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

Preface

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

Contents

Introduction
Context
Pacific Transportation Securities
Start of the Pacific Greyhound Lines
Buck Travis, His California Transit Company, and His YellowaY‑Pioneer Lines
Charles Wren and His Pickwick Stages
Southern Pacific Motor Transport Company
Motor Transit Company
Back to the PTS and the Start of the PacGL
Pool (Interline) Operations
Suburban Operations
Air-conditioned Coaches for Contra Costa County
Special Operations for the US Navy
Special Airport Shuttles
Meeting Other Greyhound Companies
The Second Western GL
Diversification and Expansion
Greyhound Lines, Inc. (GLI)
Beyond the PacGL and the WGL
Conclusion
Addendum: California Parlor Car Tours
Related Articles
Bibliography

Introduction

            The Pacific Greyhound Lines (PGL or PacGL) was a regional intercity motor-coach carrier in the system of the Greyhound Lines (GL).  It was based in San Francisco, California, USA.  It existed from 1929 until -57, when it became renamed and reorganized as the Western Division of The Greyhound Corporation (the Greyhound parent umbrella firm).  That division became known also as the second Western Greyhound Lines (WGL).

            The parent Greyhound firm then also merged into the new Western GL not only the Northwest GL (NWGL), based in Seattle, Washington, but also the route segment [from the Northland GL (NGL)] between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Rock Springs, Wyoming, which had previously been a part of a major cross-country route of the Overland GL (OGL).  [Details about that reassigned route (and its history) follow below, in the section entitled “The Second Western GL.”]

Context

            The year 1929 (the time of the start of the Pacific GL) was a busy year for the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC), the parent Greyhound firm under its original name, and for Carl Eric Wickman, Orville Swan “Sven” Caesar, and their associates in Duluth, Minnesota, and Chicago, Illinois – and for many others elsewhere in the developing motor-coach industry – and in the galloping national economy of the US during the last year of the decade often known as the Flapper Age or the Roaring 20s (just before the devastating Great Depression).

              Wickman in Hibbing

            Erik Wretman was born in 1887 in Sweden, and in 1905 at age 18 he migrated to the US and adopted the anglicized name of Carl Eric Wickman.  He expressed a preference to be known as Eric rather than Carl.  The young Wickman went first to Tucson, Arizona, and then soon to Minnesota, where he settled in Hibbing and got a job in the mines nearby (but became laid off in 1914).

            By 1925 Wickman and his associates had already:

                        pooled their funds and bought a 1913 Hupmobile open touring car in Hibbing, in the hope and anticipation of reselling it at a profit (in 1914);
                        begun to use the unsold car in a taxi service in Hibbing;
                        converted the on-demand taxi service into a bus service on a more-or-less fixed route with scheduled (or at least frequent) trips;
                        achieved much success and attracted imitation and competition;
                        bought also a 1914 Hupmobile closed sedan (late in 1914);
                        adopted the business name of the Hibbing Transportation Company for their partnership (sometime during 1915);
                        bought their first two “real buses” – new Whites with 12-seat bodies – and placed them in service on a new route between Hibbing and Nashwauk (in 1915);
                        incorporated their firm, naming it as the Mesaba [sic] Transportation Company (late in 1915);
                        owned 18 buses and ran them on three regular routes from Hibbing to Alice, Nashwauk, and Grand Rapids (by the end of 1918);
                        started a route from Hibbing to Duluth, about 85 miles to the southeast, using Packard stretched sedans (during 1919, after Ralph Bogan and Swan Sundstrom, members of the firm, returned from the “Great War”);
                        formed a second corporation, the Mesaba [sic] Motors Company – to sell White trucks, to modify cars (often Packards) for use as buses, to build bus bodies, to mount them on truck chassis, to sell the completed buses and converted cars to other carriers, and to transfer some of them to the Mesaba Transportation Company – (early in 1920);
                        bought a majority (controlling) interest in the White Bus Lines, which ran on three intercity routes in three directions from Duluth (by 1923);
                        bought the rights to a route between Duluth and Minneapolis via Saint Paul (all three in Minnesota), about 162 miles (altogether) to the south, thus first venturing beyond the area of Hibbing and Duluth (late in 1923);
                        extended a route of the White Bus Lines from Duluth northeastwardly along the west shore of Lake Superior to Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, thus becoming an international motor-coach carrier (early in 1924);
                        bought several more firms and routes – to reduce or eliminate competition or to increase the route system of the White Bus Lines (during 1924);
                        financed the formation of the Gray Motor Stage Line, the Detroit-Toledo Transportation Company, the Blue Goose Lines, and the Southland Transportation Company, each of which later became a part of the Greyhound Lines (formed during 1923-25).  [Harris Spearin, the seller of the White Bus Lines, founded (with Wickman’s backing), the Southland Transportation Company, running between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky; that route soon fell into place in the route between Detroit, Michigan, and Nashville, Tennessee, and onward to other points in the South and Southeast.]

              Big Dreams and Big Plans

            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 – both cash and credit – with which to build such an organization.  He made contacts in Duluth and assembled a syndicate of bankers, financial executives, and investors.  [Sometime in 1922 he had sold his stock in the Mesaba Transportation Company (to two of his investors in Hibbing).]

            The syndicate then bought (from Wickman and a longtime investor) controlling interests in the White Bus Lines and the Mesaba Motors Company and then merged the latter into the former.  [Thus ended the Motors Company.]

            Sometime early in 1924 Edwin Carl “Ed” Ekstrom, with the backing of Wickman, founded the Safety Motor Coach Lines, based in Muskegon, Michigan.  Ekstrom had previously proposed the name Greyhound for Wickman’s growing empire.  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 slogans “RIDE the GREYHOUNDS” and “GREYHOUNDS of the HIGHWAY.”

            Then late in 1924 the syndicate formed another 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 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.

            In April 1925 Wickman (through the NTC) bought another firm – one which led to major and important 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’s NTC bought those bus operations, it promptly resold the local route (and its buses) to the holding company that owned both city-transit (streetcar) firms (in Duluth and in Superior).

              Caesar on the Team

            During Wickman’s purchase of that concern 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 had been born in Sweden, and his mother had been born in Norway.  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, 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 White truck dealer in Superior.]

            Caesar instantly became Wickman’s sidekick and right-hand man, who later (in 1946) succeeded Wickman as the president and eventually (in 1956) as the chairman of the board of directors of The Greyhound Corporation.  From the start Wickman functioned as the strategist, who planned the course, and Caesar served as the tactician, who ran the show.

              Great Northern Railway

            Then in May 1925 the Great Northern (GN) Railway, based in Minneapolis, bought the Northland Transportation Company (from the syndicate in Duluth) and hired both Wickman and Caesar to move to Minneapolis and to manage the NTC on behalf of the GN Railway (GNR).  Wickman and Caesar then started growing and grooming the NTC (for the GNR) by using railroad money.

            The GNR got the benefit of the expertise and experience of Wickman and Caesar along with their company, and Wickman and Caesar got the unmatched benefit of their access to the railroad’s financial capital and its political influence.

            [Likewise in 1929 the executives of the Pennsylvania Railroad approached those in charge of the Motor Transit Management Company (which in 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 in the East.  That move soon led to the formation of the Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines (PennGL) and the partial ownership of the PennGL by the “Pennsy” Railroad.]

              Automotive Investments

            Meanwhile back in Duluth, having sold the Northland Transportation Company to the GN Railway, the financiers in Duluth soon (in 1925) 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).

            In June 1925 the Automotive Investments bought another Minnesota firm – the Boulevard Transportation Company – from Paul William Tibbetts, who later served as the longtime president (and eventually the chairman of the board of directors) of the Southwestern GL, based in Fort Worth, Texas.

            Both the NTC and the Automotive Investments continued to buy individual routes and entire preexisting motor-coach carriers.

              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 05 February 1930 the MTC became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation (with an uppercase T because the was an integral part of the official name).]

            [More about the preceding events is available in my article bearing the name of the Northland GL.]

              Growth to the East, South, and Southeast

            On 15 October 1926 the MTC, in its first purchase, bought the Safety Motor Coach Lines, which in 1924 Ed Ekstrom had founded (with the support and financial backing of Wickman).

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

            Also on 15 October 1926 the MTC made its second purchase – the Interstate Stages and its subsidiary, the Cardinal Stage Lines.  The latter firm, Cardinal, ran between Chicago and Philadelphia via Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh – through Pittsburgh to Philadelphia – the first route of the MTC to Philadelphia – thus making connections to the rest of the Atlantic Seaboard.

            In 1927, though, Wickman next sent Ekstrom to Fort Worth, Texas, where Ekstrom took part in forming and developing the Southland Greyhound Lines.  In July 1927 Ekstrom became the first president of the Southland GL, which in 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 took an early retirement from Greyhound, and when Paul Tibbetts succeeded him.

            In November 1926 the MTC formed two subsidiaries – the GLI of Indiana – to run a new route between Chicago and Indianapolis, Indiana – and the GLI of Ohio – to take over certain future routes (including one between Indianapolis and Richmond, Indiana, on the way to Dayton and Columbus, both in Ohio, and onward on a second route from Chicago to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, both in Pennsylvania, and to the rest of the Atlantic Seaboard).

            In February 1927 the GLI of Indiana started running (between Chicago and Indianapolis), thus becoming the first business unit of the growing Greyhound empire to make a public use of the name of the Greyhound Lines.

            In March 1927 the MTC bought a majority (controlling) interest in the C.H. Will Motors Corporation, of Minneapolis, from which the MTC had begun to buy its parlor (intercity) coaches.

            In June 1927 the MTC bought the Indianapolis-Cincinnati Bus Company, which ran not only between the named cities but also between Indianapolis and Richmond, Indiana, on the way to Dayton, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and the rest of the East Coast.

            The officials of the MTC hired J.C. Steinmetz in the autumn of 1927 and sent him to Atlanta, Georgia – to buy one or more bus lines to gain access to Florida for the fledgling Greyhound system in the Midwest.  Then Steinmetz developed the new Dixie Safety Coach Lines, which ran between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida, via Atlanta.  It soon (in 1928) became renamed as the Greyhound Lines of Georgia (GLG), which in turn (in 1931) became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines (SEGL).  The Greyhound Corporation then (in 1931) sold the newly renamed SEGL to the Consolidated Coach Corporation (CCC), of Lexington, Kentucky.  The CCC first (in 1931) adopted the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Southeastern GL (with the consent of The Greyhound Corporation), and the CCC (the company itself) later (in 1936) became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines.

              More Development

            In November 1927 the Pickwick Stages arrived in Saint Louis, Missouri, thus meeting Wickman’s MTC (after reaching from San Diego and Los Angeles, both in California, via El Paso and Amarillo, both in Texas).

            On 02 July 1928 the MTC finally succeeded in starting its direct through-coach service between Minneapolis and Chicago (as soon as the roads became passable by the coaches).

            During July 1928 the Pickwick Stages bought (from the MTC) a 45-percent stake in the Greyhound Lines, Inc., of Delaware (the GLI of Delaware), and then on 31 July 1928 the MTC and the Pickwick Stages renamed the GLI of Delaware as the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines (the PG Lines).  Thus the PG Lines became a joint venture and a joint property of its two owners.

            In 1928 the Illinois GL (IGL) became formed as a subsidiary of the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.  The original purpose of the new firm (the IGL) was to take over and to operate a route between Chicago and Saint Louis.  The IGL also took over and ran several other north-south routes in the northern and central parts of Lincolnland.

            Sometime during 1928 the GLI of Indiana took over the Detroit-Toledo-Cleveland Bus Company, connecting the named cities.

            In August 1928 the GLI of Indiana took over the Cleveland-Pittsburgh Motor Stages, running between the named cities.

            On 11 September 1928 a coach of the YellowaY-Pioneer System completed the first regularly scheduled coast-to-coast bus trip in the US, from Los Angeles to New York City, by a single operating company.  However, that service did not long continue with any regularity because of the difficulties for a single thinly capitalized firm to sustain such an extended and ambitious operation.  [Buck Travis, the founder and president of the YellowaY-Pioneer System, rode as a passenger and observer aboard that coach during the entire trip.]

            In September 1928 the MTC merged the Cardinal Stage Lines (bought in September 1926) into the GLI of Indiana, thus giving the MTC a route all the way from Chicago (and from Wisconsin and Minnesota) to Philadelphia, ready to make connections to New York City; Baltimore, Maryland; and Washington, DC – and to prepare to extend its own route network along the Atlantic Seaboard.  That merger provided the seed from which the Pennsylvania GL soon grew and developed.

            On the same day, in September 1928, the GLI of Indiana started a shuttle service on a branch line from Gettysburg (on the Cardinal route, on US-30, between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) to Baltimore and onward to Washington.  Soon the passenger traffic there grew enough to require separate coaches to the two different destinations.

            In October 1928 the GLI of Indiana started a new alternate shortcut route between Gettysburg and New York City via Harrisburg and Allentown, both in Pennsylvania, thus bypassing Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey.

            In November 1928 the MTC bought the Southland Transportation Company, running between Indianapolis and Louisville via Cincinnati, then merged the Indianapolis-Cincinnati route into the GLI of Indiana and merged the Cincinnati-Louisville route into the GLI of Ohio.

