Wisconsin to the east of the Twin Cities – including routes between Saint Paul and Ellsworth, between Saint Paul and Eau Claire, and between Duluth and La Crosse (on a direct route, bypassing the Twin Cities) via Rice Lake (the birthplace of Orville Caesar) and Eau Claire.

Paul William Tibbetts

            Paul William Tibbetts was another colorful and interesting actor in the early years of the motor-coach industry.  He was the son of a physician who moved his family from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Minneapolis in 1888, while Paul was 6 years old.  After graduating from high school Paul spent two years in Alaska, prospecting for gold.  Next he returned to Minneapolis and later bought a hardware store in Wayzata and served at least one term as the mayor of Wayzata. 

            He also bought an interest in the Wayzata State Bank and soon increased his holding to a controlling interest and then became the president of the bank (and remained in that post for five years).  About 1923, while Tibbetts ran the bank, one of his friends applied for a loan – to rescue his ailing bus firm – the Boulevard Transportation Company.  Tibbetts thought that the risk was too high for his bank, but he granted his friend a loan of $6,000 of his personal funds. 

            About 1924 the friend was unable to repay the loan with cash, so he paid by transferring a controlling interest in his firm to Tibbetts, who took over the concern, appointed himself as the president, rescued the firm, and on 19 June 1925 sold it to Wickman’s (and the GNR’s) Northland Transportation Company.  Thus Tibbetts entered the motor-coach industry.

            He served as the second (starting in 1930, after Ekstrom) and long-time president (and the chairman of the board of directors) of the Southwestern GL (SWGL), based in Fort Worth, Texas.  He retired about 1955, and he died at age 78 on 22 September 1960 at his home in Fort Worth.  More about Tibbetts and the SWGL will be available in my forthcoming article about the SWGL.]

Safety Motor Coach Lines

            Meanwhile, sometime during the second quarter of 1924, Ed Ekstrom, with the backing of Wickman, founded the Safety Motor Coach Lines, starting with two Fageol Safety Coaches (hence the name of the firm, with the pleased approval of the Fageol brothers, Frank and William), running first between Muskegon and Grand Rapids, both in Michigan.  [A description of Ekstrom appears above in the section entitled “Mesaba Transportation Company.”]

            Within months Ekstrom extended his route network northwardly to Fremont and to Ludington, both in Michigan, and southwestwardly to Chicago, Illinois, via Holland, South Haven, and Benton Harbor, all three in Michigan, and via Michigan City, Indiana.

            Ekstrom started also a detached route, farther to the north in Michigan, between Petoskey and Traverse City – which he sold later, about 1926, and which in -48 the Great Lakes GL (GLGL) bought (from the North Star Lines) – thus allowing the GLGL to complete a direct through-route between Chicago and Sault Sainte Marie, in the eastern part of the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, via Benton Harbor, Muskegon, Ludington, and Saint Ignace, all in the Wolverine State.

            [More about the Safety Motor Coach Lines and the Great Lakes GL is available in my article about the GLGL.]

            Then, however, … [please continue to the next section].

Motor Transit Corporation

            While Wickman continued to serve (in Minneapolis) as the president of the Northland Transportation Company (and while the NTC continued as a subsidiary of the Great Northern Railway), Wickman and his associates in Duluth (that is, his financiers and investors in Duluth) on 20 September 1926, in a momentous and hugely significant action, formed the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC), which promptly began to accumulate at least controlling interests in companies operating in areas outside the territory of the GN Railway (and thus of no concern to the GNR).

            On 15 October 1926 the MTC, in its first purchase, bought the Safety Motor Coach Lines, which in 1924 Ed Ekstrom had founded.  [A description of Ekstrom appears above in the section entitled “Mesaba Transportation Company,” and a description of his Safety Motor Coach Lines appears above in the preceding section, entitled “Safety Motor Coach Lines.”  Even more about Ekstrom and his firm in Michigan is available in my article about the Great Lakes GL, and yet more about him and his later activities in Texas will be available in my forthcoming article about the Southwestern GL.]

            After the purchase Ekstrom served as the first president of the MTC.

            In 1927, though, Wickman sent Ekstrom to Texas, where he took part in forming and developing the Southland Greyhound Lines.  On 26 July 1927 Ekstrom became the first president of the Southland GL, which on 01 October 1933 became a large part of the Southwestern GL (SWGL).  He served in that post (as the president of the Southland GL) until 1930, when he retired from Greyhound, and when Paul Tibbetts succeeded him.  [More about that will be available in my forthcoming article about the SWGL.]

            On 05 February 1930 the Motor Transit Corporation became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation.

Marketing

            Of particular note is that, when the MTC bought Ekstrom’s Safety Motor Coach Lines, the MTC thus acquired the use of several important marketing tools or details, which Ekstrom, with his special flair, had used in his firm:

                        Ekstrom began to use the blue-and-white livery (color scheme).
                        He introduced the name Greyhound by which to refer to his coaches (albeit in a borrowed use), and he caused it to be painted onto them.
                        He further used the slogan “ride the Greyhounds.”
                        His firm also began using a logo or trademark, consisting of a running greyhound dog superimposed onto a ring, which bore (on its lower half) the name “Safety Motor Coach Lines” and (on its upper half) the words “Greyhounds of the highway.”

            That logo began to appear on the sides of the coaches and in advertising, not only in Michigan but also later in Texas, after Ekstrom took a large part in the expansion of Greyhound in the Southwest – and before long the logo appeared from coast to coast.

            The logo, with only slight changes, mostly in the inscriptions, also became the pattern for shoulder patches on the uniforms for drivers throughout the entire Greyhound system, and it continued in that way until the 1980s.

            [More about that topic is available in my article about the Great Lakes GL.]

More Growth for the MTC
(the Motor Transit Corporation)

            Meanwhile the Safety Motor Coach Lines continued as a subsidiary of the MTC until 23 January 1930, when it became renamed as the Eastern Greyhound Lines of Michigan (the EGL of Michigan), which in 1935 became renamed as the Central Greyhound Lines of Michigan (the CGL of Michigan), making the third use of the name of the Central GL, which in -36 became a part of the main undenominated second Central GL, a part of which (that is, the Michigan routes) in -48 became merged into the Great Lakes GL (GLGL).  [More about the Safety Motor Coach Lines and the GLGL is available in my article bearing the name of the Great Lakes GL, and more about the EGL of Michigan, the CGL of Michigan, and the second and third Central GL is available in my article bearing the name of the Central GL.]

            On 30 July 1927 the MTC bought – from a partnership of six men – Mather, the three Fitzgerald brothers, Wickman, and Bollum – the Royal Rapid Transit Company (described above in the section entitled “Reaching toward Chicago”), running along these four routes:

                        between Chicago and Madison via Rockford and via Lake Geneva;
                        between Chicago and Dubuque via Rockford;
                        and between Madison and Dubuque via Dodgeville.

