Greyhound and Trailways

The Trailways bus system was formed in 1936 as an association of five separate companies working together to offer nationwide bus service through routing, ticketing and scheduling. Unlike its major competitor, Greyhound, which centralized ownership, National Trailways Bus System was an association of almost 100 franchises. 

The origin of the company has been described by others:

...Carl Earl Wickman was an immigrant who settled in Hibbing, Minnesota, because the weather there reminded him of his native Sweden. Wickman’s first ambition was to be a car salesman, but when he could not sell a single seven-passenger “Hupmobile” he founded the first U.S. bus company. ---encyclopedia.com

…By the mid-1920s Wickman’s company, renamed Mesaba Transportation Company, was worth several million dollars and had numerous partners. In 1925 the man who had started it all left the company and purchased a fledgling firm known as the White Bus Line. The following year Wickman and his partner, Orville Caesar, merged this company with others to form the Motor Transit Corporation, nicknamed “Greyhound” because the buses it used, which were built by Safety Coach of Muskegon, Michigan, were sleekly designed and sported gray paint. ---encyclopedia.com

James Elliott ‘Jack Craft’ (1902-1969) was a native of Breathitt County, Kentucky. Largely uneducated, Craft migrated to the coalfields of West Virginia to find work in the mines. After working long enough to repay the coal company for his transportation expenses, he worked at different locations throughout the southern coalfields. It was in McDowell County that he fell in love with the great invention of that time, the automobile. Capitalizing on that interest, he started by driving coal company executives on their rounds and in 1921 established a Welch taxi service with a single Model-T Ford. After this proved profitable, he expanded into providing bus service to various coalfield towns. As his business grew Craft acquired other small bus lines, establishing Consolidated in January 1934. On August 1, 1956, Craft sold his business to Virginia Stage Lines, a Trailways affiliate. ---westvirgibiaencyclopedia.org

During the 1950s  - 1970s bus service in and out of Princeton was furnished by Consolidated Trailways, a subsidiary of Virginia Stage Lines, a Trailways affiliate.  The bus terminal was located in front of the Princeton Bowling alley which became the Princeton Youth Center after the bowling alley closed. Greyhound shared the facility but only as a drop-off and pick-up location. Greyhound’s closest facility was located at 1330 Bland Street in Bluefield. Princeton was a stop along a main route for Consolidated Trailways running between Roanoke, Virginia and Huntington, West Virginia.

By the mid-1970s bus service and routes in West Virginia had been drastically reduced.

In 1987 Greyhound Lines, Inc., the nation’s largest bus company, bought the bus routes and other assets of the financially struggling Trailways Corp. The various small Trailways affiliates continued to be separately owned but mostly offered tours and bus rentals for private trips.