            In December 1928 the GLI of Indiana started a new alternate shortcut route between Chicago and Pittsburgh – the MTC’s third route between Chicago and Philadelphia (and the rest of the Atlantic Seaboard) – via Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Mansfield, Ohio – thus bypassing Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland.  [Significantly, that route paralleled the rail route of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR); that significance became obvious in 1929, when the officials of the PRR approached their counterparts of the Motor Transit Management Company, and in 1930, when Greyhound formed the PennGL, and when the PRR bought a minority (noncontrolling) interest in the PennGL.]

              Motor Transit Management Company

            Sometime during 1928 the MTC formed the Motor Transit Management Company and based it in Cleveland, Ohio – to own the coaches, buildings, and other facilities, to manage the workforce, and to conduct the activities of the various regional subsidiaries in the Northeast and in the Midwest (east of Chicago and Saint Louis).  The regional companies continued to hold their respective certificates for their routes, and the management firm conducted the operations.  Orville Caesar served as the president of the management firm, which in 1930 became renamed as the Greyhound Management Company.

            [The original Greyhound companies involved with the management company were the GLI of Indiana, the GLI of Ohio, the Safety Motor Coach Lines, and the Pennsylvania General Transit Company (which last firm became the Pennsylvania Greyhound Transit Company, which in turn became a part of the new Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines).  As more subsidiaries (and then divisions) came into existence in those regions, then those new firms became added to the list of the ones under the direction and administration of the management company.  The newly formed Pennsylvania GL was among the additions to the carriers under the management firm, as were the PGL of Illinois, the PGL of Indiana, and the PGL of Virginia.  Eventually those other Greyhound companies were the first Central GL, the second Central GL, the CGL of Michigan, the CGL of New York, the first Eastern GL, the EGL of Michigan, the EGL of New England, the Illinois GL, the New England GL, the first Ohio GL, the Richmond GL, and the Canadian Greyhound Lines, Limited.  About the middle of 1941 the parent Greyhound firm discontinued that centralized approach, and it transferred all the managerial and administrative functions to the respective regional operating companies and to the headquarters of The Greyhound Corporation (in Chicago).  [If you wish, please read my article about divisions and subsidiaries of corporations and the differences and similarities between them.]

              Reaching to the West Coast

            Early in 1929 Wickman’s Motor Transit Corporation (MTC) made the first of its two reaches from the Midwest toward the Pacific Coast.  The MTC bought a minority (noncontrolling) interest in William Crawford’s Columbia Gorge Motor Coach Company (CGMCC), which ran between Portland and Pendleton, both in Oregon, in part through the famous and picturesque Columbia Gorge (the valley of the Columbia River).  The CGMCC already held options for buying two more lines, which, if exercised, would give it a complete route between Portland and Salt Lake City.  Soon the CGMCC exercised its options, thus buying those two routes and thus reaching Salt Lake City, and the MTC increased its ownership (in the CGMCC) from a minority interest into a majority (controlling) interest.  The MTC did not merge the CGMCC into any of the operating companies of the MTC but rather temporarily allowed it to continue to run under its own name as a wholly owned subsidiary of the MTC – until 31 May 1929, when the MTC sold the CGMCC to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.

            Soon after the MTC made its reach to the Pacific Northwest, it reached also to San Francisco and elsewhere in California.  That’s the subject of the next section, entitled “Pacific Transportation Securities.”

              More Growth in the Midwest and East

            In April 1929 the MTC formed the Eastern GL (EGL), as a holding company (rather than as an operating company), to own several Greyhound subsidiaries, both preexisting ones and future ones, to the east of Chicago – in addition to (and separately from) the Pennsylvania GL.

            In May 1929 the MTC consolidated in the Northland Transportation Company all of its operations between Minneapolis and Chicago and between Chicago and Des Moines, Iowa.

                During 1929 the MTC and the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) began negotiations that led to the creation of the Pennsylvania GL and the investment of the PRR in the PennGL.

            In 1929 the MTC bought the Great Lakes Stages (GLS) and the Colonial Motor Coach Corporation, then in 1930 it renamed the GLS as the Eastern Greyhound Lines of Ohio (the EGL of Ohio) and renamed Colonial as the Eastern Greyhound Lines of New York (the EGL of New York).  Those two purchases provided the MTC with routes between Chicago and New York City via Cleveland and across the Southern Tier of New York and northern Pennsylvania.  [Those two operating companies, the EGL of Ohio and the EGL of New York, became operating subsidiaries of the undenominated main EGL (a holding company), as did both the EGL of Michigan (formerly the Safety Motor Coach Lines) and the EGL of New England (which in 1930 began running, between Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City).  In 1935 the EGL and its EGL subsidiaries became renamed as the Central GL and the CGL subsidiaries (except the EGL of New England) – in preparation for the investment in the CGL by the New York Central Railroad.]

            In May 1929 the MTC bought the YellowaY-Pioneer (sometimes called also Pioneer-YellowaY) System.  Although that firm ran mostly in the West, it had also a route between Saint Louis and Pittsburgh, which the MTC assigned to the GLI of Indiana.  [The other routes went to other Greyhound companies.]

            YellowaY-Pioneer had connected in Pittsburgh with the Purple Stages, running between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  To maintain the continuity of the previous interchange arrangement (of Purple and YellowaY-Pioneer) and to enhance the MTC’s competitive position, the MTC then bought also the Purple Stages and merged it too into the GLI of Indiana.

            On 01 August 1929 the GN Railway sold the Northland Transportation Company to the Motor Transit Corporation and the Automotive Investments (Wickman’s acquisition firm).  [The syndicate had sold the NTC to the GNR (in 1925) for $500,000, and the GNR sold the NTC to the MTC and the syndicate (in 1929) for $3,100,000 (after many additions and improvements).]

            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.  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 August 1929 the MTC – through its acquisition company, the Automotive Investments – bought the Richmond-Washington Motor Coaches.  In the next month, September 1929, the MTC formed the Richmond-Greyhound Lines (RGL), temporarily using a hyphen in the name, then bought and took over the RF&P Transportation Company.  In 1930 Greyhound merged into the RGL (formerly known as the RF&P Transportation Company) the Richmond-Washington Motor Coaches, which it had bought in August 1929; then in 1931 Greyhound bought also the Richmond-Norfolk Motor Coaches and merged it too into the RGL.  In 1936, during a reorganization and reincorporation of the RGL, it became slightly renamed by the removal of the hyphen from its former name.  During that same year, 1936, the RGL made a contract to buy the Peninsula Transit Corporation (PTC), then in -37 it completed the purchase and merged the PTC into itself.  Predictably, the RGL was based in Richmond, Virginia.  [The RF&P Transportation Company was the bus subsidiary of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac (RF&P) Railway.]

              Will and Yellow Coaches

            In 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 by GM.  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).  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.

            Pursuant to another term of the deal between GM and the MTC, GM turned over the Will facilities (in Minneapolis) to Carl Herman Will (the previous owner of the C.H. Will Motors Corporation, where Will then continued to operate his other business firm, Tropic-Aire, Inc., which built automotive heaters and related hardware.  Orville Caesar had conceived and developed the notion of heating the insides of the coaches of the NTC by using electric fans and hot water (from the cooling systems of the engines of the coaches).  Caesar had obtained patents for the apparatus and continued to hold them, although he assigned the rights to them to Tropic-Aire.  Caesar’s and Will’s heaters had already become the first automotive heaters using that concept anywhere in the US.  In October 1926 they had first been installed aboard the coaches of the NTC and the various elements of the MTC.  Many other automotive builders promptly started to install Tropic-Aire heating systems in their vehicles too.  [In 1951 the McGraw Electric Company bought Tropic-Aire, then in 1957 McGraw became a part of the McGraw-Edison Company, and then in 1985 the Cooper Industries bought McGraw-Edison.  McGraw also made and sold room heaters and blow dryers (for hair styling), all under the brand name of Tropic‑Aire.]

              The Greyhound Corporation

            On 05 February 1930 the Motor Transit Corporation became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation, and the Motor Transit Management Company became renamed as the Greyhound Management Company.

            In March 1930 the parent firm, under its new name, formed the main undenominated Pennsylvania GL, based in Cleveland, which at first served not as an operating company but rather a holding company (to own subsidiary operating firms).

            A longtime president of the Pennsylvania GL was Swan Sundstrom, who concurrently was also a longtime vice president of the Richmond GL, and who had been one of the original drivers who had worked for Eric Wickman, in the Mesaba Transportation Company, in Hibbing, Minnesota.

            In or about 1930 the GLI of Indiana took over, from the Indiana Public-service Company, the rights to the route between Indianapolis and Louisville.  Thus it extended its Chicago-Indianapolis route directly to Louisville (bypassing Cincinnati).  By doing so it not only completed its parallel route of the PRR railway route between Chicago and Louisville but also connected Chicago (in Louisville as well as Cincinnati) with Florida, the Gulf Coast, and much of the rest of the Southeast via the Consolidated Coach Corporation, which soon became the Southeastern GL.  Thus the route between Chicago (along with Wisconsin and Minnesota) and Louisville became a major high-volume trunk line.

            In June 1930 the Greyhound parent firm formed the first Central GL.

            Soon afterward the PennGL took over also the Interstate Highway Limited, running between Detroit and Pittsburgh.

            Also in 1930 the Safety Motor Coach Lines became renamed as the Eastern GL of Michigan (the EGL of Michigan), then in -35 (briefly) as the Central GL of Michigan (the CGL of Michigan, the third CGL); then in -36 it became merged into the undenominated main second Central GL.

            The Capitol Greyhound Lines came into existence in November 1930, as a joint venture (owned in two equal shares) of the National Highway Transport (NHT) Company and The Greyhound Corporation.  Its purpose was to operate a new single main line between Washington, DC, and Saint Louis, Missouri.  It ran along US-50, a route shorter and six hours faster than the best alternate route then available.  [The longer route ran via Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Indianapolis.]  The NHT Company in July 1931 became the Atlantic GL.

            Early in 1931 the National Highway Transport (NHT) Company, based in Charleston, West Virginia, which had already formed operating ties to Greyhound and had begun negotiations with the Dog, began using the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Atlantic Greyhound Lines (while at first keeping its own previous corporate name).  Then in July 1931, as I first mentioned in the preceding paragraph, NHT became renamed as the Atlantic Greyhound Lines (AGL), with the consent of Greyhound, although the parent Greyhound firm had then acquired only a minority interest in NHT and not yet a controlling interest.  In 1936 The Greyhound Corporation accumulated a controlling (majority) interest in the Atlantic GL; in 1957 the parent firm finished buying the minority interest in the AGL and then merged the AGL into itself as a division.

            In 1931 The Greyhound Corporation bought a controlling (majority) interest in the Smith Motor Coach Company, based in Memphis, and renamed it as the Dixie Greyhound Lines (DGL).  Thus the DGL provided major links between Chicago and New Orleans, Louisiana, and between Saint Louis and New Orleans.  In 1948 Greyhound bought the remaining minority interest in the DGL and merged it as a division into the parent umbrella firm.

            In 1932 the Teche Lines, based in New Orleans, began to use the hyphenated brand name, trade name, or service name of the Teche-Greyhound Lines (with the consent of The Greyhound Corporation, the parent Greyhound firm), while retaining its own corporate name until -34.  The use of the Greyhound name started after Teche entered into a through-traffic tariff agreement with Greyhound, and after Greyhound began to buy a minority interest in Teche, which interest continued to grow.  During 1939 the parent umbrella firm finished buying all of the remaining minority interest in the Teche GL; then in -41 it merged Teche into itself as a division.  The Teche GL provided the southernmost link that connected New Orleans with Memphis, Saint Louis, Chicago, and other points.

            In June 1935 the MTC and the New York Central (railway) System began negotiations that led to the creation of the second Central GL (CGL) and the investment of the railway firm in the second CGL – to provide a motor-coach network paralleling and supporting the passenger-train routes of the NYC Railroad.  That arrangement repeated the case of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Pennsylvania GL.  The main route of concern there was the touted “water-level” route, between Chicago and New York City via Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Albany (the last two in Upstate New York) and the Hudson River Valley (between Albany and New York City; however, there was also an extensive route network in a swath between Chicago and New York City, especially in Upstate New York.  In September 1935 the second Central GL came into existence and began to run.

            In 1937 The Greyhound Corporation formed the New England Greyhound Lines (NEGL) as a subsidiary of the parent firm.  The purpose of the new concern was to take over three routes of the New England Transportation (NET) Company plus two subsidiaries of the NET Company – the Berkshire Motor Coach Lines and the Victoria Coach Lines, which were two discount-price carriers that NET had previously bought (not later than 1932) – along with the Quaker Stages and the Old Colony Coach Lines.  Because of a delay in receiving approval from the federal Interstate Commerce Commission, the NEGL did not start running until 1939.  The NET Company was the bus subsidiary of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford (NYNH&H) Railroad, commonly known as the New Haven (NH) Railroad.  In turn the railway firm bought a one-half interest in the New England GL.

            In 1941 The Greyhound Corporation formed the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines (GLGL) as another subsidiary of the parent firm – to take over the Eastern Michigan Motorbuses.  Soon afterward Greyhound also merged into the GLGL both the first Ohio GL and the Michigan routes of the second Central GL.

