The Great Lakes Greyhound Lines (called also GLGL), a highway-coach carrier, was a Greyhound regional operating company, based in Detroit, Michigan, USA, from 1941 until 1957, when it merged with the Northland Greyhound Lines, a neighboring operating company, thereby forming the Central Division of The Greyhound Corporation (the parent Greyhound firm), called also the Central Greyhound Lines (making the fifth of six uses of the name of the Central Greyhound Lines).
Origin The Great Lakes Greyhound Lines (GL) resulted from a combination of three major components: the Eastern Michigan Motorbuses, the Ohio Greyhound Lines, and the Michigan routes of the Central Greyhound Lines (a subsidiary of The Greyhound Corporation with the second use of the name of the Central Greyhound Lines).
That third source, the (second) Central GL, is of particular historical interest, because it had descended from, among other elements, the Safety Motor Coach Lines, in which Edwin Eckstrom, an early investor and participant in the Greyhound development in northern Minnesota, first applied the name Greyhound (albeit in a borrowed usage) to the coaches and the companies and first applied the blue-and-white livery to the coaches.
Eastern Michigan Motorbuses In 1924 the Detroit United Railway (DUR) Company, an electric interurban rail carrier, formed a highway-coach subsidiary, then named as the People's Motor Coach (PMC) Company, to enable its parent firm to reduce its operating costs and to enhance its competitive position against an increasing number of rivals operating buses on the improving roads. [The DUR Company had already become involved in the first of its two bankruptcies and reorganizations.]
During the following years the PMC Company developed an extensive bus system, mostly by the acquisition of pre-existing smaller companies, operating along both suburban and intercity routes.
In one notable event, late in 1924 the DUR Company bought the Detroit-Toledo Transportation Company from Ralph A.L. Bogan, another original busman from northern Minnesota. Bogan (along with Swan Sundstrom, another early driver in Hibbing, Minnesota, and elsewhere) had (in 1923) used the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Blue Goose Lines, as he had previously used the same brand name for one other bus company (the Gray Motor Stage Line, running in Wisconsin, between Janesville and Watertown) and later (in 1925) used it again for a third firm (running in Indiana, from Indianapolis southward to Evansville and northward to Kokomo and soon onward to Fort Wayne). The DUR Company extended the name of the Blue Goose Lines (and the image of a blue goose) to its entire intercity system.
Eventually all three of those Bogan routes became segments of the growing Greyhound route network; Bogan himself continued as a key player at Greyhound, serving eventually as the vice president during the presidency of Orville Swan Caesar (1946–56) of The Greyhound Corporation, after the retirement of Carl Eric Wickman, the principal founder of Greyhound. [Sundstrom later became the president of the Pennsylvania GL.]
Other acquired firms included the White Star Motorbus Company, the Wolverine Transit Company, the Star Motor Coach Line, and the Highway Motorbus Company.
The DUR Company in 1928 became renamed as the Eastern Michigan (EM) Railways, and the PMC Company, its highway-coach subsidiary, in 1928 became likewise renamed as the Eastern Michigan Motorbuses (EMM); then in -31 the EM Railways went into the second (and final) bankruptcy and reorganization.
The renamed EMM continued to acquire other firms, including the Southern Michigan Transportation Company, the Great Lakes Motor Bus Company, and the Grosse Ile Rapid Transit Company (which had begun in 1919 as the Grosse Ile Transportation Company).
Despite the lack of success of the parent EM Railways, by 1938 the subsidiary EM Motorbuses had become the largest intrastate bus company in the Wolverine State.
Then The Greyhound Corporation, the parent Greyhound firm, bought a controlling (majority) interest in the EMM under the supervision of the receivers (and the court) in bankruptcy.
However, the federal Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) did not at first allow Greyhound to exercise control over the EMM or to merge it into Greyhound, not until 1941, after a change in the membership of the ICC.
Because of the large size of the EMM, its route network, and its operations, The Greyhound Corporation created a new subsidiary, named as the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines, which in 1941 took over the EMM.
Ohio Greyhound Lines In 1941, when the Great Lakes GL came into existence, The Greyhound Corporation merged the Ohio GL into the new Great Lakes GL.
The Ohio GL had run between Detroit and Louisville (in Kentucky) via Toledo, Dayton, and Cincinnati (all three in Ohio), plus along a detached route between Evansville and Indianapolis (both in Indiana).
[The route segment between Louisville and Cincinnati had come from the Southland Transportation Company, which Harris Spearin, with the backing and financing of Wickman in Minnesota, had founded in 1925, after (in 1923) he sold his White Bus Lines, running three routes based in Duluth, Minnesota, to Wickman's Mesaba Motors Company (a predecessor of the Motor Transit Corporation, which in 1929 became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation – with an uppercase T, because the word "the" was an integral part of the legal name of the corporate entity).]
To comply with an Indiana statute (one which required that corporations doing business in the Hoosier State be domiciled there), Greyhound created a paper administrative corporation, based in Indiana and named as the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines of Indiana, to conduct the route between Evansville and Indianapolis. [The Ohio GL (running 1935–41) had likewise been based in Indiana, as had been the predecessor Central GL (1930–35), which had made the first use of the name of the Central Greyhound Lines, and as had been the earlier predecessor Greyhound Lines, Inc., GLI, of Indiana, which (in 1927) had started Greyhound service between Chicago (in Illinois) and Indianapolis, and which had made the first use of the name of the Greyhound Lines.]