            Then on 19 October 1927 the MTC bought the Mohawk Stage Lines Company, running between Chicago and Davenport, Iowa, via Joliet and LaSalle, both in Illinois.  The sellers were A.E. Beaurline, A.W. Beaurline, and Hiram Bollum.

            [Please do not confuse the Mohawk Stage Lines Company with a different firm with a similar name – the Mohawk Stage Line, Inc., which ran in an area in Wisconsin to the east of the Twin Cities.]

            About the end of 1927 the MTC bought – from the Metropolitan Motor Coach Company, an Insull property, as described below in the section entitled “Arriving in Chicago and Its Vicinity” – the Northern Illinois Service Company, which ran along these four routes:

                        between Chicago and Davenport via Geneva, DeKalb, and Dixon (all three in Illinois) and Clinton (in Iowa) – different from the route of the Mohawk Stage Lines Company (via Joliet, LaSalle, and Princeton, all three in Illinois);
                        between Dixon and LaSalle (to the south);
                        between Dixon and Freeport (to the north);
                        and between Dixon and Rockford (to the north-northeast).

More Growth for the NTC
(the Northland Transportation Company)

            In April 1927 the Northland Transportation Company (NTC) made a contract to buy the Mesaba [sic] Railway Coach Company, which by that time ran just one route – between Hibbing and Aurora via Chisholm, Virginia, and Biwabik.  [The owners of the Range Rapid Transit Company (on 01 June 1925) had sold the rest of its routes and buses – to the Mesaba Railway Coach Company – after, on the same day, selling most of its routes, coaches, and other assets to the NTC – as described above in the section entitled “Expansion of the NTC.”]  Pursuant to the contract of sale and purchase in 1927, the NTC took over the subject route, and (on 19 April 1927) the parent interurban-railway firm quit running.

            By the end of 1927, after prolonged negotiations, the NTC reached a contract to buy the (relatively) long-distance routes (in northern Minnesota) of the Mesaba [sic] Transportation Company.  Those routes were all of the seller’s routes except the local routes in Hibbing.  [The seller was Wickman’s first corporation; on 15 December 1915 it replaced the Hibbing Transportation Company, which had been Wickman’s partnership (with four other men).  Wickman transferred his shares in that corporation in 1922 (in a swap).]  The closing of the sale took place on 01 February 1928.  Thus the NTC acquired about 30 coaches, and the five other coaches remained with “Big Andy” Anderson, who had (in the interim) bought Ralph Bogan’s interest in the firm.  [More about those Hibbing and Mesaba firms is available above, near the start of this article, in the two sections bearing their respective names.]

            That sale and purchase involved these three routes:

                        between Hibbing and Grand Rapids;
                        between Hibbing and Duluth via Virginia;
                        and between Hibbing and Bemidji [which the Mesaba firm had started (by extending from Grand Rapids to Bemidji) on 24 September 1924)].

            Soon the NTC announced that it would increase the level of its service between the Twin Cities and the Mesabi Range – via both the route via Duluth and the one via Grand Rapids – using, it said, “equipment capable of making the entire run without a change of buses.”  To reach that goal, the NTC placed an order for 20 new coaches – WMC model GY – with aluminum bodies (with toilets) built in Detroit by the Murray Corporation of America – and received them from April through June 1928.

            [During 1913-54 the Murray Corporation of America and its two predecessor firms (the J.W. Murray Manufacturing Company and the Murray Body Corporation) built uncounted steel automobile bodies for Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Packard, Reo, Studebaker, and others, but none of the three Murray concerns is known to have built any other bodies for motor coaches.]

            The NTC in 1928 made two extensions of its Marshall line – from Minneapolis via Norwood, Olivia, and Redwood Falls – one of the two routes which it had bought in 1925 from the Interstate Transportation Company.  The extensions went to Brookings, South Dakota, about 59 miles (to the west-southwest) from Marshall, and to Watertown, South Dakota, about 79 miles (to the northwest) from Marshall.  [More about the Interstate Transportation Company is available above in the section entitled “Expansion of the NTC.”]

Arriving in Chicago and Its Vicinity

            On 02 July 1928 the MTC finally succeeded in starting its own direct through-coach service between Minneapolis and Chicago (via La Crosse and Madison).  At first three trips ran each day in each direction – two trips each way via Rockford (between Madison and Chicago) and one trip each way via Lake Geneva (on a shortcut about an hour quicker than the route through Rockford).

            By 1928 the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC) had formed the Royal Rapid Corporation (without the word transit) – a firm based in Illinois – to hold and use the certificates for intrastate operation within Lincolnland – because the state government (during that era) required that a “domestic” – that is, not a “foreign” (out-of-state) – company must conduct the intrastate operations.

            By September 1928 the Royal Rapid Corporation (the new holding company) owned at least these two operating firms:

                        the Royal Rapid Transit Company (described above in the section entitled “Reaching toward Chicago”), which ran along these five routes:

                                    between La Crosse and Madison;
                                    between Madison and Chicago via two alternate routes (that is, via Rockford and via Lake Geneva);
                                    between Chicago and Dubuque via Rockford;
                                    and between Madison and Dubuque via Dodgeville;

                        and the Northern Illinois Service Company, which ran (west of Chicago) along these four routes:
                                    between Chicago and Davenport via Geneva, DeKalb, Dixon, and Clinton (in Iowa) – different from the route of the Mohawk Stage Lines Company (via Joliet, LaSalle, and Princeton);
                                    between Dixon and LaSalle (to the south);
                                    between Dixon and Freeport (to the north);
                                    and between Dixon and Rockford (to the north-northeast).

            Then on 01 October 1928 the MTC transferred to the NTC these three motor-coach holding companies:

                        the Twin City and Southern (TC&S) Bus Company (including its two operating subsidiaries, the Terminal Motor Bus Company, running between the Twin Cities and La Crosse, and the Mohawk Stage Line, Inc., running in Wisconsin, as described above, in the section entitled “Reaching toward Chicago”);
                        the Mohawk Stage Lines Company, running in upstate Illinois, as described above, in the section entitled “More Growth for the MTC”;
                        and the Royal Rapid Corporation (including its two operating subsidiaries, the Royal Rapid Transit Company and the Northern Illinois Service Company, as described above, in the previous paragraph).

            Next in December 1928 the TC&S Bus Company bought a route (from the Van Tassel Bus Lines) between Winona and Owatonna via Rochester (all three in Minnesota), and then TC&S extended its new line from Owatonna to Mankato (also in Minnesota).

            By that time TC&S had discontinued the shortcut route (bypassing the Twin Cities) between Duluth and La Crosse via Rice Lake and Eau Claire.  [There was apparently not enough activity along that route to support it.]

