New Day for the Hound

Soon the sun disappeared from view,

The stars came out like they always do,

Then I cuddled up close to you,

And we both fell in love on a Greyhound Bus,

That's us--in love on a Greyhound Bus. . . .*

In tune with this popular song, The Greyhound Corp. plans to carry romance and its paying customers more comfortably than ever before. Soon Greyhound, world's biggest intercity bus company, will put into operation the first of 1,500 new 37-passenger buses, first Greyhound replacement since 1942. The new aluminum buses, designed by Raymond Loewy Associates and costing $38 million, are air-conditioned and contain such gadgets as a seat which is "shaped to the human form."

By the peak of the vacation season, Greyhound, which intends to replace one-third of its fleet, will have hundreds of the new buses on its main lines. To help keep them filled, it has laid out some 200 low-cost tours around the U.S. Example: a six-day tour from Chicago to Washington provides five nights in hotels, sightseeing trips to public buildings in the capital, Washington Monument, Mount Vernon, etc. Total cost (excluding meals): $42.50.

Up with Hupp. This was a long way from the one Hupmobile with which Founder Carl Eric Wickman, whose sad eyes seem to be always peering through a windshield, started in 1914. An immigrant from Sweden, Wickman carried passengers on the dirt roads fanning out from Hibbing, Minn. Practically in at the birth of the bus business, his infant line grew by gobbling up his one-car competitors.

In 1925 Wickman bought a small line operating out of Superior, Wis., owned by a young man named Orville Swan Caesar. The line was unimportant, but Caesar, a onetime mechanic's helper who liked to tinker, was not. Within a year he and Wickman were running Greyhound together and had laid the foundations of the present Greyhound Corporation. They kept on buying up other lines out of profits, kept their former owners to run them. When their cash dwindled, a Minneapolis banker, Glenn Wood Traer, joined forces with them. He persuaded railroads to hedge their own futures by investing in "the Hound."

By carrying passengers cheaply (1 1/2 -c- a mile) and as safely as railroads, Greyhound has grown into a holding company which controls 19 transportation systems under the Greyhound emblem--Atlantic Greyhound, Pennsylvania Greyhound (50% owned by Pennsylvania Railroad), Pacific Greyhound, etc. The systems have over 78,000 miles of routes, six times greater than the mileage of any single U.S. railroad, do some 40% of U.S. intercity bus business. Last year the company grossed $174 million, earned a net of nearly $20 million, and paid handsome stock dividends of $3.20 a share.

Dog into Elephant. Though the Hound is already elephant-sized, President Orville Caesar, 54, plans to keep it right on growing. As Wickman is chairman of the board of directors, most of the Hound's care and feeding is up to Caesar. He now has in the works a $20 million project for new terminals, at New York, Chicago and San Francisco, along with garages, restaurants and comfort stations.

In addition, Caesar has spent half a million dollars building an experimental double-decker bus, the first for long haul, express runs. Worked out with Designer Loewy, it will be only 18 inches higher than present buses and no longer. But the tricky new seat arrangement will permit 13 more passengers to be carried, 50 v. 37 in present buses. It also has a washroom, toilet, water cooler, may even carry a hostess. The driver sits in a special clearview compartment between the two decks. It will start on its shakedown cruises this summer. If the trial runs suit Caesar, the bus may go into production next year.

* Song by Ralph Blane, Kay Thompson, George Stoll. Copyright 1945 Robbins Music Corp.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.