In 1928 the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC), before it became renamed as The Greyhound Corporation, bought the Detroit and Cincinnati Coach Lines, using the brand name, trade name, or service name of the Sunny South Lines, running between those two named cities, thereby gaining the major part of the Greyhound route between Detroit and Louisville. [The seller of the Sunny South Lines was Walter Nisun, who had founded it, and who later (about 1934) sold to the Pennsylvania GL another of his properties, running between Detroit and Saint Louis (in Missouri) via Fort Wayne and Indianapolis.]
[In 1930, during the formation of the Pennsylvania GL, The Greyhound Corporation transferred the routes of the GLI of Indiana – to the Pennsylvania GL and to another new subsidiary, named originally as the (first) Central GL. The Pennsylvania GL got the routes paralleling and coinciding with those of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which made a minority investment in the Pennsylvania GL, and the (first) Central GL got the other routes of the GLI of Indiana (that is, the ones between Indianapolis and Evansville and between Detroit and Louisville).]
[The (first) Central GL in 1935 became renamed (as the Ohio GL) to allow Greyhound to reassign the name Central to a different subsidiary, in the Midwest and the Northeast, one which coincided with the territory of another major railway company, the New York Central (NYC) System, one in which Greyhound transferred a minority non-voting interest to the NYC System, the subsidiary which the Greyhound executives wished to bear a name (Central) to suggest the relationship with the related railway firm (New York Central), as in the case of the neighboring Pennsylvania GL and the Pennsylvania Railroad.]
The Ohio GL continued to increase its route network throughout the Buckeye State, mostly by the acquisition of pre-existing carriers.
Great Lakes GL of Indiana In 1941, shortly after the creation of the Great Lakes GL, The Greyhound Corporation renamed the Ohio GL as the Great Lakes Greyhound Lines (GLGL) of Indiana, based still in Indiana but as a subsidiary of the main undenominated Great Lakes GL (based in Detroit).
In 1947 the GLGL of Indiana closed the gap between its two detached routes (the one between Detroit and Louisville and the one between Evansville and Indianapolis) by obtaining authority from the State of Indiana to run between Madison and Paoli (both in the Hoosier State), thereby also providing a new direct (shortcut) through-route between Evansville and Cincinnati.
Cincinnati and Lake Erie (C&LE) Transportation Company In 1945 The Greyhound Corporation bought a controlling (majority) interest in the Cincinnati and Lake Erie (C&LE) Transportation Company, which had begun in 1923 as the highway-coach subsidiary of the Cincinnati and Lake Erie (C&LE) Railroad, an electric interurban railway in western Ohio, which had ended its rail operations in 1939. The C&LE bus firm ran on a main line between Toledo and Hamilton (a suburb of Cincinnati), including several alternate loops, plus along branch lines between Dayton and Columbus, Dayton and Delaware, Xenia and Columbus, and Lima and Springfield (all in the Buckeye State); it also ran extensive suburban operations based in Dayton. That purchase provided Greyhound with the valuable intrastate rights along many route segments on which it had previously held only the interstate rights. Greyhound in 1946 got approval from the ICC and in 1947 merged its new property into the Great Lakes GL of Indiana.
Safety Motor Coach Lines Edwin (Ed) Ekstrom, an accountant by education and by profession, born in Ludington, Michigan, and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1917 became an investor and participant in the Mesaba Transportation Company, based in Hibbing, the first incorporated firm (replacing the Hibbing Transportation Company, a partnership consisting of Eric Wickman, Ralph Bogan, and others) leading to the founding of the Greyhound empire.
In 1923 Ekstrom acquired (from Wickman's corporation) a controlling interest in the Eastern Wisconsin Transportation Company (running between Madison and Fond du Lac, both in the Beaver State), which (in -21) Wickman had financed during its founding by E.J. Stone; Ekstrom then went to Wisconsin and took charge of his new property.
In 1924 Stone resigned from the firm which he had founded, then he went to work as a bus salesman for the Mack Truck Company.
Shortly afterward the Eastern Wisconsin concern became sold again – to an electric interurban railway and later (the last time) to the Northland GL.
Later that same year, 1924, Ekstrom, with the backing of Wickman, founded the Safety Motor Coach Lines, starting with two Fageol Safety Coaches (hence the name of the firm, with the pleased approval of the Fageol brothers), running between Muskegon and Grand Rapids (both in Michigan).
Within months Ekstrom extended his route network northward to Fremont and to Ludington (both in Michigan) and to the southwest to Chicago (in Illinois) via Holland, South Haven, and Benton Harbor (all three in Michigan) and Michigan City (in Indiana).
Ekstrom also started a detached route, farther north in Michigan, between Petoskey and Traverse City, which he sold later (about 1926), which (in 1948) the Great Lakes GL reacquired (from the North Star Lines), thereby completing a direct through-route between Chicago and Sault Sainte Marie (in the eastern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) via Benton Harbor, Muskegon, Ludington, and Saint Ignace (all in Michigan).
Ekstrom used the name Greyhound by which to refer to his coaches, and he caused that name to be painted onto them.