            Further, on 01 January 1929 the NTC transferred to the Royal Rapid Corporation another of its properties – the TC&S Bus Company (including its two subsidiaries, the Royal Rapid Transit Company and the Northern Illinois Service Company).  Afterward the Royal firm referred to its system in Wisconsin – in Wisconsin only (not in Illinois) – as the Royal Rapid Lines.  [“Royal Rapid Lines” was not the name of a business entity but rather a brand name, trade name, or service name – one that the NTC (or one of the Royal firms) attached to the Royal routes in Wisconsin.]

            On 01 July 1929 the Royal Rapid firm started a new alternate route between the Twin Cities and Madison (and onward to Chicago) via Eau Claire [one which approximates the alignment of the present Interstate highway 94 (I-94)].

            The two firms running westwardly from Chicago – the Mohawk Stage Lines Company and the Northern Illinois Service Company – were not parts of the Royal Rapid Lines.  [The Mohawk firm was a direct subsidiary of TC&S, and the Northern Illinois firm was a subsidiary of the Royal Rapid Corporation, which in turn was a subsidiary of TC&S.]

            Instead the NTC for a short time (likely during 1928-29) informally referred collectively to the Mohawk firm and the Northern Illinois firm as the “western division of [the] Greyhound Lines,” which never existed as a separate entity.

            Sometime early in 1929 one of the two firms in the “western division” – either Mohawk or Northern Illinois – extended its route from Davenport to Des Moines (both in Iowa), and one of them (likely the Northern Illinois firm) started a new direct route between Rockford and LaSalle (bypassing Dixon).

            Then sometime in May 1929, in a step toward simplification, the NTC merged the Northern Illinois Service Company into the Mohawk Stage Lines Company (and dissolved the newly empty shell of the Northern Illinois firm).

            Thus the MTC consolidated in the NTC all of its operations between Minneapolis and Chicago and between Chicago and Des Moines.

Northland Greyhound Lines

            On 01 August 1929 the Great Northern Railway (GNR) sold the Northland Transportation Company (NTC) to the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC) and the Automotive Investments, Inc. (Wickman’s acquisition firm) – for $3,100,000.  [Previously, during the second half of May 1925, the GN Railway had bought the NTC from Wickman’s syndicate (that is, his financiers and investors) in Duluth, as described above in the section entitled “Great Northern Railway.”]

            Then on 15 August 1929 the MTC formed yet another firm, named as the Northland Greyhound Lines (NGL), Inc., and the MTC sold 30 percent of the stock in the NGL to the GN Railway.  The NGL held a certificate of incorporation from the State of Delaware.

            Thus the Northland Greyhound Lines came into existence – as a holding company – thus far – until 31 December 1936, when it became an operating company in its own right – in a federal-tax strategy – as described below in the section entitled “Revenue Act of 1936.”

Northland GL of Illinois

            At the outset the MTC transferred into the NGL these two subsidiaries:

                        the Northland Transportation Company (which held a certificate of incorporation from the State of Minnesota);
                        and the Royal Rapid Corporation (with a certificate of incorporation from the State of Illinois), which the MTC next renamed as the Northland Greyhound Lines of Illinois (the NGL of Illinois).

            The NGL of Illinois took over all the routes (of the NTC) to the east and southeast of Minneapolis, including all its routes between Minneapolis and Chicago.

            On 31 December 1934 the MTC merged the assets of the NTC (previously a subsidiary of the main NGL) into the NGL of Illinois, and then the MTC dissolved the empty corporate shell of the NTC.  Thus all the former routes of the NTC came under the name of the Greyhound Lines.

            During the second half of the decade of the 1930s, Greyhound truly dominated the intercity-bus industry throughout Minnesota – where it owned nearly half of the coaches, carried half of the riders, and ran more than half of the miles.

Pickwick-Greyhound Lines

          The Pickwick-Greyhound (PG) Lines, based in Kansas City, Missouri, was a jointly owned property of the Pickwick Corporation and the Motor Transit Corporation [before the MTC became renamed (on 05 February 1930) as The Greyhound Corporation].  The joint ownership of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines (by Pickwick and Greyhound) is the reason for the hyphen in the name of that company.

            The Pickwick-Greyhound Lines had started in 1912 in San Diego, California, as the Pickwick Stages, which first ran in the Imperial Valley, between San Diego and El Centro via Ocotillo, all in California, and it grew soon and fast.  It grew northwardly along the Pacific Coast as far as Portland, Oregon.  Also it grew eastwardly to Phoenix, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas, and on 01 November 1927 it reached Saint Louis, Missouri.  Then sometime early in -28 it continued all the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  [The Pickwick Stages was then the largest intercity bus company in the US, and it was about twice as large as the MTC.]

            [More about the PG Lines will be available in my forthcoming article about that firm.]

YellowaY-Pioneer Stages

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

            Although the YellowaY-Pioneer route network lay mostly in the West, it included also a route between Saint Louis, Missouri, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

            In May 1929 the MTC bought the YellowaY-Pioneer Stages, based in San Francisco, California, which W.E. “Buck” Travis had assembled in the previous year, -28, when his Pioneer Stages bought the YellowaY System, from the newly formed American Motor Transportation Company, based in Oakland, California.  [More about the YellowaY-Pioneer Stages will be available in my forthcoming article about the Pacific GL.]

Pickwick-Greyhound Lines of Illinois

          The YellowaY-Pioneer Stages ran a route, among others, between Chicago and Los Angeles, California, via Omaha, Nebraska, and Denver, Colorado.

            The MTC placed that former-YP route (between Chicago and Los Angeles) into the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.  When the MTC did so, it caused the “western division” of the Greyhound Lines (that is, the Mohawk Stage Lines Company) to cease running between Chicago and Davenport and between Clinton and Davenport (in favor of the PG Lines).  [During the winding up of the PG Lines (in the first half of 1932, as described below in the next section, the route segment between Chicago and Davenport went to the Interstate Transit Lines, which late in 1943 became the eastern half of the Overland GL.  More about the Overland GL will be available in my forthcoming article bearing its name.]

            However, because of the requirement for a “domestic” corporation to hold a certificate for intrastate operation in Illinois, the PG Lines formed a subsidiary, known as the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines of Illinois (the PG Lines of Illinois), which then held the Illinois certificate.

End of the PG Lines

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

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

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

            Unfortunately, it appears that PG had never – never – turned a profit during any year of its short existence – despite – or perhaps because of – its ambitious and dramatic expansion.  [In that era, before the federal regulation of financial reporting to the investing public, it’s hard to be sure about the lack of profit, but the annual reports of both Pickwick and Greyhound (the joint owners of PG) seem to indicate the losses or the absence of profits from the operation of their joint property.]

