Greyhound shipped parcels in the empty luggage space of buses going anyway

Greyhound's scheduled intercity buses formed the largest private transport network in America — by the late 1990s the company profile counts 2,400 buses, 75,000 route miles, 2,600 destinations and 18,000 daily departures. A bus leaves on schedule anyway; the question was what else could ride it.

From the 1940s the company formalized the answer as the express package business, which its own history says cost almost nothing to implement: parcels took the empty luggage space under the coach, on the same schedules, with no dedicated trucks or drivers.

Greyhound Package Express grew into a 24-hour service linking 3,800+ destinations, with door-to-door Direct Drive, a money-back Priority tier, and a budget Standard tier that shipped when bus space was available; packages could weigh up to 100 lb, and rates undercut FedEx and UPS because Greyhound was filling space that would otherwise go empty.