Greyhound Buses founded 1914-2020 by Carl Eric Wickman
Carl Eric Wickman was born in Sweden in 1887. In 1905, he moved to the United States where he worked as a drill operator at a mine in Alice, Minnesota, until he was laid off in 1914. That same year, he became a Hupmobile salesman in Hibbing, Minnesota. Although unsuccessful as a car salesman, Wickman used a seven-passenger car to begin a bus service with Andy "Bus Andy" Anderson and C.A.A. "Arvid" Heed in 1914. The fledgling company transported iron ore miners from Hibbing to Alice at 15 cents a ride.
In 1915, Wickman joined forces with Ralph Bogan, who was running a similar service from Hibbing to Duluth, Minnesota, to form the Mesaba Transportation Company. The company made $8,000 in profit in its first year.
By the end of World War I in 1918, Wickman owned 18 buses and was making an annual profit of $40,000. In 1922, Wickman joined forces with Orville Caesar, the owner of Superior White Bus Lines. Four years later, Wickman purchased two West Coast operations, the Pioneer Yelloway System (the operator of the nation's first transcontinental bus) and the Pickwick Lines, creating a national intercity bus company.
The Greyhound name had its origins in the inaugural run of a route from Superior, Wisconsin to Wausau, Wisconsin. While passing through a small town, Ed Stone, the route's operator, saw the reflection of his 1920s era bus in a store window. The reflection reminded him of a greyhound dog, and he adopted that name for that segment of the Blue Goose Lines. The Greyhound name became popular and later applied to the entire bus network. Stone later became General Sales Manager of Yellow Truck and Coach, a division of General Motors (GM), which built Greyhound buses.
As president of the company now named Motor Transit Corporation, Wickman continued to expand it so that by 1927, his buses were making transcontinental trips from California to New York. In 1928, Greyhound had a gross annual income of $6 million.
In 1929, Greyhound acquired additional interests in the Gray Line and part of the Colonial Motor Coach Company to form Eastern Greyhound Lines.Greyhound also acquired an interest in Northland Transportation Company and renamed it Northland Greyhound Lines.