            Then in January 1932 the Pickwick Corporation (the parent Pickwick firm) filed for protection in receivership in California.

            Wisely, the officials of The Greyhound Corporation decided not to take part in continuing the operation of Pickwick-Greyhound (that is, not to make up for the accumulating losses of the PG Lines).

            Instead Greyhound, under the supervision of the receiver, wound up the business of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.  Greyhound sold most of the routes and most of the coaches of the PG Lines, but Greyhound kept for itself (lawfully, properly, and with payment to the receiver) several of those routes and some of those coaches in the greatly condensed leftover PG.

            Greyhound likewise took over the sole ownership of both the Illinois GL, which had previously been a subsidiary of Pickwick-Greyhound, and what was left of the PG Lines (likewise with proper payment to the receiver).  [More about the Illinois GL is available in my article about that firm.]

            During those processes the former-YP route between Chicago and Omaha via Davenport went to the Interstate Transit Lines, a Greyhound affiliate (but not a division or a subsidiary), which on 01 December 1943 became the eastern half of the Overland GL.  [Again, more about the Overland GL will be available in my forthcoming article about that firm.]

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

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

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

Two Moves to Chicago

            Wickman moved the operational headquarters of the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC) from Duluth to Chicago shortly after the founding of the MTC (on 20 September 1926) – because he and his associates recognized that Chicago had already become a major hub in transcontinental travel in the US, and that it would become an even more important one.  Soon Wickman moved also the administrative headquarters from Duluth to Chicago.

            Next, however, we pause to examine a unique and interesting man and his business activities and enterprises – and the transactions between the MTC and several of his firms.

Samuel Insull

            Samuel Insull was a brilliant 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.  [Some regard Insull as the father of modern holding companies; he was at least one of the first who used that technique.]  Early (starting in 1881 and at his age of 21) he had worked as the private secretary of Thomas Alva Edison, then he took part (in 1889) in the founding and organization of the Edison General Electric Company [which in 1892 became a large part of the General Electric (GE) Company], and next (starting in -92) he served as the president of the Chicago Edison Company – before he began to build his own empire.

MTC and the Insull Empire

            Most (by far) of the properties of Insull’s holding companies were public-utility (gas and electric) companies.

            However, he owned at least majority (controlling) interests (if not complete interests) in several electric urban (streetcar), suburban, and interurban railway systems, including these four:

                        the Gary Railways (in the Indiana suburbs of Chicago);
                        the Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin (CA&E);
                        the Chicago, North Shore, and Milwaukee;
                        and the Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend.

            [The last of those four – the Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend – known simply as the South Shore Line – still runs – between Chicago and South Bend, Indiana – which the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) now operates.  It’s also one of the last few surviving electric interurban railways anywhere in the US.]

            Each of those four railways (above) provided bus service too. 

            The first one to do so, in 1922, was the “North Shore Line,” which itself started with three “streetcar-type” Fageol Safety Coaches – in and around Waukegan, Illinois, about midway between Chicago and Milwaukee.

            Next, in 1924, the CA&E formed a subsidiary, the Western Motor Coach Company, which did not begin to run until September 1927 (because of strong opposition and objections by the parallel steam railways) – to run from Chicago westwardly to Elgin, Aurora, Saint Charles, and many intermediate points.

            In the spring of 1926 the “South Shore Line” also formed a subsidiary, the Shore Line Motor Coach Company (without the word south) – to take over the bus service of the Gary Railways (another Insull property) – and to buy a non-Insull firm running between Michigan City, Indiana (on the line to South Bend) and Benton Harbor, Michigan (beyond Michigan City and on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan). 

            Then, in December 1926, the “North Shore Line” also formed a subsidiary, the Metropolitan Motor Coach Company, which (in January 1927), using five Yellow Coach Ys, started running between Chicago and Milwaukee. 

            Later the (south) Shore Line bought several more firms; by the end of 1926 it ran as well between Chicago and Grand Rapids via Benton Harbor and between Chicago and Detroit via South Bend.

            On 20 August 1927 one or more of the actors in Wickman’s MTC circle formed the Chicago-Milwaukee Coach Lines – to run in direct competition against the Metropolitan firm.  The owners of the new concern are no longer known, but its vice president was Roy Fitzgerald, and its coaches wore a blue-and-white MTC livery.  [The MTC had just (on 30 July 1927) bought the Royal Rapid Transit Company from Bollum, Mather, Wickman, and the three Fitzgerald brothers (Roy, Ed, and Ralph).]

            Further, in October 1927, the Metropolitan firm bought the Northern Illinois Service Company, which ran between Chicago and Davenport via Geneva and Saint Charles – but without local rights between Chicago and Saint Charles.

            However, on 31 December 1927 the MTC bought the Northern Illinois firm from the Metropolitan concern, as described above in the section entitled “More Growth for the MTC.”

            On that same date the MTC bought – also from the Metropolitan firm – its routes between Chicago and Grand Rapids via Benton Harbor and between Chicago and Detroit via South Bend (the ones first mentioned above, just four paragraphs previously) – which the Metropolitan concern had recently placed into its new subsidiary, known as the Southwestern Michigan Motor Coach Company.  [Sometime during 1929 the MTC placed those routes into the Safety Motor Coach Lines, which on 23 January 1930 became renamed as the Eastern Greyhound Lines of Michigan (the EGL of Michigan), which in 1935 became renamed as the Central Greyhound Lines of Michigan (the CGL of Michigan), making the third use of the name of the Central GL, which in -36 became a part of the main undenominated second Central GL.  Even later, on 31 December 1948, those routes (the Michigan routes of the CGL) became a large part of the Great Lakes GL (GLGL).  More about the EGL of Michigan, the CGL of Michigan, and the main CGL is available in my article about the Central GL, and more about the GLGL is available in my article bearing its name.]

            In partial payment for those purchases from the Metropolitan firm, the MTC conveyed the Chicago-Milwaukee Coach Lines to the seller.

            Afterward the bus operations of the Insull properties merely complemented the operations of their urban, suburban, and interurban railways, and the MTC continued to build its longer intercity and interstate routes.

            Then the Metropolitan Motor Coach Company took these significant steps:

                        in 1928 it took over the local bus routes of the North Shore (rail) Line;
                        in 1929 it started running between Chicago and Lake Geneva;
                        and in 1930 it took over these two other operating companies:

                                    the Western Motor Coach Company (the bus subsidiary of the CA&E Railroad, connecting Chicago with Elgin, Aurora, and Saint Charles);
                                    and the Northwestern Transit Company [running along local routes in Oak Park, a suburb (about nine miles west of the Chicago Loop) famous as the locale of the home and architectural studio of Frank Lloyd Wright and many examples of his work and the work of several of his protégés and disciples].

