Southeastern Greyhound Lines - Relationship With Greyhound

Relationship With Greyhound

From an early date Consolidated operated in conjunction with Greyhound in a cooperative way (with through-ticketing of passengers, through-checking of their baggage, and coordinated connecting schedules, all of which provided advantage to each company along with convenience to their customers).

The CCC sought (among other carriers) the "Greyhound Lines of Georgia", a new and relatively small but significant operation, which by that time had become a single-line company (after initial growth and subsequent paring or pruning), on a route between Chattanooga (in Tennessee) and Jacksonville (in Florida) via Atlanta and Macon (both in Georgia), through the entire length of the Peach State.

That regional Greyhound company in Georgia had started in 1928 as a subsidiary of the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC), the original Greyhound firm, although that subsidiary was then isolated from the rest of the Greyhound empire in that early time in the development of the company's route network – isolated except at its southern end in Jacksonville, which in 1931 the Atlantic Greyhound Lines (called also Atlantic or AGL), another operating company, also reached from the north and northeast along the East Coast.

The Greyhound Lines of Georgia was a result of the work of J.C. Steinmetz, whom the officers of the MTC had sent in 1927 to the Southeast to spearhead the growth of Greyhound in that direction and to provide Greyhound with a gateway for the important (that is, potentially lucrative and therefore profitable) passenger traffic between Florida and the populous Midwest.

{In 1929 the Motor Transit Corporation became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation, and in 1930 the company moved its administrative headquarters from Duluth, Minnesota, to Chicago, Illinois, which had begun to emerge as the major gateway for highway travel between the East and the West. }

The Greyhound Corporation renamed the Greyhound Lines of Georgia (running between Chattanooga and Jacksonville) as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines and in 1931 sold it to the Consolidated Coach Corporation, with which it made connections in Atlanta and Chattanooga. Consolidated then began operating the SEG Lines along the route between Chattanooga and Jacksonville, thereby making connections (in Jacksonville and Lake City) for various points throughout the Sunshine State via the Florida Motor Lines (FML), which in -46 became renamed as the Florida Greyhound Lines (FGL) and which in 1957 became merged into the Southeastern GL.

Consolidated also made connections in Dothan, Alabama, with the Union Bus Company (not to be confused with the Union Transfer Company based in Nashville), which former Union firm in turn made connections in Tallahassee, Lake City, and Jacksonville with the Florida Motor Lines for points along the Gulf Coast and elsewhere in Florida.

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