page_title: Greyhound Lines
section_title: 1914–1930: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Greyhound Lines / History / 1914–1930: Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: Greyhound Bus Station, Eastern Greyhound Lines
context_page_description: Greyhound Lines, Inc., usually shortened to Greyhound, is an intercity bus common carrier serving more than 3,800 destinations across North America. The company's first route began in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1914 and the company adopted the Greyhound name in 1929. Since October 2007, Greyhound has been a subsidiary of British transportation company FirstGroup, but has been based in Dallas, Texas, since 1987. Greyhound and its sister companies in FirstGroup America are the largest motorcoach operators in the United States and Canada.
context_section_description: 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. 
  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 across the bus network but only later gave its name to Greyhound Corporation. Stone later became General Sales Manager of Yellow Truck and Coach, a division of General Motors (GM), which built Greyhound buses.
  Through most of the mid-1920s, the parent company was named Motor Transit Corporation. Wickman continued to expand it so that in 1928, the Greyhound system had a gross annual income of $6 million. and was offering trips in places from California to New York.  The first transcontinental bus trip was made in 1928 by competitor Yelloway-Pioneer System,  In 1929, Wickman purchased two West Coast operations, the Yelloway-Pioneer System and the Pickwick Lines, creating a national intercity bus company.
  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.
caption: An Eastern Greyhound Lines coach depicted at a stop in Conneaut, Ohio, c. 1930
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