            Early in 1931 the Chicago-Milwaukee Coach Lines became merged into the Metropolitan Motor Coach Company.

            Shortly afterward, however, on 01 June 1931, the Metropolitan firm leased to the Northland GL of Illinois these three of its intercity and interurban routes:

                        between Chicago and Elgin;
                        between Chicago and Lake Geneva;
                        and between Chicago and Milwaukee.

            During that process Metropolitan also sold to the NGL of Illinois an unknown number of its coaches of unknown makes.

Insull, the MTC, and the Southeastern GL

            By 1929 one or more of Sam Insull’s holding companies had bought a minority (noncontrolling) interest in the Motor Transit Corporation (which on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation).

            Then on 20 February 1929 the Kentucky Securities Corporation (KSC), a subsidiary of Insull’s Middle West Utilities Company, took control of the Consolidated Coach Corporation (CCC) – by buying more than 90 percent of the voting stock of the CCC from the widow of Richard Spurr Webb Jr.

            {On 07 October 1926 the CCC, based in Lexington, Kentucky, came into existence; in ­‑31, with the consent of The Greyhound Corporation, it began to use the trade name, brand name, or service name of the Southeastern Greyhound Lines [even though the official name of the company continued (albeit temporarily) as the Consolidated Coach Corporation]; and in -36, again with the consent of the Greyhound parent firm, it (the company itself) became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines (SEGL).  Richard Webb, the Studebaker dealer in Lexington, was one of the four organizers who founded the CCC, and he served as the first president of the CCC (until 28 August 1927, when he suddenly died of an illness at age 38).  Webb had repeatedly increased his investment in the CCC.}

            Soon, however, the MTC and Greyhound began to buy stock in the CCC from Insull’s KSC.  By 1935 the KSC held just slightly more than 50 percent of the voting stock in the CCC.  [In that same year, -35, during a reorganization of the network of the Insull corporations (and during the throes of the Great Depression), the KSC became slightly renamed as the Kentucky Securities Company (rather than “Corporation”).]

            Further, in 1938 the SEGL became listed for trade on the New York Stock Exchange (the “big board”), and Greyhound continued to increase its partial ownership of the SEGL.

            Finally, during 1950 The Greyhound Corporation gathered the last of the stock in the SEGL, thus gaining complete ownership of it; then on 31 December 1950 the SEGL ceased to exist as a separate corporation, and on 01 January 1951 it became a division of the parent umbrella Greyhound firm.  The parent firm then dissolved the newly empty corporate shell of the SEGL.

            [More about the SEGL is available in my article bearing its name.]

            Now we return to the story of the Northland GL.

Expansion throughout Wisconsin

            During 1932-34 the NGL of Illinois added many routes to its network throughout Wisconsin – in most cases by purchase (of either entire preexisting firms or just certificates) and in a few cases by the introduction of new routes.  Among the added routes were these:

                        between Appleton and Milwaukee via Oshkosh and Fond du Lac;
                        between Ashland and Abbotsford;
                        between Ashland and Wausau (in summer only) via Ironwood (on the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan);
                        between Eau Claire and Appleton via Wausau;
                        between Eau Claire and Oshkosh via Stevens Point;
                        between La Crosse and Tomah via Sparta;
                        between Park Falls and Abbotsford;
                        and between Waupaca and Appleton.

Wheeling and Dealing

            Sometime early in 1922 Wickman’s Mesaba [sic] Motors Company financed the formation of the Eastern Wisconsin Transportation Company by E.J. “Ed” Stone – which then started a route (the first bus route) between Fond du Lac and Milwaukee.

            Within two months, however, the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company paid to Stone’s firm an unknown sum of money to withdraw from that market.  Stone took the funds and pulled out, and the Milwaukee utility then substituted its own coaches on two parallel alternate routes – one via Hartford and one via West Bend. 

            Next Stone started running his coaches instead on a route between Fond du Lac and Madison (the capital of the Beaver State).

            Then sometime in 1923, with financing from Wickman, Edwin Carl “Ed” Ekstrom bought (from Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company) a controlling interest in Stone’s Eastern Wisconsin Transportation Company.  Ekstrom then went to Fond du Lac and took charge of his new property. 

            As I mention above in the section entitled “Marketing,” Ekstrom later introduced the name Greyhound by which to refer to his coaches (albeit in a borrowed use – borrowed from Ed Stone), and Ekstrom caused the name Greyhound to be painted onto them (in his Safety Motor Coach Lines).  [Previously Stone had informally referred to his coaches as greyhounds, commenting on the resemblance of them to sleek, swift, slender, graceful hounds.]

            In the next year, 1924, Stone resigned from the firm that he had founded, and then he went to work as a bus salesman for the Mack Truck Company.  [After Ekstrom founded his Safety Motor Coach Lines, in 1924, he used mostly Fageol Safety Coaches, but he bought also several Mack parlor cars, perhaps in part because of his friendship with Stone.]

            Sometime during the early part of 1924 the Wisconsin Power and Light Company, a holding company, bought the Eastern Wisconsin Electric Company, and soon in April 1924 those two firms together bought the Eastern Wisconsin Transportation Company (from Ekstrom and Stone).

            [More about Ekstrom is available in many places above, starting in the section entitled “Mesaba [sic] Transportation Company,” and even more about him and his Safety Motor Coach Lines is available in my article about the Great Lakes GL; more yet about Ekstrom and his activities in Texas will be available in my forthcoming article about the Southwestern GL.]

            Meanwhile the Eastern Wisconsin Electric Company – which ran streetcars in both Oshkosh and Fond du Lac and an interurban railway between Neenah and Fond du Lac via Oshkosh – in August 1922 started running also its own bus services – first between Fond du Lac and Plymouth.  Then on 02 July 1923 it added a route between Fond du Lac and Beaver Dam.  The carrier used the brand name, trade name, or service name of The Orange Line for its bus routes.

            In April 1925 the owner of The Orange Line extended it northeastwardly from Neenah to Green Bay via Appleton – and it started running also between Madison and Stevens Point after buying out three independent operators along that route (which was detached from its other routes).

            Further, in June 1929 the owner of The Orange Line bought from the Royal Rapid Transit Company (which was then a subsidiary of the MTC) its route between Madison and Dubuque via Dodgeville.  By 1943, however, that route became discontinued in favor of a more direct route via Platteville.

            [The name of The Orange Line reappears below in the section entitled “Even More Growth in Wisconsin” – in a mention of a purchase on 01 December 1945, when the NGL bought the two remaining bus routes of The Orange Line.]

            Finally the NGL of Illinois bought – from the Wisconsin Power and Light Company – the route between Madison and Stevens Point and then began to run it on 26 July 1934.

            At about that same time the NGL of Illinois bought also the route between Ashland and Ironwood (on the UP of Michigan) – from the Northwestern Motor Bus Company.

