Motor Coaches (i): From Steam to Gasoline

[This is one of a series of articles written by Merrill Weekes for the newspaper Old Autos, starting in April, 2004. The series is written with the collective title of "Model T's to Motor Coaches."]

As we travel the highways of this great nation and visit the many interesting historic sites and natural beauty areas, we become aware of the popularity of motor coaches as people movers.

Signal Hill in St. Johns and the Cabot Trail on the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains and the rugged scenery of British Columbia in the West and the multitude of attractions in between would not be accessible to thousands of citizens each year without motor coach tours. Scheduled passenger and parcel service between cities and towns and charter trips to sporting events, ski hills, and destinations for educational tours, keep motor coach companies busy in all seasons.

Down through the centuries, men and women were restricted to the speed of animals on land and the whims of the wind propelling sail boats on water. Then the steam driven engine was invented.

Sir Goldsworth Gurney designed and constructed a steam powered coach to operate a scheduled service between Gloucester and Cheltenham, England in the 1820's. It carried eight passengers, rode on wood spoke rimmed wheels and required a fireman and a driver to operate it. Other inventors followed suit and by 1900 steam buses were traveling on the streets of Paris, France. However, steam coaches were cumbersome and could only travel when the primitive roads were at their seasonal best.

It was the development of the internal combustion engine that made the construction of an efficient multi-passenger vehicle possible. In 1900, the five Mack brothers constructed a twenty passenger sight-seeing bus in their Brooklyn carriage shop and it proved to be very successful.

The White Sewing Machine Company of Cleveland, Ohio, developed a steam car in 1900, and moved on to become a major supplier of gasoline engine heavy duty trucks for the military in the war of 1914 ­ 1918. Following the war they began building buses on truck type chassis. They soon captured a major share of the North American highway coach market, but at the beginning of World War Two, they opted to drop bus production to concentrate on heavy trucks.

Collacutt Coach Lines of Oshawa operated a fleet of White Motor Coaches between Oshawa, Peterborough and Gananoque until after World War Two.

Merrill S. Weekes, July 2004