Florida Greyhound Lines - Origin

Origin

The immediate predecessor of the Florida Greyhound Lines (GL) was the Florida Motor Lines (called also FML), which began in January 1926 – when the firm of Stone and Webster, a multistate public-utility management-service company, established a headquarters in Orlando for the FML and consolidated several properties which it had bought and operated in the Sunshine State. The FML then owned 150 coaches and ran them along 1,290 route miles.

The largest and strongest of those subsidiaries was the Florida Motor Transportation (FMT) Company, based in Miami, which had begun in 1919 – as a result of a merger between two other firms, each likewise based in Miami, and each of which had started in 1914 – the Clyde Passenger Express, running 32 miles (51 km) southward to Homestead, and the White Star Auto Line, running 60 miles (97 km) northward to West Palm Beach. The FMT Company extended northward along the East Coast to Jacksonville in 1921.

The second largest firm was the White Stage Line Company, which had begun in 1918 as the White Bus Line, running between Tampa and Saint Petersburg – eventually, starting in 1924, along US highway 92 (US-92) on the new Gandy Bridge across Tampa Bay, which shortened the distance from 43 miles (69 km) to 19 (30 km) – and which extended to Orlando in 1924 and to West Palm Beach in 1925.

In 1927 the Florida Motor Lines (FML) also began to provide tour and sightseeing services in Miami, Miami Beach, Jacksonville, Saint Augustine, and Daytona Beach.

In 1933 the FML moved its head office from Orlando to Jacksonville.

The FML made connections to the north (in Jacksonville) with the Atlantic GL and to the north and northwest (in Jacksonville, Lake City, and Tallahassee) with the Consolidated Coach Corporation (which in 1936 became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines) and the Union Bus Company (which in 1941 was bought by and merged into the Southeastern GL).

The FML continued to grow and expand within the Sunshine State, mostly by acquiring other pre-existing firms.

However, in one notable instance (among others), the FML obtained a certificate (of public necessity and convenience) for a new route extending from Homestead (near the tip of the mainland on US-1, the Dixie Highway) and continuing to Key West on US-1 along the Overseas Highway. The FML began operating that route in 1936, while the road was still under construction, at first relying in part on two ferry-boat rides which spanned two gaps among the islands until 1938, when the last bridge became complete and open for traffic.