Westward Ho!

            Before 1933 neither the Northland Transportation Company nor the Northland Greyhound Lines (NGL) had yet ventured into the territory of the Great Northern Railway any farther west than Fargo, North Dakota, or Watertown, South Dakota. 

            On 15 October 1933, however, the NGL of Illinois started a new route between Minneapolis and Butte, Montana – about 1,172 miles long – not via Fargo, North Dakota, but rather via Marshall, Minnesota; Watertown and Aberdeen, South Dakota; and Jamestown and Bismarck, North Dakota.  At first it ran just one trip each day in each direction, and it did so without intrastate rights anywhere beyond Watertown.  [In 1933 the main NGL was still a holding company, whereas the NGL of Illinois (a subsidiary of the NGL) was the operating company – until 1936 – as described below in the section entitled “Revenue Act of 1936.”]

            In Butte the NGL of Illinois made connections (to and from various points farther west) with the Washington Motor Coach Company, which, along with the North Coast Lines, on 01 December 1949 became a major part of the newly formed Northwest GL (NWGL, based in Seattle, Washington).  In 2004, however, Greyhound abandoned its through-route between Seattle and Minneapolis.  [More about the NWGL will be available in my forthcoming article bearing its name.]

            Then on 01 July 1934 the NGL of Illinois discontinued the route segment between Aberdeen and Jamestown – but left in place the relatively new segment between Watertown and Aberdeen – and rerouted the Butte line along an extension from Fargo to Jamestown.  It also increased to two trips daily in each direction.

            By 06 October 1934 the NGL had acquired intrastate rights along most of the route between Fargo and Butte – via Jamestown and Bismarck (both in North Dakota) and Glendive, Billings, and Bozeman (all three in Montana) mostly by the purchase of other preexisting carriers, their routes, or their intrastate rights.

            On 01 April 1935 the NGL took over a route of much significance, between Fargo and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, via Grand Forks, North Dakota, which it had bought from the Canadian-American Transportation Company.  That route later provided a link between the NGL and the Western Canadian GL.

            Then on 11 July 1935 the NGL of Illinois started an alternate parallel route to Winnipeg via Crookston, Minnesota, thus bypassing Fargo.

            Next on 16 July 1935 the NGL of Illinois started joint service (in coöperation with the Intermountain Transportation Company) between Butte and Shelby via Helena and Great Falls; soon the two carriers extended from Shelby to Sweetgrass, Montana, on the Canadian border.  That route provided the NGL with a second gateway to and from Canada and later provided a second link with the Western Canadian GL.

            On that same date, 16 July 1935, the NGL of Illinois also started a new branch route in Montana to Helena (the capital of Montana, known as the Big-sky Country) from Three Forks (between Bozeman and Butte) – along with a route from Great Falls to Lewistown, which it soon extended back to Billings.

            On 05 September 1938 the NGL (after the NGL became the operating company there) bought from the Checker Transportation Company these two routes in North Dakota:

                        from Grand Forks westwardly to Minot;
                        and from Minot southwardly to Bismarck (between Jamestown and all points in Montana, on the route between Fargo and Butte).

            Meanwhile two federal statutes – the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 and the Revenue Act of 1936 – caused many large changes at Greyhound.

Motor Carrier Act of 1935

            The Congress of the US passed – and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed – the Motor Carrier Act of 1935, which gave regulatory authority to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) over interstate bus and truck carriers.  [The ICC already had authority over the interstate railways (since 1887).]

            That law also imposed a significant requirement on highway carriers (using trucks, buses, or both) that were controlled by a “carrier other than a motor carrier” – that is, highway carriers controlled by railway companies.  It forbade the ICC to allow such a “controlled” interstate highway carrier to operate unless the operation of the highway carrier was to be used in the operation of the railroad or in direct support of it.

            That caused a problem for the NGL – because the Great Northern (GN) Railway (GNR) had in May 1935 increased its 30-percent stake in the NGL to slightly more than 45 percent.  [The GNR had sold its one-sixth interest in the Pacific GL to The Greyhound Corporation for cash plus more stock in the NGL.] 

            One result of that transaction was that the GN Railway and The Greyhound Corporation then held exactly the same number of shares in the NGL.  [The remaining shares of the outstanding stock were in the hands of other investors.]

            In an attempt to satisfy the new law, on 03 June 1935 each of Greyhound and the GNR deposited 52,000 shares of their stock (in the NGL) into a voting trust, and on 23 September 1935 (just before the effective date of the new act) the parties made a contract (with each other) to perpetuate their equal ownership of the NGL and their equal representation on the board of directors of the NGL (with each party appointing four directors).  The parties (Greyhound and the GNR) and their respective lawyers believed that that arrangement prevented a control of the NGL by the GNR.

            Unfortunately, however, the commissioners and the lawyers of the ICC did not concur with that conclusion.  In 1937 the NGL applied for approval (by the ICC) to buy the operating rights of a bus company in an area well outside the territory of the GNR (in eastern Wisconsin, as discussed below in the section entitled “More Growth in Wisconsin”).  Because of the reluctance or uncertainty on the part of the ICC, the commission deferred its decision on that application.

            To cure that problem, in December 1935 Greyhound and the GNR cancelled their contract of September 1935, and they amended their voting-trust agreement to increase the number of directors from eight to nine and to allow Greyhound to appoint five of the directors – giving clear control to Greyhound (rather than the GN Railway).

            Greyhound (that is, The Greyhound Corporation) and the GNR agreed (with each other) that Greyhound would increase its holding to 51 percent of the stock outstanding (registered in its own name) in the NGL.  On 06 April 1939 the ICC approved the purchase.  Greyhound bought the additional shares. 

            Afterward Greyhound continued to own about 51 percent of the NGL, the GNR continued to own about 45 percent, and other investors held the remaining 4 percent – until 02 November 1955, when The Greyhound Corporation bought – for cash – the entire partial ownership of the GN Railway – and until the first half of 1956, when the parent firm issued new stock in itself in exchange for the relatively small number of publicly held shares in the NGL.

Revenue Act of 1936

            Further, in 1936 The Greyhound Corporation began to eliminate its multiple (and often complex) intermediate holding companies (between the parent firm and its operating subsidiaries).  The purpose of those steps was to avoid a hugely increased federal income tax on the undistributed earnings of corporate subsidiaries (in part as a result of a legislative socioeconomic motive to make more cash available to the public during the Great Depression).  The tax increase took place under the infamous federal Revenue Act of 1936, which the Congress of the US had passed (and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had signed) as a means by which to cause or force a simplification of complicated corporate structures in the public-utility industries (including the transport industries).  Changes in the federal laws soon allowed transport companies to return to the use of holding companies with their subsidiary corporations; however, Greyhound continued using mostly divisions, although it did use also a few subsidiaries.  [If you wish, please read my article about corporate divisions and subsidiaries and the differences between them.]