             In 1943, during World War II (WW2), the Union Pacific Stages (UPS) and the Interstate Transit Lines (ITL) began to use the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Overland Greyhound Lines (OGL) – with, of course, the consent of the parent Greyhound umbrella firm – after Greyhound bought a one-third interest in each of those two concerns.  In 1952 the Greyhound parent firm bought the entire ownership of both the UPS and the ITL (previously just minority interests), and it next merged those two former affiliates together into itself as a single new division (using the same old name of the Overland Greyhound Lines) of the parent firm.

            In 1946, less than a year after the end of WW2, The Greyhound Corporation bought the Florida Motor Lines, based in Jacksonville, and renamed it as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL), thus providing connections throughout the Sunshine State with all points elsewhere in the Greyhound system.

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

            [And much is available about each of the individual Greyhound companies mentioned above.  Please click on any one or more of the inline links in the text above (or elsewhere throughout this article).  All of the text in this article is rich with inline links (in the online version), as are my other articles at my website.  The appearance of the links is subtle, but all the links work properly.]

Pacific Transportation Securities

            Shortly after the MTC approached William Crawford’s Columbia Gorge Motor Coach Company, the MTC made the second of its two reaches from the Midwest toward the Pacific Coast.  Early in 1929, under the leadership of Eric Wickman and his associates in Duluth and Chicago, several motor-coach interests on the West Coast opened discussions, and they found a better way to the future.  The result, on 17 May 1929, was the incorporation of the Pacific Transportation Securities (PTS), Inc., based in San Francisco.  Three investors held equal shares in the new firm; the owners were the MTC (Greyhound under its original name), The Pickwick Corporation (the parent umbrella firm of the Pickwick Stages and several other Pickwick subsidiaries), and the Southern Pacific (SP) Railroad.  Wickman served as the chairman of the board of directors of the PTS.  [Sometime during 1930 Greyhound bought all of Pickwick’s stock in the PTS; several times through the years Greyhound also bought (in steps) the stock owned by the SP Railroad until 1956, when it bought the last of it.]

Start of the Pacific Greyhound Lines

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

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

            The PTS (from the outset) began to run its new motor-coach property under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Pacific Greyhound Lines.  Thus began the Pacific GL, which instantly became the largest business unit of the growing Greyhound empire.  Before long (sometime during the next year, 1930) the PTS (the corporation itself) became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines, Inc.; that is, the name of the corporation (the PTS) became changed to the same as its brand name, trade name, or service name.  Again, thus began the Pacific GL (PacGL).

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

            Now let’s look at each of the three large parts involved in the formation of the Pacific GL.  The first of them was the California Transit (CalTrans) Company.

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

            Wesley Elgin “Buck” Travis – who was known mostly or usually as either Buck Travis or W.E. Travis – was a colorful, energetic, and productive pioneer in highway transit in the Far West.  He was born – on 22 July 1870 in Hamilton, White Pine County, Nevada, near what’s now US-50 and between Ely and Eureka – as the eldest of seven children (and the first of four sons) of a man who, during about 25 years, owned and operated a large fleet of horse-drawn stagecoaches on a large route network in the Far West. 

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

            At age 22 in 1892 Buck took control of his father’s rural “star” routes (using horse-drawn delivery vehicles on about 2,000 miles of those routes) in the service of the US Mail, which he subcontracted to others.  In 1905, however, the Postmaster General changed a policy and passed a rule that required that the mail contractors must live in the respective served territories.  Thus by 1908, after 16 years, Travis had sold his star-route contracts to other people (including some of his subcontractors), and then he moved on to other enterprises.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            On 17 May 1929 – as I described above in the section entitled “Pacific Transportation Securities” – the Pacific Transportation Securities (PTS), Inc., came into existence, and two weeks later, on 31 May 1929, the PTS bought the assets and operations of three large motor-coach concerns, including the California Transit Company.  [The PTS bought CalTrans from the AMTC.]  The PTS (from the outset) began to run its new motor-coach property under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Pacific Greyhound Lines (PacGL).  And soon (sometime in the next year, 1930) the PTS became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines, Inc.; that is, the name of the corporation (the PTS) became changed to the same as its brand name, trade name, or service name.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            Travis later served for a while as the chairman of the board of The Greyhound Corporation, but, by his own request, he even later returned to San Francisco and to the presidency of the PacGL.

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

            In the spring of 1929, when the PTS bought Buck Travis’s CalTrans Company, the Pioneer Stages held and ran these routes (all within California):

                        a trunk line between San Francisco and Los Angeles via Oakland, Livermore, Tracy, Los Baños, Mendota, Fresno, Tulare, Bakersfield, and Saugus;
                        a trunk line between Sacramento and Los Angeles via Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Fresno, Tulare, Bakersfield, and  Saugus;
                        a connector between San Francisco and Sacramento via  Oakland;
                        a connector between Stockton and  Tracy;
                        a connector between Merced and Los Baños;
                        a branch line between Livermore and San  Jose;
                        a branch line between Stockton and Carl Inn (near the western gateway to the Yosemite National  Park);
                        a branch line between Mendota and San Joaquin;
                        a branch line between Fresno and Clovis;
                        a branch line between Fresno and Corcoran;
                        a branch line between Bakersfield and Maricopa;
                        a loop between Fresno and Tulare via Visalia;
                        a loop between Visalia and Delano via  Porterville;
                        a branch line between Visalia and Coalinga;
                        and a loop between Bakersfield and Saugus via Tehachapi, Mojave, Rosamund, Lancaster, and Palmdale.

            In short, the Pioneer Stages dominated the area between Los Angeles in the south and San Francisco and Sacramento in the north via the Central Valley.

            On 31 May 1929 the Pacific Transportation Securities bought (from Buck’s AMTC) Buck’s CalTrans Company – its routes, coaches, facilities, and other assets, including the coach-building firm.  Then Buck liquidated his AMTC and dissolved the empty corporate shell.

Charles Wren and His Pickwick Stages

            The Pickwick Stages provided a large part for the creation of the Pacific Greyhound Lines, on 31 May 1929, when the Pacific Transportation Securities bought that large part – routes, coaches, facilities, and other assets – from the Pickwick Stages, which was a subsidiary of The Pickwick Corporation.

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

            In the next year, 1912, A.L. Hayes bought a second-hand Ford Model T and used it to run an “auto-stage” line between San Diego and Escondido, California, a small town about 36 miles to the north.

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

            In 1914 Grise and Hayes merged their two operations together.  They soon began to use increasingly larger vehicles, including Locomobile and Pierce-Arrow touring cars.  Grise and Hayes, first individually and later jointly, had used the Pickwick Theater in San Diego as their terminal in that city.  Later in that same year, 1914, they named their concern, apparently a partnership, as the Pickwick Stages (taking a cue from the name of that theater).  Even later, in 1917, Hayes bought the interest of Grise in their firm, thus gaining the entire ownership of the Pickwick Stages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

            Further, in 1922 Wren formed a holding company, which he named as The Pickwick Corporation (with an uppercase T because the word the was an integral part of the official name), based in Los Angeles.  The Pickwick Stages, Inc., became a subsidiary of the umbrella holding company.  [Thus Wren, through his new corporation, gained complete control over the Pickwick Stages.]  Other subsidiaries later included the Pickwick Airways, a group of AM-radio broadcast stations, a coach-building plant, and a chain of hotels.

            Wren continued to expand his route network between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  During that time, in September 1924 and in December 1925, Wren bought two bus operations (based in Fresno, California) from E.J. Thompson, who next served as Wren’s superintendent or regional manager in San Francisco, and who later collaborated with Wren in forming the Rocky Mountain Stages, to offer highway service between San Francisco and Salt Lake City via Reno.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            Soon Wren started a branch line from Springfield, Missouri, between Joplin and Saint Louis, to Harrison, Arkansas, apparently on his way to Little Rock, Arkansas – and perhaps on his way to forge a route between Kansas City and Memphis, Tennessee – and then who knows where beyond Memphis.  [After Wren arrived in Saint Louis, he did indeed (through the PG Lines) reach southwardly to Memphis and onward to Birmingham, Alabama, and to New Orleans – by buying a bankrupt firm (the Gregory Bus Lines) in 1929.  More about that is available in my articles about the Dixie GL and the PG Lines.]

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

            In Saint Louis, on arrival there, on 01 November 1927, the Pickwick Stages met the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC).

            [The Pickwick Stages did not meet the MTC in the Pacific Northwest until early in 1929, when the MTC bought a minority position in William Crawford’s Columbia Gorge Motor Coach Company.  More about that is available in my article about the Overland GL.]

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

            In March 1928, shortly after the Pickwick Stages arrived in Saint Louis (on 01 November 1927), Wren extended his firm eastwardly – to Vincennes, Indiana, on his way to Louisville, Kentucky – and to Pittsburgh via Indianapolis, Columbus (in Ohio), and Wheeling (in West Virginia).  It appears that Wren had intended to continue all the way to the East Coast – to Philadelphia, Washington, and New York City – but then (on 31 May 1929) Wren and his Pickwick Stages pulled back to Saint Louis.  [More about that is available in my article about the PG Lines.]

            In the spring of 1929, just before the PTS bought large parts of Charles Wren’s Pickwick Stages, Pickwick held and ran these routes:

                        the original route between San Diego and El Centro;
                        a branch line between El Centro and Calexico;
                        an intricate route network between San Diego and Los Angeles, including a route between Los Angeles and Boulevard (between San Diego and El Centro) via Riverside and Julian;
                        the coastal or near-coastal route between Los Angeles and San Francisco via San Fernando, Castaic, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, Salinas, and San Jose;
                        a loop between Castaic and Ventura via Palmdale, Lancaster, Mojave, Tehachapi, Bakersfield, Famosa, and Lost Hills;
                        a branch line between Lost Hills and Taft;
                        the extension between San Francisco and Portland via Oakland, Fairfield, Davis, Woodland, Williams, Red Bluff, Redding, and Weed (with a view of Mount Shasta), all in California, and then Medford, Roseburg, Eugene, Albany, and Salem, all the latter five in Oregon;
                        several loops and spurs, especially in Southern California, between Los Angeles and Ventura;
                        a route between San Francisco and Salt Lake City via Reno;
                        one between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City via Las Vegas;
                        one between Los Angeles and El Paso via El Centro and Yuma;
                        one between San Diego and El Paso via El Centro and Yuma;
                        one between Los Angeles and Denver via Albuquerque, New Mexico;
                        one between El Paso and Saint Louis via Roswell, Amarillo, and Tulsa;
                        a branch line between Kansas City and Joplin;
                        a branch line between Springfield and Harrison;
                        an extension between Saint Louis and Vincennes;
                        and an extension between Saint Louis and Pittsburgh.

            On 31 May 1929 the Pacific Transportation Securities bought most of the Pickwick Stages – most of its routes, coaches, facilities, and other assets – all except the assets related to the last six items listed above in the preceding paragraph – the route between Los Angeles and Denver via Albuquerque, the route between El Paso and Saint Louis, its two branches, and its two eastwardly extensions beyond Saint Louis.

            On that same date, 31 May 1929, the Pickwick Stages sold those remaining assets – related to all of its routes, branches, and extensions to the northeast of El Paso – to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.

            Afterward the Pickwick Stages was no longer a carrier but rather just a holding company – one which held a 45-percent ownership in the PG Lines and a one-third ownership in the brand-new Pacific Transportation Securities.

Southern Pacific Motor Transport Company

            In 1908 King Henry Ford and his Ford Motor Company introduced their Model T, which, along with other horseless carriages, began to enable competition against the passenger trains of the railway industry throughout the US.  By 1920 the paving and other improvements to the highways of the nation allowed a tremendous increase in the rivalry from the new contraptions.

            During the 1920s the railways across the country, including the Southern Pacific (SP) Railroad, based in San Francisco, faced a set of growing challenges:

                        Increasing numbers of passengers reduced their patronage of the trains and shifted their reliance to motor vehicles in various ways.
                        The smaller passenger loads on the trains produced lower revenues, thus causing many trains to become unprofitable or marginally profitable.
                        Population growth in some areas invited new feeder or connector services to the railheads but did not yet justify the laying of new trackage or the running of new trains to some of the growing areas.
                        Motor-coach carriers had begun to spring up all across the nation and had begun to compete with many trains, thus causing a drain of revenue from the railways to the bus companies.
                        Motor-truck carriers had likewise begun to spring up to compete against the trains, thus causing also a drain of revenue from the railways to the trucking companies.
                        On some routes the more profitable freight-train traffic had become busy, thus increasing the demand for the finite or limited track capacity, which continued to become increasingly scarce.

            The obvious solution for that set of problems was for the railroads to start their own motor-truck and motor-coach services – to offer highway-based carriage services for cargo and passengers aboard their own trucks and buses.  That would allow the railway firms to recover the revenue (or at least a part of it) for freight payments and passenger fares otherwise lost to outside rivals.  By cancelling some of the unprofitable or marginally profitable trains (either passenger trains or freight trains), that would not only eliminate some of their losses or near-losses but also free some of the scarce track capacity for the benefit of the more profitable freight trains.  The railroads could create their own highway subsidiaries, or they could buy or contract preexisting highway carriers.  Some of the railroads did it one way, and some of the others did it the other way.  And a few of them did it both ways.  Further, several railroads operated combination (“combo”) motor coaches (“brucks”) with large cargo compartments in their tails.

