Teche Greyhound Lines - Background and Participation of O.W. Townsend

Background and Participation of O.W. Townsend

O.W. Townsend, who in 1932 obtained control of the Teche Lines, had begun in the highway-coach industry in 1924 when he founded the Cornhusker Stage Lines (based in Hastings, Nebraska, running between Hastings and Lincoln, the capital of the Cornhusker State), which in 1927 became a link in the chain of independently owned carriers which (acting separately but cooperatively) operated under the collective name of the YellowaY Lines (in an attempt to reach from coast to coast).

Soon under the YellowaY name Townsend ran his coaches across Nebraska between Chicago (in Illinois) and Denver (in Colorado) – and maybe onward to Salt Lake City (in Utah).

In 1928 Townsend sold some (but not all) of his rights (in the routes of the Cornhusker Stage Lines) to the newly formed American Motor Transportation Company, which bought also most of the other independent YellowaY member firms, and which then operated them as the YellowaY-Pioneer System.

In 1929 the Motor Transit Corporation (called also MTC) bought the Yelloway-Pioneer System, and later in 1929 the MTC became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation.

Townsend in 1929 sold his remaining property (including the remaining routes) in the Cornhusker Stage Lines to the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad, which merged it into its new Interstate Transit Lines, which in 1943 (along with the Union Pacific, UP, Stages, another bus subsidiary of the UP Railroad) began operating under the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Overland Greyhound Lines (after The Greyhound Corporation began to buy a minority interest in each of those two bus companies of the railroad), and both of which in 1952 became wholly owned subsidiaries of the parent Greyhound firm, then became merged, under the name of the Overland Greyhound Lines, as a division of The Greyhound Corporation.

Meanwhile, even before Townsend sold the remainder of Cornhusker to Interstate (that is, not later than 1929), he began another carrier – the Atlantic-Pacific Stages, running between Saint Louis (in Missouri) and Los Angeles (in California) via Kansas City (on the state line between Kansas and Missouri), Denver (in Colorado), and Albuquerque (in New Mexico) – which in 1930 he sold to the Interstate Transit, Inc., a completely different firm (different from the Interstate Transit Lines) with a confusingly similar name, operating as the Colonial Stages, which afterward became renamed as the Colonial Atlantic-Pacific Stages (called also CAPS), and which succumbed in 1932 during (and as a casualty of) the Great Depression.

In 1931 and 1932 Townsend lived and worked in Philadelphia (in Pennsylvania) as the regional manager of the eastern end of the CAPS.

After the second (and final) failure of the CAPS, Townsend moved to New Orleans (lawfully taking with him about 20 of the newer coaches, Macks of the model BK), bought a controlling interest in the Teche Lines, and began making deals with The Greyhound Corporation.