            On 01 January 1936 The Greyhound Corporation, in anticipation of the forthcoming new statute, the parent Greyhound firm, previously a holding company rather than an operating company, taking its first step, merged the Eastern GL of New England (formerly a subsidiary) into itself (as a division).  [More about the EGL of New England is available in my articles bearing the names of the Central GL and the New England GL.]

            That action – as a part of the tax strategy – caused the parent firm, The Greyhound Corporation, to become not only a holding company but also an operating company – with its own ICC-MC number (1515).  [Later Greyhound kept and continued using also other MC numbers, including 1501 and 1511, which other subsidiaries had obtained from the ICC.]

            Further, The Greyhound Corporation continued as both a holding company and an operating company – because the new federal statute (the Revenue Act of 1936) allowed operating corporations to own and hold operating subsidiaries, although the Revenue Act heavily taxed the retained (undistributed) earnings of operating subsidiaries of nonoperating holding corporations.

NGL as an Operating Company

            At midnight at the end of 31 December 1936 The Greyhound Corporation, the parent umbrella Greyhound firm, merged all the assets of the NGL of Illinois into the Northland GL, which had previously been a holding company (rather than an operating company).  Greyhound then dissolved the newly empty corporate shell of the NGL of Illinois, which then ceased to exist.  Thus the NGL became an operating carrier in its own right (rather than just a holding company).

            Still, though, to comply with an Illinois statute which still required a “domestic” corporation to hold the certificates (of convenience and necessity) to haul intrastate passengers within Lincolnland, The Greyhound Corporation formed a new Illinois corporation, called the Norgrey Company (“Norgrey” as in “Northland Greyhound”), which then held the paper for all the Illinois routes of the NGL.

More Growth in Wisconsin

            The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company provided its hometown with not only electricity but also its streetcar system and five electric interurban-railway routes based there (connecting it with Burlington, East Troy, Kenosha, Sheboygan, and Watertown).  [Milwaukee was then the largest city in the US with a single company providing both its electricity and its streetcar system.]

            Further, about 1919 that same firm began to operate buses (along with streetcars), and by 1923 it developed an extensive interurban bus system, which it named as the Wisconsin Motor Bus Lines (WMBL).

            The WMBL reached its zenith in 1930 – with a network of more than 1,000 route miles – when it started these two ambitious lines:

                        between Sheboygan and Appleton (about 65 miles);
                        and between Sheboygan and Iron Mountain (in the UP of Michigan) via Green Bay, Pound, and Wausaukee (about 165 miles).

            Sadly, though, during the Great Depression and as a result of it, the ridership of the WMBL greatly diminished, and those in charge of the firm found it necessary to begin to reduce its service and to eliminate some of its routes.

            By 1936 these five routes (among a few others) remained:

                        between Janesville and Beaver Dam via Watertown;
                        between Madison and Watertown;
                        between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac via two parallel branches;
                        between Milwaukee and Madison via two parallel branches;
                        and between Milwaukee and Oconomowoc.

            The NGL eventually bought all five of those routes.  During the summer of 1937 it took over two of them – between Janesville and Beaver Dam and between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac – and on 23 August 1937 it took over the three others.  [The route between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac was the one for which Wickman’s Mesaba Motors Company in 1922 had financed Ed Stone’s Eastern Wisconsin Transportation Company – and the route from which the electric-power firm had then paid Stone to withdraw – as described above in the section entitled “Wheeling and Dealing.”]

            In 1937 the Sioux Limited Lines ran a somewhat circuitous route between Minneapolis and Chicago via Eau Claire, Fairchild, Marshfield, Stevens Point, Plainfield, Addison, Hartford, and Milwaukee – a total of about 475 miles.

            During 1937 the NGL applied for approval from the ICC for a purchase of the Sioux Limited Lines – and that’s the case that the ICC deferred until 1939 – because of the question of whether the Great Northern Railway “controlled” the Northland GL – until 1939 – after The Greyhound Corporation and the GN Railway made changes in their ownership and governance of the NGL.  [More about that is available above in the section entitled “Motor Carrier Act of 1935.”]

            In 1939 the NGL finally bought the Sioux Limited Lines (with the belated approval of the ICC).

            Then on 05 February 1940 the NGL bought (from the Wisconsin River Valley Transportation Company) a route between Wausau and Stevens Point, along with a 23-seat GarWood bus.

Growth in the UP of Michigan

            Meanwhile on 05 June 1938 the NGL started running in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan between Calumet and Saint Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinac, via Marquette and Rapid River, and along a branch between Rapid River and Escanaba.

            Next on 01 June 1939 the NGL connected that branch and that route with its network in Wisconsin.  It did so by buying (from the Gray Transportation Company) these two routes:

                        between Ironwood and Iron Mountain;
                        and between Milwaukee and Escanaba via Green Bay and Iron Mountain.

[The Gray firm was the successor of the Deluxe Motor Coach Lines, which in 1926 had started service on several routes, including one between Green Bay and Escanaba via Iron Mountain.]

Even More Growth in Wisconsin

            By 1938 the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company had become renamed as the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Transport Company, and by -41 it had reduced its railcar service and had converted some of its routes from steel wheels on steel rails to rubber tires on public roads.

            Sometime in 1946 Henry Bruner sold (to the Shore Line Transit Company, of Hammond, Indiana) his Kenosha Motor Coach Lines, which had run two streetcar systems (in Racine and Kenosha) and several interurban bus routes and railcar lines.  He had bought those assets from the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Transport Company.  The Shore Line firm then converted the Kenosha railcar route (from Milwaukee) to buses during 1947.

            Further, by 1948 the North Shore Line railway route between Milwaukee and Sheboygan had become cut back from Sheboygan about halfway to Port Washington; then the last railcar ran on 26 March 1948, and the NGL took over that route on the next day and introduced bus service on it.

            Meanwhile on 01 December 1945 the NGL had bought the last remaining bus service of The Orange Line, consisting of these two routes:

                        between Fond du Lac and Sheboygan;
                        and between Green Bay and Dubuque, Iowa, via Appleton, Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Platteville.

[In June 1929 the owner of The Orange Line had bought from the Royal Rapid Transit Company (which was then a subsidiary of the MTC) its route between Madison and Dubuque.  More about that is available above in the section entitled “Wheeling and Dealing.”]

            Then in April 1947 the NGL reached an agreement to buy the remaining routes of the Wisconsin Motor Bus Lines (from which the NGL had bought five routes in 1937), and the NGL took charge of them on 16 June 1947.  [More about the previous events is available above in the section entitled “More Growth in Wisconsin.”]  The routes involved in 1947 were these:

                        between Milwaukee and Sheboygan;
                        and a group of routes within the area of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Oconomowoc, Watertown, and Madison.