            As early as 1924 the SP Railroad began to take part in joint ticketing in coöperation with local auto-stage operators.  During that year the SP thus discontinued at least five steam trains and 20 motorized railcars on branch lines.  Next the company started dropping some of the cars from some of the trains and then started dropping some of the midday and late-evening trains from the timetables – while the rubber-tired stages picked up the slack.

            Still, though, the railway continued to bleed cash while running many nearly empty one-car steam trains.

            Recognizing the futility of trying to continue that way, those in charge sought a better way to run their railroads.

            On 07 April 1927 the California Railroad Commission (the appropriate regulatory agency) granted its consent to a request from the SP Railroad for a replacement of railway service with motor coaches.  The decision allowed the SP to buy the Boulder Creek Stage Lines from Amy Goodwin Harvey, the widow of James Alexander Harvey, who had died at age 52 in 1921.  James had founded his firm about 1910, running about 16 miles through the redwood forests between Santa Cruz and Boulder Creek via Felton.  [Previously he had owned and run the horse-drawn Santa Cruz and Pescadero Stage Line, and before that he had worked as a stage driver for others.]  On 29 May 1927 the SP took over the stage line, its operation, and its 12-seat Reo combo coach.

            On the day of the decision, 07 April 1927, the SP Railroad formed its Southern Pacific Motor Transport (SPMT) Company, a wholly owned subsidiary, to take over its first highway operation and to expand from that start.  On 03 June 1927 the Railroad Commission allowed the SP to transfer its stage line to its SPMT Company, and the SP promptly carried through.

            The SPMT Company in July 1927 received its first new rolling stock – two Mack AB coaches with aluminum bodies.

            From that modest origin the SPMT Company grew fast and greatly.

            The next such step took place in Oregon.  On 20 September 1927, after some involvement with local transit systems in Salem and Eugene, the SPMT Company started its first intercity motor-coach lines as replacements for trains – electric railcars on the first three and steam trains on the fourth one:

                        between Portland and Lake Oswego (10 miles);
                        between Portland and Forest Grove via Hillsboro (10 miles);
                        between Portland and Corvallis via McMinnville (84 miles);
                        and between Portland and Ashland via Salem and Eugene (329 miles).

The last of those four motor-coach lines ran parallel to a main rail line of the parent SP firm, and it did so, using 13 Yellow Coach Ys and several ACF parlor cars, in direct competition against the Pickwick Stages.

            In December 1927 the SPMT Company started its first interstate (not merely intercity but also interstate) motor-coach lines as replacements for steam trains on three routes:

                        between Reno, Nevada, and Truckee, California (38 miles);
                        between Medford, Oregon, and Weed, California (89 miles);
                        and between Grant’s Pass, Oregon, and Eureka, California (183 miles).

            Also in December 1927 the SPMT Company began to increase its operations in California by requesting authority (from the Railroad Commission) to replace some of its passenger trains with highway coaches, and in January 1928 it made its first purchase of a preexisting motor-coach carrier – the Dunham Stage Lines.  That new property ran a 35-mile route between Napa and Santa Rosa, using three 18-seat buses, which new Fageol Safety Coaches soon joined.  [The correct English pronunciation of the French name Fageol (in the US) is “fad-jull,” rhyming with “fragile” or “satchel.”]

             In Oregon the SPMT Company found it hard just to reach a breakeven point while competing against its rivals there. The rivals included not only the Pickwick Stages, which had extended in December 1925 between San Francisco and Portland, but also several smaller independent firms.

            The SPMT management sought to improve its lot by buying some of the competition.  Three concerns were members of a trade association, which had coördinated their schedules and issued their timetables under the collective name of the Oregon Stages System.  SPMT bought them – the Oregon Stages and the Coast Auto Lines in December 1928 and the Pacific Stages in January 1929.  Those three purchases included 75 coaches altogether.

            Further, SPMT kept the association – the Oregon Stages System (OSS) – and then moved into the OSS the SPMT’s existing routes, equipment, facilities, and operations in Oregon (except the city-transit firms in Salem and Eugene).

            The Oregon Stages (the first of the three members of the OSS) had run three significant routes:

                        between Salem and Albany (28 miles), which it had bought in 1925;
                        between Portland and Albany via Salem, the state capital, 79 miles, which it also had bought in 1925;
                        and between Portland and Ashland, a main route covering the entire north-south width of the state, via Salem, Eugene, and Grant’s Pass (329 miles).

            The Coast Auto Line (the second of the three members of the OSS) had run four notable routes:

                        between Roseburg and Myrtle Point (58 miles);
                        between Crescent City, California, and Grant’s Pass (83 miles);
                        between Crescent City and North Bend (140 miles);
                        and between North Bend and Drain via Reedsport (74 miles).

            The Pacific Stages (the third of the three original members of the OSS) had run suburban operations based in Portland plus these three routes:

                        between Portland and Tillamook (73 miles);
                        between Portland and McMinnville via Newberg (37 miles);
                        and between Portland and McMinnville via Forest Grove (50 miles).

            During 1928 the SPMT Company bought (from various previous owners) at least these four more such routes in the Golden State:

                        in January between Weed and Dunsmuir (21 miles);
                        in May seasonal service between Truckee and Tahoe (16 miles);
                        in July between Petaluma and Boyes Hot Springs (16 miles);
                        and in November between Chico and Red Bluff (43 miles).

            More expansion took place during March 1929 north of San Francisco by the addition of these routes:

                        between Petaluma and Vallejo (27 miles);
                        between Lakeville and Boyes Hot Springs (12 miles);
                        and between San Rafael and Agua Caliente (30 miles).

            About the same time the SPMT Company, using combo coaches (“brucks”), replaced two daily steam mixed (both freight and passenger) trains between Gilroy and Tres Piños (22 miles), south of San Francisco and San Jose.  It also started similar service between Point Reyes and Monte Rio (55 miles), north of San Francisco.

            Meanwhile, though, during November 1928 the SPMT Company took two huge interstate steps and a smaller one.  On 18 November 1928 it started daily service between Portland and San Francisco (775 miles), and on 29 November 1928 it started tri-weekly service between Los Angeles and El Paso (1,015 miles).  Later, on 26 February 1929, it increased that latter service to daily trips.  Late in the winter or early in the spring of 1929, it started a route within Arizona – between Miami and Duncan via Coolidge Dam (135 miles) – and an alternate route between Phoenix and Lordsburg, New Mexico (281 miles).  The coaches between Phoenix and Lordsburg connected at each end with SPMT’s through-coaches between Los Angeles and El Paso.  The firm used new Fageol Safety Coaches between Portland and San Francisco and new White 54s between Los Angeles and El Paso (and between Phoenix and Lordsburg).

            SPMT’s three new interstate routes – between Portland and San Francisco, between Los Angeles and El Paso, and between Phoenix and Lordsburg – competed directly against the Pickwick Stages.

            By May 1929 the SPMT Company ran 200 motor coaches along 3,800 route miles, and it had built its system within just two years.

            On 01 May 1929 the SPMT Company bought the California Parlor Car Tours, which had begun in 1923 and had already become well established in Southern California as an operator of sightseeing services, including all-expense tours.  The firm expanded as well to Northern California.  It remained as a separate subsidiary for many decades into the Greyhound era (as a Greyhound subsidiary).  Eventually in 1985 The Greyhound Corporation sold the firm, and it now operates as an independent operator, based in San Francisco.  [More is available below in the section entitled “Addendum: California Parlor Car Tours.”]

            On 31 May 1929 the Pacific Transportation Securities bought the motor-coach business (but not the highway-truck business) of the SP Motor Transport Company – its routes, coaches, facilities, and other assets.

Motor Transit Company

            In California a motor-coach carrier, the Motor Transit Company, based in Los Angeles, existed during 1920-39.  Despite the confusingly similar name, however, it had no connection or relationship with the Motor Transit Corporation, based first in Duluth, Minnesota, and later in Chicago, Illinois.  That is, the two firms were completely separate and different from each other.  [The latter one, the Motor Transit Corporation, on 05 February 1930 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation (the longtime parent Greyhound umbrella firm).]

            Still, though, on 03 April 1930, the Pacific Transportation Securities (PTS), shortly before it became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines (PacGL), bought a one-third interest in the Motor Transit Company – at the same time when the Pacific Electric (PE) Railway Company bought the other two-thirds.  The PE Railway had already begun to run rubber-tired motor coaches as well as electric railcars.  [The PacGL held its one-third interest until July 1936, when the PE Railway became the sole owner by buying the one-third interest of the PacGL.  Below, at the end of this section, I mention again the changes in the ownership of the Motor Transit Company.]

            Olive Ransome (“O.R.” or “Ollie”) Fuller was the spark plug or driving force behind the Motor Transit Company.  [That’s Olive without an R and Ransome with an E.]  He expressed a preference to be known as O.R. (at least during his adult years).

            On 05 October 1898, Fuller’s 18th birthday, he boarded a train in Wichita, Kansas, to travel from his mother’s home to Los Angeles, where he moved in with his father and stepmother.  At first he worked for his father, Charles Henry “C.H.” Fuller, who owned (in part) and ran a livery stable (the Pioneer Stables) and a local drayage firm (the Pioneer Truck and Transfer Company).

            Then in 1905 O.R. married Agnes Nicolas [sic], a native of Fullerton, about 26 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.  They settled in Fullerton, where he began to raise hay for his father’s livery stable, and where he and his brother-in-law, Peter Nicholas [sic], opened a livery business, dealing in mules and horses, and a store, offering dry goods, feed, and building materials.

            O.R. also caught the automotive bug, as did many other young men of that era.  In 1907 he obtained a franchise to sell and service Cadillac cars, and he renamed his livery concern as the Eureka Stables and Garage.

            However, in April 1909 O.R. sold his Cadillac dealership, and he and Agnes moved to Los Angeles.  He felt persuaded that motor trucks would replace horses and wagons.  With his father’s financial support he formed a truck dealership, the Pioneer Commercial Auto Company.  He got appointments as a local agent for Randolph, Rapid, and Reliance motor trucks.

            In 1911 the GM Corporation created its General Motors Truck Company, bought the builders of both Rapid and Reliance, and then merged them into its new GM Truck Company.  GM consolidated its truck production at the former-Rapid plant, in Pontiac, Michigan.  [That’s why GM’s Truck and Coach (T&C) operations later became based in Pontiac.]  In 1912 GM rebranded both Rapid and Reliance trucks as GMC trucks.  Thus Fuller’s agency became a GMC dealership.

            However, Fuller could buy his GMC trucks for resale only from the Pacific Coast distributor (rather than directly from the builder), and that requirement reduced Fuller’s potential profit on each truck.  For that reason he went in search for another satisfactory make or brand that he could buy directly from the truck builder – and perhaps become both a local dealer and a regional distributor (to sell trucks to other dealers as well).

            In 1913 Fuller began to sell also White cars and trucks, products of The White Company, of Cleveland, Ohio (which in 1915 became renamed as the White Motor Company) – not only as a dealer in Los Angeles but also as the regional distributor for Southern California and all of Arizona.  [White, a maker of sewing machines, had built steam-powered vehicles during 1900-10, then it switched to making gasoline-powered ones in 1911.]

            Later in 1913 Fuller found it necessary to repossess a pair of nearly new White trucks from a customer in default.  He did not seek to resell them; instead he offered them to his father for a trial – so that he could find out for himself how the newfangled machines were superior to his horse-drawn wagons.

            During 1914 the father’s Pioneer Truck and Transfer Company began to buy White trucks, although it took 10 more years until the horseless carriages completely displaced the hayburners in that firm.

            In 1916 O.R.’s Pioneer Commercial Auto Company sold a pair of White “auto stages” to the Package and Express “P&E” Stage Line, which ran between Los Angeles and Anaheim via Whittier and Fullerton (about 32 miles).  Later that same year, however, P&E went into liquidation in bankruptcy after a major wreck (apparently with one of its other vehicles).  On 01 December 1916 Fuller bought the assets of the stage line from the trustee in bankruptcy, and then he reorganized the firm as the White Bus Line and began to run it.  Thus he entered the motor-coach industry.

            Then in the next year, 1917, Fuller formed the Clark Stage Line, which ran between Los Angeles and San Bernardino (about 60 miles).

            Also in 1917 he renamed his Pioneer Commercial Auto Company as the White Auto Company.

            In 1918, after the “Great War” (WW1), when the White Motor Company ceased building cars (but continued to build trucks and had begun in 1917 to build buses), Fuller became both a dealer (selling to the public) and a distributor (selling to other dealers) of the Stephens Salient Six, a high-quality mid-priced car, a product of the Stephens Motor Company, of Freeport, Illinois, which was a subsidiary of the Moline Plow Company, of Moline, Illinois.  [In 1929 the Moline Plow Company became a major part of the new Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company, based dually in both Minneapolis and Hopkins, Minnesota; then in 1963 the White Motor Company bought the Minneapolis-Moline firm, which had been known briefly as the Motec Industries.  White continued to build farm tractors until 2001.]

            Sometime during 1918 Fuller founded the Motor Carriers’ Association of California, and he served as the president at least until 1922 and perhaps beyond.

            Then in 1919 Fuller bought his third motor-coach carrier – in addition to the White and Clark concerns – the ARG Bus Company, which ran between Los Angeles and San Diego via Santa Ana (about 123 miles).

