Capitol Greyhound Lines


The Capitol Greyhound Lines, a highway-coach carrier, was a Greyhound regional operating company, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, from 1930 until 1954, when it was merged into the Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, a neighboring operating company.

Development

The Capitol Greyhound Lines came into existence in November 1930, as a joint venture by the Blue and Gray Transit Company and The Greyhound Corporation to operate a single new main line along U.S. Route 50 between Washington, DC and Saint Louis, Missouri via Winchester, Virginia; Clarksburg and Parkersburg, West Virginia; Chillicothe and Cincinnati, Ohio; Bedford and Vincennes, Indiana; and Olney and Salem Illinois. The U.S. 50 route was shorter and faster than the best alternate route then available, which ran via Hagerstown, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Wheeling, West Virginia, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis and Terre Haute, Indiana, and Effingham, Illinois. Capitol Greyhound also operated a branch line between Shoals, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky via Paoli, Indiana and provided local suburban commuter service from Washington, DC, to Winchester, Virginia, and Annapolis, Maryland.
The CpGL took part in only one interlined through-route - that is, the use of through-coaches on a through-route running through the territories of itself and one other company - with the Red Star Motor Coaches - connecting Washington, DC, via Annapolis with Rehoboth Beach and Salisbury and Ocean City, all three on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Delaware - until 1952, when the Carolina Coach Company bought the Red Star concern.
The first president of the Capitol GL was Arthur Hill, the founder and president of the B&G firm.
B&G in 1929 had become a part of the National Highway Transport Company, which in 1931 became renamed as the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, based in Charleston, West Virginia.
The Capitol GL met the Atlantic GL, the Central GL, the Dixie GL, the Great Lakes GL, the Pennsylvania GL, the Richmond GL, the Southeastern GL, and the Southwestern GL.

Merger into Pennsylvania GL

In 1954 The Greyhound Corporation bought the 50-percent share of the Atlantic GL in the Capitol GL, then Greyhound merged Capitol into the Pennsylvania GL, which in 1955 became merged with the old Central GL - thereby forming the Eastern Division of The Greyhound Corporation, the first of four huge new divisions.
Thus ended the Capitol GL.

Beyond Capitol GL

Later The Greyhound Corporation reorganized again, into just two humongous divisions, named as the Greyhound Lines East and the Greyhound Lines West ; even later it eliminated those two divisions, thereby leaving a single gargantuan undivided nationwide fleet.
In 1987 The Greyhound Corporation, which had become widely diversified far beyond transportation, sold its entire highway-coach operating business, to a new company, named as the Greyhound Lines, Inc., called also GLI, based in Dallas, Texas - a separate, independent, unrelated firm, which was the property of a group of private investors under the promotion of Fred Currey, a former executive of the Continental Trailways, which was by far the largest member company in the National Trailways trade association.
Later in 1987 the Greyhound Lines, Inc., the GLI, the new firm based in Dallas, further bought the Trailways, Inc., the TWI, its largest competitor, and merged it into the GLI.
The lenders and the other investors of the GLI ousted Fred Currey as the chief executive officer after the firm went into bankruptcy in 1990.
The GLI has continued to experience difficulties and lackluster performance under a succession of new owners and new executives - while continuing to reduce its level of service - by hauling fewer passengers aboard fewer coaches on fewer trips along fewer routes with fewer stops in fewer communities in fewer states - and by doing so on fewer days - that is, increasingly operating some trips less often than every day - and by using fewer through-coaches, thereby requiring passengers to make more transfers.
After the sale to the GLI, The Greyhound Corporation changed its name to the Greyhound-Dial Corporation, then the Dial Corporation, then the Viad Corporation.
The website of the Viad Corporation in September 2008 makes no mention of its corporate history or its past relationship to Greyhound.