            On 01 April 1948 the NGL bought (from the Green Bay Stages) a route between Sheboygan and Green Bay via Manitowoc, which had previously been a property of the Wisconsin Motor Bus Lines (WMBL).

            Then on 01 December 1949 the NGL bought the Midland Coach Company, which had taken over several old routes of the WMBL.  Thus nearly all of the former system of the WMBL came back together under the ownership of the NGL.

            Meanwhile sometime during the second half of 1948 – maybe on 26 August – the NGL bought the Kenosha Motor Coach Lines, which the Shore Line Transit Company had bought from Henry Bruner in 1946.  Thus the NGL gained the bus route (with local rights) between Milwaukee and Kenosha via Racine.

            However, with that purchase the NGL gained also both a pair of railway lines – from Milwaukee to Hale’s Corners and to Waukesha – and a suburban bus route from Milwaukee to Oconomowoc via Waukesha.  The NGL in September 1949 sold the rail lines to a group (under the promotion of Jay Maeder) in Cleveland, Wisconsin, using the name of the Milwaukee Rapid Transit and Speedrail Company, which ran only two years, until 1951.  And the NGL sold the bus route to Oconomowoc (via Waukesha) to Norman Elsy’s Waukesha Transit Lines, which took it over on 01 March 1951.  [Cleveland, Wisconsin, is on the west shore of Lake Michigan, about midway between Sheboygan and Manitowoc.]

            On 01 November 1952 the NGL sold to the Best Motor Coach Company a part of the system that the NGL had bought from the Midland Coach Company – at least the route between Racine and Beloit (via Burlington, Lake Geneva, and Elkhorn) and maybe also the route between Milwaukee and Beloit (via East Troy and Elkhorn).

            During the 1940s and -50s the NGL made several relatively small changes, including these:

                        On 24 October 1944 the NGL started a route between Madison and Lodi, about 24 miles to the north-northwest.
                        On 22 August 1950 the NGL sold that route (between Madison and Lodi) to the Capitol Bus Company (but not the company based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Capitol Trailways, even though it used that same name).
                        On 15 June 1951 the NGL started a route between Minneapolis and Iron Mountain (on the UP of Michigan) and discontinued it sometime in -54.
                        On 15 November 1951 the NGL bought (from the Fox River Bus Line) a route between Appleton and Stevens Point.

Pool (Interline) Operations

            The Northland GL took part in several major interlined through-routes (using pooled equipment in coöperation with other Greyhound companies) – that is, the use of through-coaches on through-routes running through the territories of two or more Greyhound regional operating companies.  Those interlined routes of the NGL included these:

                        between Minneapolis and Detroit via Chicago, in coöperation with the Great Lakes GL (between Chicago and Detroit) – the first such route of the NGL, starting in 1948;
                        between Minneapolis and Seattle, Washington, in coöperation with the Northwest GL (between Butte, Montana, and Seattle) – the second such route of the NGL, starting in 1950;
                        between Minneapolis and Omaha, Nebraska – with the Overland GL (between Fairmont, Minnesota, and Omaha);
                        between Duluth and Detroit via Ironwood, Iron Mountain, and Saint Ignace (all three on the UP of Michigan – with the Great Lakes GL (between Saint Ignace and Detroit);
                        between Minneapolis and Toronto, Ontario, Canada, via Chicago and Detroit – with the Great Lakes GL (between Chicago and Detroit) and the Eastern Canadian GL (between Detroit and Toronto);
                   between Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada, via Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit – with the Great Lakes GL (between Chicago and Detroit) and the Eastern Canadian GL (between Detroit and Toronto).

NGL As a Division

          On 02 November 1955 The Greyhound Corporation paid cash to the Great Northern Railway for all of its remaining ownership interest in the Northland GL, and during 1956 the parent Greyhound firm issued some new stock in itself and then transferred it in exchange for the publicly held stock of the NGL in the hands of the relatively small number of investors involved.

            Next the parent firm merged the NGL into itself as a division, and it then dissolved the newly empty corporate shell of the NGL.

NGL until 1956

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

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

OGL until 1956

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

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

Merger of the OGL into the NGL

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

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

            Thus ended the Overland GL.

GLGL until 1957

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

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

Merger of the GLGL into the NGL

          On 01 September 1957, in yet another step of consolidation, Greyhound further merged the Great Lakes GL (GLGL) into the Northland GL (NGL). 

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

            Thus ended the Great Lakes GL.

Fifth CGL and the End of the NGL

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Addendum

          Sadly and regrettably, in 2004, during a time of incompetent and unconscionable leadership at the top of the Greyhound Lines, Inc. (GLI), while Laidlaw International (an operator of trash trucks and school buses) owned the GLI, the formerly great and formerly respected carrier abandoned its through-route between Seattle and Minneapolis – that is, it abandoned the uncounted riders who had depended on Greyhound.  For many years — and even decades — Greyhound previously had consistently run three through-coaches every day in each direction between Seattle and Chicago via Minneapolis, then suddenly and abruptly Greyhound withdrew from that market.  Now in 2022 Greyhound offers one daily trip in each direction between Seattle and Spokane, and the Jefferson Lines provides one daily connecting trip in each direction between Spokane and Minneapolis.  Northwestern Trailways also offers one daily trip in each direction between Seattle and Spokane. [More about that time in the story of the GLI is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2” — especially here, here, and here.]

            Lo, how the mighty has fallen!

Postscript

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

Very Special Articles

         Please check also my other very special cornerstone articles at this website:
                   “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. (in 1987, 1999, 2007, and 2021);
                            the purchase (in 1987) of the Trailways, Inc. (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, and operation of the GM PD-4501, the famous, beloved, unmatched, and iconic Scenicruiser (an exclusive coach 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 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 Southeastern Greyhound Lines, the Southwestern Greyhound Lines, the Teche Greyhound Lines, the Valley Greyhound Lines, The Greyhound Corporation, and the Tennessee Coach Company.

Bibliography

            Coachbuilt.com.

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

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

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

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

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

                        March 1954;
                        March 1955;
                        November 1955;
                        February 1966;
                        April 1966;
                        July 1967;
                        December 1967;
                        April-May 1987;
                        July-August 1990;
                        March-April 1991;
                        January-February 1992;
                        March-April 1993;
                        January-March 2001;
                        January-March 2005.

            Online schedules and historical data at Greyhound.com.

            Rhodes, Jack, Intercity Bus Lines of the Southwest (a PhD dissertation).  College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988.  ISBN 0-89096-374-6.

            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 0‑89096‑374‑6.

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Posted at 19:54 EDT, Sunday, 14 August 2022.

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