            And in 1920 Fuller took another major and significant step; he bought the El Dorado Stage Line, which ran between Los Angeles and Bakersfield (about 112 miles).  Bakersfield was (and still is) a gateway (connecting point) to the Central Valley of California (the San Joaquin Valley) and onward to other places to the north, including San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and the Pacific Northwest.

            Soon Fuller took part in (and apparently initiated) a very early pooled interlined route – perhaps the first one in the US – between Los Angeles and Oakland – involving three different carriers – Fuller’s El Dorado Stage Line (between Los Angeles and Bakersfield), the Valley Transit Company (between Bakersfield and Merced), and Buck Travis’s California Transit Company (between Merced and Oakland).  That arrangement offered a one-ticket same-coach same-seat ride between Los Angeles and Oakland (or any other pair of points along the route) without a change of coach.  The three carriers contributed their coaches to the pool, and the drivers of the three different firms drove them within their respective territories.  While that plan was in use, regardless of whose coach turned up on any particular trip, a driver of the El Dorado firm drove it between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, a driver of the Valley firm drove it between Bakersfield and Merced, and a driver of the CalTrans firm drove it between Merced and Oakland.  By the next year, 1921, that pool operation provided four trips per day in each direction.

            Also in 1920 Fuller bought two more firms – the Antelope Valley Transportation Company, using the trade name of the Blue Line Stage, running between Los Angeles and Lancaster via Palmdale, and the Mountain Auto Line, based in San Bernardino, which connected “San Berdoo” with the nearby mountain resorts of Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake, both to the northeast of “Berdoo.”

            Further, in April 1920 Fuller took two more large and significant steps – he began construction of his Union Stage Depot in downtown Los Angeles – and he consolidated his three motor-coach firms into a single one, which he named as the Motor Transit Company.  [He did so four years before Red Townsend in 1924 named his firm as the Highway Transit Company (and 12 years before Townsend bought the Teche Lines and began to turn it into the Teche Greyhound Lines), and six years before Eric Wickman in 1926 named his firm as the Motor Transit Corporation].

            In 1918 Fuller’s first wife, Agnes, died of an illness, and in 1920 Fuller married again, to Ione Franklin Wright, a divorcée from Phoenix, Arizona.

            By March 1922 Fuller’s White Auto Company had begun to build motor-coach bodies, most of which he mounted on White chassis.  Fuller named one popular 11-seat design as the Coyote.  While Fuller installed his own bodies on White chassis, he did not rebrand the vehicles, but he did attach his mark to them – by placing his initials (ORF) on an arrowhead-shaped shield attached to the radiator shell of each coach.  [About 1921 Fuller had moved his Motor Transit Company into a four-story headquarters building (at the intersection of Market and San Pedro streets), which included a body-building shop.  There his workers began to build and install coach bodies on truck chassis.  In 1924 they also began to scratch-build their own custom chassis up from the shop floor, using four-cylinder White engines, six-cylinder Buda engines, Brown-Lipe gearboxes, and finally seven six-cylinder Sterling engines.  The custom chassis also got ORF shields on their radiator shells.]

            By May 1922 about 350 departures and arrivals (of stages) took place each day at the new Union Stage Depot, and about 270 of those events involved stages belonging to Fuller’s Motor Transit Company.

            By July 1922 the Motor Transit Company owned 139 stages and ran them along about 800 route miles.  During the preceding year, 1921, it had run slightly more than 6 million miles and had carried about 1.5 million passengers.

            During the 1920s Fuller’s White Auto Company supplied the White custom sightseeing coaches to two national parks – both Yellowstone and Yosemite.

            And during the 1920s the Motor Transit Company continued to increase its route network within its territory, in Southern California.  Two of those expansions took place by leasing routes.  In April 1924 Fuller’s firm leased three alternate routes between Pasadena and Long Beach (from the Dillingham Transportation Company).  And sometime in 1925 it leased three routes – between Riverside and San Jacinto, between San Jacinto and Idyllwild, and between Idyllwild and Keen Camp – from the Cregar Stage Line.  Then in December 1925 Fuller’s firm bought the leased Dillingham routes, and in January 1926 it bought the leased Cregar routes.

            In 1923 the Moline Plow Company closed its Stephens Motor Company, thus withdrawing from the automotive industry, and Fuller responded by becoming the sole local dealer (and the Southern California distributor) for Auburn, a similar line of upscale cars, which were products of the Auburn Automobile Company, of Auburn, Indiana.  [The former headquarters building, including its original showroom, of the builder (in Auburn), now houses the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Automobile Museum.]

            Meanwhile by 1926 it had become obvious that the extensive duplication of routes in Southern California did not serve the interests of either the carriers or the members of the traveling public.  During 1926 the three major carriers – the Pickwick Stages, the California Transit Company, and the Motor Transit Company – began to work out a mutually advantageous division of routes, and they reached an amicable agreement, which in 1927 the California Railroad Commission approved.  The result became known as the Tri-stage Merger.  The Motor Transit Company transferred its route to Bakersfield to Buck Travis’s California Transit Company and its route to San Diego to Charles Wren’s Pickwick Stages.  In return the Motor Transit Company received (from Pickwick) several local routes within what was already its territory in and near Los Angeles.  And Travis’s CalTrans Company bought Pickwick’s local rights in the Fresno area.  Several other small changes and some cash settlements also took place.  The exchanges occurred on 13 May 1927, after which the Motor Transit Company was no longer a long-distance carrier but rather just a local and interurban one.

            During 1926 the Motor Transit Company bought three more small local lines – between Pomona and San Dimas (from the City Transit Company), between Redlands and Yucaipa (from the Yucaipa Stage Line), and between San Bernardino and Oro Grande via Cajon Pass and Victorville (from the Victorville Stage Line).

            The increasing successes of Fuller in the automobile business attracted the attention of a resident of Beverly Hills, Errett Lobban “E.L.” Cord, who in 1925 completed his leveraged purchase of the Auburn Automobile Company.  In 1928 Cord bought a substantial interest (perhaps a controlling interest) in Fuller’s White Auto Company, and in the fall of -28 he and Fuller reorganized the White Auto Company and renamed it as the Auburn-Fuller Company.  Promptly Auburn-Fuller opened branch dealerships in Hollywood and Beverly Hills (in addition to the existing location of the previous White Auto Company, on the automobile row, along South Figueroa Street, in downtown Los Angeles, and in 1931 it bought the Auburn distributorship in San Francisco.

            Soon the Auburn-Fuller Company bought two AM-radio broadcast stations in Los Angeles – KFVD in 1929 and KTBI in -31 – largely to enhance its capability to compete against the two respective local car dealerships in its nearest rivals, Packard and Cadillac, each of whose dealers owned a radio station and took part in heavy radio advertising.  Auburn-Fuller got a change of the callsign of KTBI to KFAC, in which FAC represented the new owners – Fuller, Auburn, and Cord.

            In November 1931 the Auburn-Fuller Company became the exclusive distributor of Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg throughout the entire Golden State.  [Cord and Duesenberg were the other two brands of cars from the Auburn Automobile Company.  “Doozie” was a popular nickname for the Duesenberg, and that term is the origin of “a real doozie” and similar expressions.]

            By 1932 Auburn-Fuller operated five locations in Los Angeles (and its suburbs) and one in San Francisco.

            Please note the events and changes during 1931 and -32 described in the three preceding paragraphs.  Those two years, 1931 and -32, were not good years for starting or expanding business activities – not after the frightful and massive stock-market crash on the infamous Black Tuesday (29 October 1929), which was one of the factors that triggered the Great Depression in the US.  The good times did not continue to roll much longer, regrettably, as we see below, later in this section.

            O.R.’s father, Charles Henry “C.H.” Fuller, died on 27 August 1929 at age 70.

            In 1930 O.R. Fuller took another momentous step – he entered into a contract to sell his Motor Transit Company to the Pacific Transportation Securities (PTS), of San Francisco, which operated under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Pacific Greyhound Lines.  [Later in that same year, 1930, the PTS (the corporation itself) became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines.]

            Before the closing of that sale, however, an agent of the PE Railway System contacted the PTS and made a deal to buy a two-thirds interest in the Motor Transit Company, leaving a one-third interest for the PTS.

            The Railroad Commission approved on 03 April 1930, and the closing soon took place.  From that sale Fuller received a small amount of cash plus stock valued at $3,337,000.  It’s now not clear whether Fuller received stock in the PTS alone, or whether he received a combination of stock in both the PTS and the PE.

            The PE Railway took over the Motor Transit Company and then continued to hold it and to run it as a subsidiary.  Fuller remained as a member of the board of directors of his former property.

            In January 1932 the Motor Transit Company sold to the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines its route between San Bernardino and Oro Grande via Cajon Pass and Victorville (about 45 miles).

            During 1933 the Motor Transit Company bought six used Pickwick Duplex 53-seat day coaches (that is, not NiteCoaches) from the Pacific GL and then assigned them to its most heavily patronized suburban routes.  [The Duplex coaches had Sterling engines, so they were compatible with the Sterling engines in the last seven homemade ORF coaches (described above in this section).]

            Even during the early years of the Great Depression, sales of Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg automobiles decreased so badly that in July 1932 the Auburn-Fuller Company went into bankruptcy.  The firm became reorganized into the Auburn California Company, which in turn became merely the California branch of the Auburn Automobile Sales Corporation, based back in Indiana.

            Fuller himself lost much of his wealth, which had been tied up in his stock in the Auburn-Fuller Company.  He withdrew to his family ranch, north of Corona (where the town of Eastvale now stands), where preexisting dairy and poultry farms continued to operate.  He raised not only chickens and turkeys but also quail, pheasants, peafowl, and guineas.  [Both the Pacific GL and the PE Railway survived the Depression, so the stock in them remained viable.]

            During the spring of 1936, as I mention at the start of this section, the PE Railway and the Pacific GL made an agreement under which the PE would gain the sole ownership of the Motor Transit Company.  The price of the one-third interest of the PacGL was the former-Fuller Union Stage Depot (in Los Angeles) plus a cash payment of $330,000.  The Railroad Commission gave its approval in May, and the closing took place in July.

            Finally, on 01 September 1939, the PE Railway Company merged the assets and operations of the Motor Transit Company into itself and then dissolved the newly empty corporate shell.  Thus ended the Motor Transit Company.

            On 20 August 1946 Fuller died of cancer at age 65 at his family ranch.

Back to the PTS and the Start of the PacGL

            As I described above, in the two sections entitled “Pacific Transportation Securities” and “Start of the Pacific Greyhound Lines,” on 17 May 1929 the PTS came into existence, and two weeks later, on 31 May 1929, the PTS bought three large motor-coach operations:

                        the California Transit Company,
                        most of the Pickwick Stages,
                        and the motor-coach business (but not the trucking business) of the Southern Pacific Motor Transport Company.

Further, the PTS bought also at least 11 relatively small motor-coach carriers.

            Eric Wickman served as the founding chairman of the board of directors of the PTS, and Buck Travis served as the founding president.

            The PTS (from the outset) began to run its new motor-coach property under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Pacific Greyhound Lines.  Thus began the Pacific GL.  Sometime during the next year, 1930, the PTS (the corporation itself) became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines, Inc.; that is, the name of the corporation (the PTS) became changed to the same as its brand name, trade name, or service name.  Again, thus began the PacGL.

            [Frederick William Ackerman Sr., who had served as the auditor of Buck Travis’s CalTrans Company, then served as the secretary and treasurer of the PTS and of the PacGL; later he served as the president of the PacGL; later yet he served as the president and even later as the chairman of the board of directors of The Greyhound Corporation.  Ackerman, as the president of the parent firm, got the Hound back onto the road after Arthur Samuel Genet had run it into the ditch and very nearly caused it to become bankrupt.  More about Ackerman and his service is available in my article about the Greyhound Lines after WW2.]

            The Pacific GL, as the largest regional operating company of the Greyhound Lines (from its beginning), continued to run, prune, and develop its route network.  Its territory reached along the Left Coast from Portland through Sacramento and San Francisco to Los Angeles and San Bernardino and onward to San Diego and to San Ysidro, across the Mexican border from Tijuana.  It reached also from San Francisco to Salt Lake City via Reno, from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City via Las Vegas, from Los Angeles to Albuquerque via Flagstaff (in Arizona), and from Los Angeles and San Diego to El Paso via El Centro, Yuma, Phoenix, Tucson, and Lordsburg.  It ran between San Francisco and Los Angeles via both the coastal or near-coastal route (via San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara) and via the inland route through the Central Valley (via Modesto and Bakersfield).  It developed also many loops, branches, feeders, and alternate routes throughout its system.  It ran also suburban operations based in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, as I further discuss below in a later section, entitled “Suburban Operations.”

