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="">
— 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.