Tennessee Coach Company
The two Kraemer brothers left the Carolina Coach Company in 1927, then they joined Baskette in his firm in Tennessee.
The State of Tennessee in 1929 issued a joint certificate (of public convenience and necessity) to the TCC and the Union Transfer Company (UTC), based in Nashville, for service between Nashville and Knoxville along US-70, later redesignated in part as US-70S, via Murfreesboro, Woodbury, McMinnville, Sparta, Crossville, Rockwood, and Kingston.
The Tennessee Coach Company in 1929 extended its Johnson City line to Bristol (on the state line between Tennessee and Virginia) and in 1930 to Bluefield (on the state line between Virginia and West Virginia; in 1938 it added service to Atlanta, Georgia, both from Knoxville and from Chattanooga (although along rural backwoodsy routes through lightly populated areas, because Greyhound already ran between Chattanooga and Atlanta through more populous areas in north Georgia via Rome, Dalton, and Calhoun).
The TCC also provided extensive local commuter service from Knoxville to Kingston, Rockwood, Harriman, Oliver Springs, and (especially during World War II) to Oak Ridge (still sometimes called the Secret City).
[Oak Ridge was the site of the headquarters of the top-secret Manhattan Project, which in 1945 produced the world's first nuclear weapons.]
In 1929 – the same year in which the TCC and the UTC obtained their joint certificate for service between Nashville and Knoxville – another significant neighboring carrier came into existence.
The founders were Arthur Hill (of the Blue and Gray Transit Company, of Charleston, West Virginia), John Gilmer (of the Camel City Coach Company, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina), and Guy Huguelet (of the Consolidated Coach Corporation, of Lexington, Kentucky, which in 1936 became renamed as the Southeastern Greyhound Lines).
The purpose of the new firm was to run between Knoxville and Washington, DC, via Bristol, Wytheville, Roanoke, Lexington, Staunton, and Winchester (all the last six in Virginia), along a route which divided between the territories of the Blue and Gray and the Camel City companies.
In May 1932 the Old Dominion Stages leased its route segment between Knoxville and Bristol (on US-11W via Rutledge, Bean Station, Rogersville, and Kingsport) to the Tennessee Coach Company.
The TCC continued to run the leased Old Dominion segment (between Knoxville and Bristol) along US-11W as well as its own original parallel route along -11E.
[That last firm was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Continental Southern Lines, based in Alexandria, Louisiana.
In 1979 the Holiday Inns sold the TWI to a private investor, Henry Lea Hillman Sr., of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The lenders and the other investors of the GLI ousted Fred Currey as the chief executive officer (CEO) after the firm went into bankruptcy in 1990.