Pool (Interline) Operations

            By 1956 the Pacific Greyhound Lines had established many major long-distance 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 operating companies – notably these:

                        between Seattle and San Francisco via Woodland and Vallejo (both in California) (in coöperation with the Northwest GL);
                        between Seattle and Los Angeles via Sacramento and Bakersfield (in coöperation with the Northwest GL);
                        between San Francisco and Chicago via Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, and Omaha (in coöperation with the Overland GL);
                        between San Francisco and Saint Louis via Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, and Kansas City (in coöperation with the Overland GL and the Southwestern GL);
                        between Los Angeles and Chicago via Salt Lake City and Omaha and via Albuquerque and Kansas City (in coöperation with the Overland GL and the Southwestern GL);
                        between Los Angeles and Saint Louis via Amarillo and Oklahoma City (in coöperation with the Southwestern GL);
                        between San Diego and Saint Louis via Tucson and Amarillo (in coöperation with the Southwestern GL);
                        between Los Angeles and Dallas via Phoenix, Tucson, and El Paso (in coöperation with the Southwestern GL);
                        between Los Angeles and Memphis via El Paso, Phoenix, Tucson, and Dallas (in coöperation with the Southwestern GL);
                        between San Diego and Memphis via El Paso, Phoenix, Tucson, and Dallas (in coöperation with the Southwestern GL);
                        and between Los Angeles and New Orleans via El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston (in coöperation with the Southwestern GL and the Southeastern GL).

            In 1956 the GMC Truck and Coach (T&C) Division (of the GM Corporation) delivered the last new Scenicruiser to the Greyhound Lines.

            That’s also the last year before, in 1957, the Greyhound parent firm reorganized the PacGL and renamed it as the Western Division of The Greyhound Corporation, which became known also as the second Western GL (WGL).

            In 1956 transcontinental passengers still found it necessary to change coaches in Chicago, Saint Louis, Memphis, or New Orleans.  Coast-to-coast through-coaches still remained in the future.

            However, using Super Scenicruisers (repowered Scenicruisers) and newer coaches, all with Detroit 8V-71 engines, Greyhound (after the PacGL became reorganized and renamed as the second Western GL) began to connect existing schedules into true coast-to-coast interlined through-coaches, thus:

                        about 1961 between San Francisco and New Orleans via Bakersfield, Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston (in coöperation with the Kerrville Bus Company, the fifth Central GL, and the Southern GL);
                        about 1962 between San Francisco and New York City and between Los Angeles and New York City via Chicago (in coöperation with the fifth Central GL and the second Eastern GL);
                        about 1962 between Los Angeles and New York City via Saint Louis (in coöperation with the fifth Central GL and the second Eastern GL);
                        about 1962 between San Francisco and Atlanta via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Memphis, and Birmingham (in coöperation with the fifth Central GL and the second Eastern GL);
                        about 1962 between Los Angeles and Atlanta via Phoenix, El Paso, Abilene, Dallas, Memphis, and Birmingham (in coöperation with the fifth Central GL and the Southern GL);
                        about 1966 between San Diego and New York City via Phoenix, Albuquerque, Amarillo, and Saint Louis (in coöperation with the fifth Central GL and the second Eastern GL);
                        about 1966 between San Francisco and Miami, Florida, via Oakland, Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, and Jacksonville (in coöperation with the Kerrville Bus Company, the fifth Central GL, and the Southern GL);
                        about 1966 between Los Angeles and Miami via Riverside, San Bernardino, Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, and Tallahassee and Orlando (both in Florida) (in coöperation with the Kerrville Bus Company, the fifth Central GL, and the Southern GL).

Suburban Operations

            The Pacific GL ran extensive suburban operations, including commuter operations, based in San Francisco, in three distinct regions:

                        along the Westbay peninsula, between San Francisco and San Jose;
                        in Marin County, between San Francisco and Novato;
                        and in Contra Costa County, between San Francisco and Antioch.

              Westbay

            The oldest and largest of the Greyhound suburban operations in the area of the San Francisco Bay was the peninsula route, along the west side of the bay, between San Francisco and San Jose, plus the parallel shoreside route, between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay via Daly City and Pacifica.

            During the time of the start of the bus industry in the Golden State, the Peninsula Rapid Transit (PRT) Company became incorporated on 25 November 1914, to run between San Francisco and Palo Alto, about 33 miles, although the operator had likely begun to run even earlier, before incorporating the firm.  Later PRT bought one or more smaller companies, thus extending from Palo Alto to San Jose, about 48 miles altogether.  The fleet at first consisted of homemade 18-seat bodies on White two-ton chassis; however, in 1922 PRT bought six Locomobile chassis and mounted homemade bodies onto them too.

            On 01 May 1917, when the California Railroad Commission began to regulate the intrastate bus business, the commission issued many grandfather certificates, including one to the PRT Company, for its route between San Francisco and San Jose, and one to the Pickwick Stages, for its route between San Francisco and Los Angeles via San Jose.  To protect the rights of the PRT Company, however, the Pickwick certificate forbade Pickwick from hauling local passengers between San Francisco and San Jose.

            Then sometime late during the 1920s, maybe in 1928, the Pickwick Stages bought the PRT Company, thus gaining the local authority between San Francisco and San Jose (beyond the limits of the San Francisco Municipal “Muni” Railway).

            Further, on 31 May 1929 the Pacific Transportation Securities (PTS) bought most of the Pickwick Stages, including its route between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  [The PTS used the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Pacific Greyhound Lines, and in 1930 the PTS itself became renamed as the Pacific Greyhound Lines, as I first describe above, in the section entitled “Pacific Transportation Securities.”]

            Sometime during 1917 the Coastside Transportation Company, using the trade name of the Red Star Stages, began service between San Francisco and Santa Cruz via Daly City and Half Moon Bay; then in 1937 the PacGL bought the Coastside firm and took it over.  The PacGL assigned the local service between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay to its suburban operation, but it assigned the through-service (via Half Moon Bay) between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, on the north shore of Monterey Bay, to its regular mainline operation.

            In 1939 the PacGL bought 24 Yellow Coach 740 transit cars with single doors (that is, without exit doors) and with GM 6-71 diesel engines, Austin angle drives, and Banker hydraulic (that is, automatic) transmissions (the predecessors of Spicer and Allison automatic hydraulic transmissions).  All of those went into the suburban service in the Bay Area.  They were the only coaches with automatic transmissions ever bought for service in suburban service for the PacGL in the Bay Area – because all of the subsequent coaches had manual transmissions.  [However, as I describe below in this section, in 1961 Greyhound bought 10 GM TDH-5301 Fishbowls, with hydraulic transmissions, for use in San Diego; later those cars ran for a short time for the PacGL in the Bay Area.]  Those YC 740 cars bore the numbers 1001‑1024.

            Then the PacGL received a total of 171 Yellow Coach transit cars with single doors, GM 6-71 diesel engines, Spicer four-speed manual gearboxes, and Austin angle drives – 108 of the TD-4502 and 63 of the TD-4505, thus:

                        84 of the TD-4502, numbered as 1025-1108, delivered during August through October 1940;
                        24 more, numbered as 1109-1132, delivered in February 1941;
                        20 of the TD-4505, numbered as 1133-1152, delivered in December 1941;
                        40 more of the 4505, numbered as 1153-1192, delivered during January through March 1942;
                        and three more, numbered as 1198-1200, delivered in December 1942.

Some of those coaches went to Los Angeles or to San Diego, but most of them went to San Francisco.

            The missing fleet numbers above, 1193-1197, went to five used (but nearly new) Mack CM-3Gs, which the PacGL acquired when, in 1941, it bought the Mill Valley Municipal Bus Line.

            Then during February and March 1944 – after the GM Corporation in 1943 changed the brand name from Yellow Coach to GM Coach – the PacGL [with the consent of the federal Office of Defense Transportation (ODT)] received 35 copies of the GM TG-3607 transit cars, with gasoline engines, manual gearboxes, and Austin angle drives.  Some of those went to Southern California.

            And in August 1945 the PacGL received 60 copies of the TD-4506, with GM 6-71 diesel engines, manual gearboxes, and Austin angle drives.

            During June and July 1951 the PacGL received 37 copies of the GM TDM-5103 (the only ones of that model ever built), numbered as K-1400 through K-1436, with GM 6-71 diesel engines, manual gearboxes, and Austin angle drives.  [In 1948 The Greyhound Corporation had begun to use prefix letters with the fleet numbers of its coaches – with a unique single letter for each division or subsidiary.  The Pennsylvania GL got the P prefix letter, so the PacGL got the K prefix letter.]

            Greyhound had originally placed an order for 75 copies of the GM TDM-5103, all for the suburban operations of the PacGL in California.  Suddenly, in July 1951, during the deliveries of the 5103s, the California Public-utilities Commission (PUC) issued a ruling that made the 5103s slightly overweight.  However, the PUC granted a grandfathered exception for the 37 coaches already built.  The PacGL, of course, cancelled its order for the remaining 38 cars.

            In 1994 the Pacific Bus Museum (PBM), in Fremont, California, in Eastbay, between Oakland and San Jose, acquired one of the former-PacGL 5103s, first numbered as K-1407.  The PBM has announced its intent to restore K-1407, and it now seeks financial support for that project.

            During 1957 the Mack Truck Company delivered 30 copies of the Mack C-49-DM to the PacGL (along with four of them to the Richmond GL).  Each of them, numbered as P-1670 through P-1699, had 51 chairs, a single door, a Mack ENDTL-673 diesel engine (a turbocharged machine with six in-line cylinders, a displacement of 673 cubic inches, and an aluminum bell housing), a Mack TR-91 four-speed manual gearbox, and Firestone air suspension.  [In 1955 the Greyhound parent firm had reorganized and renamed the Pennsylvania GL as the second Eastern GL; it also had changed the prefix letter from P (for Pennsylvania) to E (for Eastern), and it had reassigned the P to the Pacific GL.]  All of those coaches for the PacGL were 102 inches wide (the first wide-body cars for the PacGL), although the four for the RGL were 96 inches wide.  Because of the reductions in the ridership of the suburban service – and because of the incompatibility of the Mack coaches with the GM products in the rest of the fleet (including new GM Fishbowls) of the PacGL – the carrier retired the Macks and sold them early during the 1970s.  [The four cars for the RGL used END-673 engines, normally aspirated, with 673 cubes and standard cast-iron bell housings.]  Those 34 coaches were the only Mack vehicles delivered to any Greyhound operating company after WW2 – except the unique Mack MV-620-D, numbered as C-620, which Greyhound evaluated and leased temporarily during 1958-60.  [More about the MV-620-D is available in my article about the Scenicruiser.]

            In 1999 the Pacific Bus Museum (PBM), in Fremont, acquired one of the former-PacGL Macks, P-1683.  The PBM has announced its intent to restore P-1683, and it now seeks financial support for that project.

            During March and April 1961 Greyhound received 10 copies of the TDH-5301, numbered as 9700-9709, mainly for use between San Diego and San Ysidro, on the Mexican border, across from Tijuana.  Each coach had two doors, a Detroit 6V-71 engine, an Allison automatic hydraulic transmission, and an Austin angle drive.  Workers at the Greyhound shop in Los Angeles sealed the exit door, blocked the rear stepwell, and installed an extra double seat.  Those cars were 102 inches wide, as were the Macks (in San Francisco).

            Those 10 cars had not only exit doors and hydraulic transmissions but also several other features inconsistent with the standard or usual Greyhound specifications, so many people through the years have suspected that the Dog had bought them (perhaps for a bargain price) after another customer cancelled the first order for them.  [The inconsistencies included different (foot-actuated) turn-signal switches and seats from a different source.]

            After several years, after the need for those cars in San Diego diminished, Greyhound moved them to San Francisco for use there.

            After several more years, Greyhound sold all 10 of them to the Santa Clara County Transit District, based in San Jose.

            Sometime during the 1970s, perhaps during the second half of the -70s, Greyhound withdrew from its suburban operations in Westbay, and the local transit agencies took over those routes.

            In 1999 the Pacific Bus Museum (PBM), in Fremont, acquired also one of the former-PacGL 5301s, first numbered as 9706.  The PBM has announced its intent to restore 9706, and it now seeks financial support for that project too.

            During June and July 1965 the Greyhound received 60 copies of the GM TDM-5303, numbered as 9600-9659, for suburban service in the Bay Area.  Each one had a single door (front only), a Detroit 6V-71 engine, a Spicer four-speed manual gearbox, and an Austin angle drive.  A private collector in Southern California has acquired and preserved one of those cars, 9631.

              Marin County

            Sometime during the 1920s the Pickwick Stages began to run a local route in Marin County, north of the entrance to San Francisco Bay, between Sausalito and Point Reyes, about 50 miles, after a narrow-gauge steam railway failed in business and ceased to run.  That route passed to the PTS in 1929 (and thus to the PacGL).

            Before the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, the PacGL had used the ferry boats of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NPR) between San Francisco and Sausalito, across the north end of the San Francisco Bay, for its coaches between San Francisco and Portland (via the former route of the Pickwick Stages).

            Until 1937 the PacGL had run very little short-turn local service in Marin County, although it hauled local passengers aboard its through-coaches while they passed through Marin County.

            On 27 May 1937, however, the Golden Gate Bridge opened, and the PacGL rerouted its Portland coaches across the new structure.

            The opening of the bridge resulted in a huge increase in automobile traffic between San Francisco and Marin County, which in turn resulted in a huge decrease in the business of both the ferry boats of the NPR and its third-rail electric interurban trains, which ran from Sausalito through Mill Valley and onward to Manor, near San Anselmo.  During 1937 the NPR began to cancel some of its services (including abandonments of some of its routes), and in March 1941 it completely gave up the ghost.

