Loomis (company) - Wells Fargo Armored Service

Wells Fargo Armored Service

When the express mail firm of Wells Fargo & Company ceased express service in 1918 upon the organization of American Railway Express, the company continued to exist, though no longer an operating company in the United States. George C. Taylor of American Express was president of American Railway Express with Burns D. Caldwell of Wells Fargo as chairman of the board of directors. Davis G. Meller, previously the firm's foreign traffic manager, assumed the presidency of Wells Fargo in 1918.

Elmer Ray Jones, who had been with Wells Fargo since 1893, purchased Wells Fargo & Company's Express in Mexico and Wells Fargo in Cuba in 1919 for $640,000. He headed a group of men from Wells Fargo and American Express in 1924 to buy Wells Fargo & Company in the United States from the E.H. Harriman estate, making arrangements with the executors, Charles A. Peabody and Robert W. DeForest. The shares were taken by American Express (51 per cent) and the group of individuals headed by Jones (29 per cent); the remaining 20 per cent remained outstanding. In 1924 Jones was elected president of Wells Fargo, which sold its 20,000 shares in the Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank, severing the final tie between the two institutions.

Jones redeveloped Wells Fargo as a concern for armored transportation and other specialized express movements. In 1947, for instance, he personally supervised the transfer of 13 tons of gold from Montreal to Mexico City by airplane. The company had a fleet of 50 armored cars in New York City, ten stores handling farm equipment, automobiles and trucks, and (together with American Express) the largest travel agency in Mexico. It also provided fast railroad freight service through a subsidiary, the Wells Fargo Carloading Corporation.

Succeeding Jones as president of Wells Fargo were Ralph T. Reed in 1956, Howard L. Clark in 1960, R.D. Beals in 1963, and James A. Henderson in 1964. Wells Fargo continued its overseas express service until the 1960s; by the middle of the decade, its subsidiaries operated armored cars in 12 Eastern and Southern states, and the concern had entered the coin-auditing and coin-rolling business.

As an operator of armored cars, the company did business as the Wells Fargo Armored Security Corporation as an affiliate of Baker Industries, and later, after its acquisition by Borg-Warner Security, as Wells Fargo Armored Service.