Trailways was not a single company but a group of bus companies that decided to
market themselves together. There’s a web site that details the history of
Trailways. Unfortunately, it has a lot of pop-up ads. Below is the first
chapter from the web site, which happens to be about Burlington Trailways. You
can read more at
http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=buses;id=1;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eangelfire%2Ecom%2Fal%2Fsilverball%2FJon%2Ehtml
— just close the pop-up ads if and when they open.
Railroad operation/ownership of bus companies went through some regulatory
stages. What is now Greyhound was once owned by the Great Northern which saw it
as a substitute for branchline trains. After GN gave the company $10 million,
it bought up other companies and soon was running buses well outside of GN
territory.
But at some point the ICC ruled that railroads could only run buses parallel to
their own routes, so GN divested itself of Greyhound, while Burlington, Santa
Fe, Southern Pacific (which owned half of what would become Pacific Greyhound),
and Union Pacific began running buses in direct competition with their own
transcontinental trains. Then, I believe at some point, the ICC ordered the
railroads to divest their bus interests entirely.
Randal O’Toole
Camp Sherman, Oregon
http://streamlinermemories.info
Installment One
Burlington Trailways
I was going through some of the paper stuff I've accumulated over the years and
had the idea that I might post some timetable scans -- the covers that is -
that were eye catching and maybe comment a little about the companies that put
them out or what was going on with the association at that time.
The first one is the oldest Trailways timetable I have, issued April 5, 1936.
The National Trailways Bus System was formed on February 2,1936, in Chicago,
Illinois, with five founding members, Burlington, Santa Fe, Missouri Pacific,
Safeway of Illinois and Martz.
The idea for the association and the two key players were Burlington and Santa
Fe. Missouri Pacific joined because they saw the other two railroad properties
starting something and they didn't want to be left out. Safeway of Illinois
and Martz were recruited by Burlington and Santa Fe to provide a feed from the
east for their buses at Chicago.
As you can see by the scan of the advertising piece from the center of the
timetable, little more than two months later, there were eight members, adding
the Rio Grande Motorway, Denver-Colorado Springs-Pueblo Motorway and
Denver-Salt Lake-Pacific Stages. By July, those eight members had doubled to
16 members in those three months and included Tri-State Transit which would
become Continental Southern Lines and Bowen Motor Coaches which became
Continental Bus System.
The reason the Trailways "idea" caught on so fast is in one word, Greyhound. In
the late 20's and early 30's, Motor Transit Management (Greyhound) was busy
putting together a nationwide system of bus companies using the Greyhound name
and the public was beginning to recognize Greyhound as a company who could take
you coast to coast. While Greyhound wouldn't finish buying out the railroad
interests until the late 40's and early 50's, they succeeded in getting the
name out there.
Obviously, while Burlington and Santa Fe could promote their services in their
service area, they could not afford to maintain off line offices and do
advertising promotion away from home. On the same tack, Martz might be known
as having service to Buffalo, Chicago or Cleveland, but not San Francisco.
Trailways was an attempt to form a non-profit operating trade association to
spread a common name coast to coast with each member representing the other
members as if it were his service. Worked too. Most people fail to see that
the secret to making Trailways work is to loose yourself inside the
association. Best example of that were the east coast carriers during the
60's-70's and 80's when all you saw on the bus was Trailways except for the
certificate lettering on the baggage doors. During that period. with the
exception of Continental, all the member company's buses were just marked
"Trailways," Martz being the sole exception.
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Posted by: Randal O'Toole <rot@ti.org>
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