            Although there was not enough local business, especially commuter business, for a railway with a fleet of ferry boats between San Francisco and Marin County, there was plenty of business for a bus service, so the PacGL seized that opportunity, starting in 1937.  During 1939-42 the PacGL bought a total of 195 transit coaches, as I describe above, in the subsection entitled “Westbay.”  Some of those cars served the Greyhound routes in Marin County.

            The routes in Marin County from San Francisco consisted of these:

                        to Novato via Sausalito and San Rafael, with a branch to Tiburon;
                        to Inverness via Sausalito and Manor, with a branch to Mill Valley;
                        and to Bolinas via Sausalito and Stinson Beach.

            On 01 January 1972 Golden Gate Transit (GGT), a public transit agency, took over the Greyhound operations in Marin County.  GGT started with 152 coaches, 25 of which (TDM-5303s) it leased from Greyhound.  [GGT is a subsidiary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transit District, which owns and operates also the Golden Gate Bridge and the Golden Gate Ferry (the latter of which now runs seven boats on four routes).]

              Contra Costa County

            Sometime early during the 1930s the Pacific GL bought the Western Motor Transportation Company and then began to run between Oakland and Vallejo (near the Naval Shipyard at Mare Island), about 27 miles, via Richmond, running through a part of Alameda County and into Contra Costa County.

            Then on 12 November 1936 the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge opened, thus replacing the ferry boats between San Francisco and Oakland.  The Bay Bridge, as it’s known locally, triggered an increase in the development in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (and beyond), which bloomed even more after WW2.

            At the outset the PacGL obtained local rights on several routes between San Francisco and various points in Contra Costa County.  However, the certificates forbade the PacGL to originate any such schedule in Berkeley, Hayward, Oakland, Richmond, or San Leandro – to protect the rights of the Key System (a local and interurban carrier) and the Southern Pacific Railroad (for its suburban buses and its electric interurban trains.

            Sometime in 1938 the PacGL started a route between San Francisco and Stockton via Oakland, Walnut Creek, Concord, Antioch, and Brentwood.  That became possible with the opening of a tunnel through the Berkeley Hills, on the east side of Oakland.  The certificate forbade the PacGL from hauling local passengers between San Francisco and Concord – to protect the rights of the Sacramento Northern (SN) Railway, which ran a bus service in conjunction with its electric interurban trains.  On 30 June 1941, when the SN Railway ended its passenger service (but continued its freight business), the PacGL bought the bus operation of the SN, thus gaining the local authority between San Francisco and Concord via Oakland, Orinda, Walnut Creek, and Pleasant Hill.  Sometime later the PacGL extended its local Concord line to Antioch via Pittsburg.

            In 1951 the PacGL took two steps in its route network:

                        It started a branch route between Walnut Creek and Danville;
                        and it started an alternate loop between Walnut Creek and Concord via Ignacio Valley, thus bypassing Pleasant Hill.

            About the end of 1973, however, after the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rail system began to run, Greyhound ended its suburban service to Contra Costa County.  [One of the initial BART lines duplicated the PacGL route to Concord.]

              Air-conditioned Coaches for Contra Costa County

            During 1960 the Western GL filed an application for a fare increase (of 11 percent) for its suburban operations in the Bay Area.  [On 01 June 1957 the parent Greyhound firm had renamed the PacGL as the Western Division of The Greyhound Corporation, called also the second Western GL (WGL), and it had merged into the new WGL not only the Northwest GL, based in Seattle, but also the route segment [from the Northland GL (NGL)] between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Rock Springs, Wyoming, as I describe below, in the section entitled “The Second Western GL.”  [The second WGL was the second of the four new huge divisions, after the second Eastern GL (in 1955) and before the fifth Central GL (later in 1957) and the Southern GL (in 1960).]

            The California Public-utility Commission (PUC) granted the requested fare increase – on two conditions:

                        that the WGL start two new branch routes [one in the shoreside service (to Half Moon Bay) and one in Contra Costa County] to accommodate new subdivisions in the two respective suburban areas,
                        and that it begin to use air-conditioned coaches on all its routes in Contra Costa County.

            Predictably, the WGL appealed the air-conditioning requirement to the state appellate court, which in 1961 merely affirmed the order by the PUC.

            Previously none of the coaches in Greyhound suburban service in the Bay Area had air‑conditioning.

            Further, the WGL was not willing to buy new (or even used) suburban coaches with air‑conditioners.

            However, the WGL marshalled a large number of older air-conditioned parlor coaches, withdrew them from mainline service, and reassigned them to suburban service in Contra Costa County.  That took place in three major steps:

                        During 1961-62 the WGL dedicated its 220 remaining GM PD-4151s, built in 1948, to that purpose.  The PacGL had received 233 4151s, numbered from 91 through 323, delivered in six lots, from April through December 1948.  The ones repurposed were from P-104 through P-323.  The WGL then renumbered them as 9104-9323.  It also acquired three more 4151s, which in 1948 had first gone to the Great Lakes GL.  The WGL installed a Johnson fare box in each of those Silversides.

                        During January-March 1965 the WGL reassigned 67 of its GM PD-4103s (in two lots) from mainline work to Contra Costa.  First it converted 38 of them originally delivered to the PacGL, numbered in 1965 in the series of 7370-7492, renumbered as 9330-9367.  Next it converted 29 more 4103s, which the PacGL had acquired from other Greyhound divisions, numbered in 1965 in the series of 7300-7348, renumbered as 9368-9396.  Then in 1966 the WGL moved its nine remaining 4103s to the Contra Costa service and renumbered them as 9585-9593.  The 4103s also got Johnson fare boxes.

                        Starting in 1968 the WGL began to reassign a large number of GM PD-4501s – the beloved Scenicruisers – all built during 1954-56 and all rebuilt and repowered during 1961-62 – from mainline service to Contra Costa.  In 1968 the WGL converted the first 11 of them and renumbered them as 9660-9670.  In 1969 Greyhound reassigned 49 more 4501s and renumbered them as 9050-9098.  In 1971 Greyhound Lines West (GLW), as it had become known by then, reassigned the last group of Scenicruisers – 20 more of them – and renumbered them as 9030-9049.  Each of those 80 Cruisers got an extra row of seats on the upper deck, thus increasing the seating capacity from 43 to 47.  Each one got also a Johnson fare box.  All the toilets remained in place, but Greyhound sealed the doors to them.  The first of those lots, 9660-9670, and a part of the second lot, 9089-9098, had come from other Greyhound divisions; the other part of the second lot, 9050-9088 (previously numbered as 8019-8077), and the last lot, 9030-9049 (previously numbered discontinuously in the 8100 series), were all of the remaining 4501s from the WGL.

            Thus Greyhound satisfied the lawfully imposed requirement for air-conditioned coaches for service in Costra Costa County – without buying new (or used) suburban coaches equipped with air‑conditioning.

            Still, though, about the end of 1973, as I mentioned above, near the end of the previous subsection, entitled “Contra Costa County,” after the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rail system began to run, GLW ended its suburban service into Contra Costa County.

Special Operations for the US Navy

            During the second half of 1941, as the prospect of WW2, along with the likelihood of the involvement of the US in it, continued to increase, Navy officials at The Pentagon and at the Naval Shipyard at Mare Island, California, began to plan for what soon became an urgent need.

            The shipyard at Mare Island was a major facility.  It was the main Naval yard (and the first one) on the Pacific Coast for the building, rebuilding, repairing, overhauling, and converting Navy ships and boats.

            The yard lay (and the site still lies) in the city of Vallejo and at the mouth of the Napa River, where it flows into the San Pablo Bay, at the north end of the San Francisco Bay.  It’s about 25 air miles (and about 35 road miles) to the north-northeast from downtown San Francisco.

            During the lifetime of the yard (1854-1996), it built 89 seagoing ships, including 18 submarines and 4 submarine tenders, plus more than 300 landing craft (for amphibious operations).  [It built five of the seven top-scoring subs of the US Navy in WW2.]

            Navy officials correctly foresaw that the wartime demands on the yard at Mare Island would soon require it to employ a civilian workforce of at least 50,000 and perhaps as large as 65,000.  Expecting that the yard would draw many thousands of workers and their families from other parts of the US, the Navy quickly built temporary housing nearby.

            Expecting also that the yard would draw workers from an extended commuting area around Vallejo and San Francisco, those Navy officials saw another looming problem – the demands for transportation.  For an expected workforce of that size, there would not be enough cars, enough parking lots, enough highway capacity, or enough oil, gasoline, replacement tires, or repair parts (because of the forthcoming wartime rationing).

            The obvious and correct solution was to create a huge bus system – and to do it fast.

            The Navy first laid out a network of 26 interurban routes that reached nearly every town within a radius of 50 miles of Mare Island.  One route was 67 miles long.  Those routes reached as far as Sausalito, Corte Madre, Manor, Healdsburg, Calistoga, Woodland, Sacramento, Benecia, Antioch, Walnut Creek, Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, San Leandro, Hayward, many other intermediate places, and three endpoints within San Francisco.

            The Navy also laid out eight local routes within Vallejo to serve the new temporary housing and the related facilities (stores, shops, and such).

            All the routes ran seven days per week, and they were scheduled to match the changes of the shifts (three shifts per day) at the yard – for both inbound workers and outbound ones.  The most heavily patronized routes had several extra sections or many of them – sometimes as many as 30 sections.

            Further, the local routes in Vallejo ran all day every day and well into every night in addition to the times of the changes of the shifts – to provide service to the families who lived in the temporary housing and shopped nearby.

            That vast system appeared to be the largest contract bus system anywhere in the world.

            The operation began on 01 March 1942, using about 50 sightseeing buses leased from the Tanner Motor Livery, a sightseeing firm in Los Angeles, which had already ceased its sightseeing tours because of the war.

            With the coöperation of the federal Office of Defense Transportation (ODT), the Navy placed a high-priority order for 300 Yellow Coach TD-4505 city-transit cars with GM 6-71 diesel engines, Spicer manual transmissions, and Austin angle drives (but without exit doors).  The deletion of the exit door increased the seating capacity from 45 to 47.  By July 1942 enough new cars had arrived to allow the Navy to return the leased sightseeing buses to Tanner, and by October -42 all the new ones were in service.  The handrails on the inside were not the usual polished stainless steel but rather painted steel.  The outside color scheme was solid Navy gray, and there was no hint of brightwork.  After several wrecks in dense fog, however, the Navy added white or yellow stripes to the tails and noses of the coaches.

            Clearly, the Navy needed to hire an outside carrier to manage and operate the system – to recruit, hire, train, and supervise the drivers and other workers, to manage the maintenance program, and otherwise to cause the system to work right and well.  Likewise clearly, Greyhound was the only outfit qualified to fit the bill, so the Navy hired the Pacific GL.

            The PacGL created a new exclusive division, which it called Division 9, and, predictably, it selected two of its well-qualified and well-experienced managers with strong records and reputations and placed them in the two top positions.  The company also transferred in a cadre of likewise well-seasoned dispatchers and supervisors.  That is, the company provided real bus people to run the bus operation.  It offered opportunities for drivers in its other divisions to volunteer to transfer into Division 9, based at Mare Island.

            Throughout the life of the program Division 9 maintained a roster of about 450 drivers.  Many of the drivers left civilian life and entered military service, and Division 9 began recruiting women as replacement drivers.  By 1944 about half of the drivers were women.  [All the coaches had Armstrong steering and unsynchronized manual transmissions, but the women drivers met the challenge.]

            During 1943, for some reason not now known or understood, the Navy in its collective infinite wisdom transferred 35 of the TD–4505s to one or more other places and replaced them with 30 long-nose gasoline-powered International chassis with high-roof school-bus-type bodies, some with Wayne bodies and others with Schultz bodies.

            {The Wayne Works was a well-known leading builder of school buses based in Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana, and the Schultz Corporation was a builder of trailer houses that built school-bus bodies (and other products) during WW2.  In 1995, after several changes, including a bankruptcy, the Wayne empire finally failed in business and ceased to function.  However, the Schultz Corporation now continues to build “manufactured homes” and is now based in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  [My wife (Marda) and I have lived in a Schultz home, and we’ve bought and renovated another Schultz home for resale.]}

            Early in 1944 the Navy further provided Mare Island with 10 GM (after the change of the brand name in 1943 from Yellow Coach to GM Coach) gasoline-powered 38-seat city-transit cars (without exit doors) of an unknown model (perhaps TG-3606s transferred from elsewhere).

            Later in 1944 Mare Island received 15 curious Mack diesel-electric CMs in poor condition and with a strange history.  They had started as a part of a large order (of an unknown specific number) that the Surface Transportation System, of New York City, had placed in 1941.  Then in 1942, after Mack built the cars, but before Mack delivered them to the customer, the Navy persuaded the ODT to seize them and to divert them to the Navy.  Those 15 cars served at some unknown Navy base in their Surface livery and with their Surface destination signs in place.  The previous Navy operator had “ridden them hard and put them away wet.”  When they arrived at Mare Island, they still wore the Surface colors and had the Surface signs.  However, the PacGL managers soon caused them to become repainted into the Navy gray.  Still, though, they saw little further service at Mare Island, largely because of their poor condition.  Also, the gearing was so slow that they were not well suited for use on the interurban routes, so they stayed on the local routes in Vallejo.  It may be that only four of them often or routinely served there.

