The Pickwick Stage Company

The Pickwick Stage Company was a pioneer transportation company on the West Coast.  They offered first class bus transportation with deluxe sleeper motor coaches and upscale hotels. The Pickwick Corporation included the Pickwick Airlines, Pickwick Nitecoaches, Pickwick Broadcasting, Pickwick Terminals, Pickwick Hotels and Golden State Hotel Company.  In 1926, the Motor Transit company joined forces with two West Coast operations, the Pickwick Lines and the Pioneer Yelloway System, to form the Northland Transportation Corporation a.k.a. "the Greyhound Lines." The running dog was first used as the company's logo.  Major new hotels were built in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Kansas City, and each hotel had its own radio station.  Pickwick owned KGB in San Diego,  KTM in Los Angeles, KTAB in San Francisco and KMBC in Kansas City. 

Unfortunately, the company found itself overextended when the Great Depression hit and major loans were called.  A number of of its subsidiaries were sold off. In 1931, General Motors assumed $1 million of Pickwick debt.  Greyhound Lines survived the reorganization and continues to this day.  KTAB in Oakland was never owned by Pickwick, it was only being leased, and so the Tenth Avenue Baptist Church ended up taking the station back from Pickwick in 1933, along with $100,000 in debt.