In 1926, several small bus companies founded in Minnesota during the 1910s merged to form the Motor Transit Corp., which had its main offices in Chicago. Led by E. C. Eckstrom and Eric Wickman, among others, the company used painted gray buses that were manufactured in Muskegon, Michigan. In 1930, the company changed its name to Greyhound Corp. Its fortunes were boosted by the 1933 World's Fair held in Chicago, during which it helped to move some 20 million attendees around the 428-acre fair site. By the beginning of the 1940s, Greyhound owned a fleet of 4,000 buses. In the 1960s, when it was the largest bus line in the United States, with 32,000 employees around the country and roughly $500 million in annual revenues, the company began to move into new lines of business. Its most significant venture came in 1970, when Greyhound began diversifying and acquired Armour-Dial, the old Chicago-based meatpacking giant. In 1971, when Greyhound moved its headquarters to Phoenix, about 1,000 jobs left the Chicago area. By the end of the century, after the company sold its Greyhound Lines to Laidlaw Inc. of Canada, Greyhound buses still ran in and out of Chicago, but the company had little presence in the city.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.