            As soon as WW2 ended – on 08 May 1945 in Europe and on 02 September 1945 in Asia – the work at the shipyard began to wind down, so the need for the bus service likewise began to wind down.  The PacGL started a gradual process of cutting trips and then cutting routes.  Then early in 1947 the Navy cancelled the program entirely.  The PacGL offered opportunities to many of the drivers to apply for transfer to other divisions of the PacGL, and the Navy transferred its buses to many other Navy sites literally around the world.  [For a while several of them provided a shuttle service between The Pentagon and the Navy Annex, in Arlington, Virginia, while showing the names of some of the places in Northern California (as a joke on the destination signs).

Special Airport Shuttles

            Late in the 1960s and early in the 1970s, while huge numbers of members of the US armed forces returned to the US from Vietnam (and elsewhere in the Far East) via Travis Air Force Base (AFB), near Fairfield, between San Francisco and Sacramento, Greyhound ran a shuttle service for the convenience of those returning military members.  The shuttle ran between Travis AFB and the San Francisco International Airport (SFO), with brief intermediate stops at the Naval Station on Treasure Island (in San Francisco Bay) and at the Greyhound station in downtown San Francisco.  Most of the passengers rode to SFO, where they caught civilian flights to various destinations.  The stop on Treasure Island was for the benefit of the Navy members who went there for discharge or other processing.  [In June 1971, after I returned from my tour of duty as a Naval officer in the Far East, I received my discharge and my DD-214 at Treasure Island.]  The equipment used for that shuttle was a group of 47-seat Scenicruisers, apparently selected from the Cruisers already modified for suburban service based in San Francisco.  Greyhound added a small uppercase T (for Travis) at the end of the fleet number of each of the Cruisers in the pool for the shuttle service.  In March 1972, for example, GLW ran 17 round trips every day – 7-24 – between Travis AFB and the SFO airport, scheduled during daytimes at hourly intervals (and less often during each night).

Meeting Other Greyhound Companies

            During the 1940s and -50s the Pacific GL met these other Greyhound regional operating companies:

                  to the north: the Northwest GL;
                  to the east: the Overland GL, the Northland GL (after The Greyhound Corporation merged the OGL into the NGL), and the Southwestern GL.

The Second Western GL

            On 01 June 1957 the parent Greyhound firm renamed the Pacific GL as the Western Division of The Greyhound Corporation, called also the second Western GL (WGL).  That was the second of the four huge new divisions, after the second Eastern GL (in May 1955) and before the fifth Central GL (later in 1957) and the Southern GL (in 1960).

            Then Greyhound merged into the new WGL not only the Northwest GL but also the route segment [from the Northland GL (NGL)] between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Rock Springs, Wyoming.  [That segment had previously been a part of the route of the Overland GL (OGL) between Chicago, Illinois, and Salt Lake City via Omaha, Nebraska, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Greyhound on 01 August 1956 had merged the OGL into the NGL.]

            Thus ended the Pacific GL and the Northwest GL, and thus began the second Western GL.

            [More about the Northwest GL, the Northland GL, and the Overland GL is available in my three articles bearing the names of those operating companies.]

            [The first Western GL was the earthly remains of the Pickwick-Greyound Lines (the PG Lines).  On 05 April 1932, after the bankruptcy of the PG Lines (during the Great Depression), The Greyhound Corporation bought (from the receiver in bankruptcy) the leftover remainder of the PG Lines and renamed it as the first Western Greyhound Lines (WGL).  The WGL then ran in part between Kansas City and Los Angeles via Albuquerque – in time to complete a second Greyhound corridor (in addition to the route via El Paso and Saint Louis) between Southern California and the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933‑34 (the International Exposition of a “Century of Progress”).  Then on 01 October 1933, when Greyhound formed the Southwestern GL (SWGL), it divided the route of the first WGL (formerly the PG Lines) between Kansas City and Los Angeles into two segments – split at Albuquerque – that is, one segment between Albuquerque and Kansas City and one between Albuquerque and Los Angeles.  It transferred the route segment between Albuquerque and Saint Louis to the Southwestern GL, it transferred the route segment between Albuquerque and Los Angeles to the Pacific GL, and it transferred the rest of the assets and operations of the first WGL (the remainder of the PG Lines) to the SWGL.  That transfer included the route between Saint Louis and Kansas City (the original route of the PG Lines) and the route between Denver and Albuquerque via Raton, New Mexico, which the PG Lines had developed.  More about that is available in my articles about the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines and the Southwestern GL.]

Diversification and Expansion

            During the 1960s and -70s The Greyhound Corporation underwent a huge (and nearly explosive) expansion, which went far beyond the transport industry.  Greyhound bought a large number of preexisting subsidiaries (and formed several new ones) in a wide variety of specialties – motor-coach manufacturing, food service, airport services, computer leasing, aircraft leasing, financial services, hospitality services, exhibition and convention-support services, meat packing, consumer-goods manufacturing, short-term car renting, railway-equipment leasing, and even more.  [More about that is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]

Greyhound Lines, Inc. (GLI)

            During that time of growth and diversification, Greyhound in 1963 formed the second Greyhound Lines, Inc. (the second GLI) and placed all its motor-coach operations into the new GLI (as a subsidiary of The Greyhound Corporation) – to separate and isolate its assets and operations in its own exclusive and dedicated corporation, just as every one of the other subsidiaries existed in its own separate and isolated corporation.  [The creation of those separate corporations was absolutely correct, proper, and lawful, and it completely complied with widely recognized and accepted legal, ethical, management, and accounting principles.  More about that too is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]

            {Late in the 1920s there had been three Greyhound subsidiaries (not divisions) that used the name of the Greyhound Lines, Inc. (GLI) – that is, the GLI of Indiana, the GLI of Ohio, and the GLI of Delaware.  Those three firms are sometimes known collectively as the first GLI (or the first GLIs in the plural).  [The GLI of Indiana in 1927 became the first business unit of the growing Greyhound empire to make a public use of the name of the Greyhound Lines; in -34 the GLI of Indiana became renamed as the Pennsylvania GL of Indiana (PGL of Indiana), which about -53 became merged into the main undenominated Pennsylvania GL, which in -54 became renamed as the second Eastern GL.]  More about those three early GLI subsidiaries is available in my article about the Central GL, starting in the section entitled “The GLI of Indiana.”}

Beyond the PacGL and the WGL

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

            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 2023) is available in my article entitled “Greyhound Lines after WW2.”]

Conclusion

          The Pacific Greyhound Lines made major, significant, and lasting contributions to the present Greyhound route network.

Addendum: California Parlor Car Tours

          Sightseeing tours in horseless carriages, using open-air wagons with wooden benches, began in Southern California almost as soon as motor vehicles began to appear there.

            In 1921 Ralph “Smitty” Smith formed his Smith-Fageol Company, to sell (in Southern California) the products (mainly motor coaches) of the new Fageol Motors Company, of Oakland.  [The Fageol brothers, Frank and William, had just (in that same year, 1921) introduced the first model of their new buses, which they named as the Fageol Safety Bus, and which they quickly renamed as the Fageol Safety Coach (at the suggestion of one of their customers).]

            Smith soon saw the opportunities in the infant sightseeing industry, so he began to buy Fageol Safety vehicles and to run them in his own sightseeing business.  At first he made curbside pickups, as did other similar operators; then in 1923 he made a relationship with the Los Angeles office of the famous international firm of Thomas Cook and Son, based in England.  By the end of that same year, -23, he began to conduct tours from the Cook office.  His first tours there ran to Hollywood, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Riverside, Long Beach, and San Diego.

            At an early date Smitty named his sightseeing firm as the Parlor Car Tours – to emphasize the deluxe or upscale nature of his operation.

            Soon he began to offer three-day circle tours to Monterey, San Francisco, and several intermediate attractions along the El Camino Real (“The Royal Road” or “The King’s Highway”), which later became known also as US highway 101 (US-101).  That service began on 18 November 1924.

            On 08 January 1925 Smith and his partners, whom he had drawn in by then, reorganized, renamed, and incorporated their firm as the California Parlor Car Tours (CPCT), and they moved the headquarters to San Francisco, where it has remained ever since.

            In January 1927 the CPCT began a two-day circle tour from Los Angeles to Paso Robles and back.

            The business thrived, and the firm continued to buy custom-built Fageol Safety Coaches with special appointments and with increasing seating capacities.

            In August 1929, after the state government opened the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH or state road 1) through Malibu, the CPCT started sending its coaches on the new route, which still provides spectacular views along the way.

            In May 1929, during the negotiations to form the Pacific Transportation Securities, which produced the Pacific Greyhound Lines, the Southern Pacific Motor Transport (SPMT) Company (a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad) quietly bought the CPCT for $75,000.  The SP officials allowed the CPCT to operate as a separate subsidiary of a subsidiary, and they did not convey the CPCT into the formation of the PacGL.

            While the SPMT Company owned the CPCT, the tour company maintained a close relationship with the PacGL, from which it repeatedly bought, leased, or borrowed coaches from the PacGL.

            Eventually, on a date no longer clear, The Greyhound Corporation bought at least a majority (controlling) interest in the CPCT.

            In June 1935, after a reduction in the tour business during the Great Depression, the CPCT offered a new four-day circle tour from Los Angeles to the Yosemite National Park via Monterey, the Pacheco Pass, and Merced – and then back to Los Angeles via Modesto, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz.

            The CPCT added one more feature before the start of WW2.  In October 1936, after the opening of the segment of the Pacific Coast Highway between Monterey and San Luis Obispo via Big Sur, the CPCT began to use that route, with its unmatched views, between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

            Business continued to thrive until WW2, which cut off both the domestic traffic and the stream of tourists from abroad.  Then the federal Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) ordered a wartime suspension of all tourist operations throughout the US, starting on 01 June 1942.  The California Railroad Commission added its formal consent (on 23 November 1942) for a suspension of the operations of the CPCT for the duration of the war.

            On 12 November 1946, after WW2, the Railroad Commission gave authority for the CPCT to resume all its previous services.

            Further, the ICC gave its authority to the CPCT for new interstate tours to Reno, Nevada, in January 1947 and to Grant’s Pass, Oregon, in April 1948.

            In 1958, as soon as the Hearst Castle (near the Pacific Coast Highway, the PCH, state road 1, in San Simeon, between Monterey and San Luis Obispo) became open to the public, the CPCT added a three-day tour (based in San Francisco) of the coast, the castle, and several nearby missions – and later it added an expanded five‑day tour.

            On 20 October 1964 the ICC allowed The Greyhound Corporation to transfer the rights of the CPCT from Greyhound into the name of the CPCT itself, thus preparing for the possibility of a simple or uncomplicated sale of the CPCT – and meanwhile allowing the CPCT to issue its own investment stock.  [Without the ownership of those certificates, the CPCT would have held few assets and thus little basis for selling stock or gaining consent (from the federal SEC) to sell stock to the public.]  That process included the issuance of a new ICC number and an ICC certificate for the tour company.

            The CPCT continued to grow modestly and to thrive.

            During 1984 two private investors, Bipin Ramaiya and Ralph Seligman, bought the CPCT from The Greyhound Corporation for $4,400,000.  Ramaiya had worked for Greyhound in San Francisco from 1970 until May 1972, when he went to work for the CPCT instead.  When he and Seligman bought the CPCT, Ramaiya became the president and CEO, and Seligman became the vice president.  Ramaiya continued in that post until February 2019, when he retired.

Very Special Articles

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

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

Related Articles

            Please see also my articles about the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, the Capitol Greyhound Lines, the Central Greyhound Lines, the Dixie Greyhound Lines, the Florida Greyhound Lines, the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines, the Illinois Greyhound Lines, the New England Greyhound Lines, the Northland Greyhound Lines, the Northwest Greyhound Lines, the Ohio Greyhound Lines, the Overland Greyhound Lines, the Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines, the Richmond Greyhound Lines, the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, the Southwestern Greyhound Lines, the Teche Greyhound Lines, the Valley Greyhound Lines, The Greyhound Corporation, the Greyhound Lines after WW2, the Tennessee Coach Company, and the Scenicruiser.

Bibliography

            Coachbuilt.com.

            Harris, Eva, Driving America for 100 Years.  Victoria: Friesen Press, 2017.  ISBN 978-1-4602-5290-1.

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

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

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

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

                  March 1954;
                  April-May 1954;
                  June 1954;
                  March 1955;
                  April 1955;
                  November 1955;
                  January 1964;
                  April 1965;
                  April 1966;
                  December 1967;
                  December 1969;
                  April 1973;
                  December 1978;
                  March 1979;
                  September 1979;
                  October 1979;
                  July 1984;
                  November-December 1989;
                  July-August 1990;
                  March-April 1991;
                  January-February 1992;
                  March-April 1993;
                  April-June 1995;
                  October-December 1996;
                  October-December 1998;
                  October-December 1999;
                  January-March 2001;
                  October-December 2017.

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

            Plachno, Larry, Modern Intercity Coaches.  Polo: Transportation Trails, 1997.  ISBN 0-993449-27-5.

            Rushing, Duncan Bryant, Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines.  Orange City: Fidelity Publishers, forthcoming.

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

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Posted at 01:24 EST, Monday, 18 December 2023.

©  Copyright, 2023, Duncan Bryant Rushing