HOW IT ALL BEGAN - All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide - page 17

But then trucks appeared. Actually, the value of hauling sup-
plies by truck had become apparent in Europe during World War
I when the U.S. Army used fleets of vehicles to haul supplies and
ammunition to the doughboys at the front. From that experi-
ence, it was easy to see that trucks had considerable potential
for peacetime application. In 1919 a convoy of trucks set out to
cross the country from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. The
journey took three months, and the vehicles averaged less than
six miles per hour, but they did it. Suddenly it was clear that the
only thing trucks needed to become a new and important mode
of transportation was a decent road.
To provide jobs for the unemployed after the stock market
crash of 1929, the government started building those roads, the
beginnings of our Interstate Highway System. As soon as new
roads were finished, trucks began hauling freight over them.
Instead of traveling city to city in a railroad boxcar, goods were
traveling door to door in a truck. Then came buses—Greyhound,
Trailways, and a host of small-time carriers—and the railroads
started losing passenger business too. Right behind the buses came
private automobiles. Thanks to Henry Ford and mass produc-
tion, ordinary people could now pile into the family car and visit
friends or relatives several hundred miles away. As if competition
from trucks, buses, and cars wasn't bad enough for the railroads,
a few visionaries were talking about airplane travel becoming
feasible for large numbers of people within 20 years. To top it all
off, in some parts of the country railroads were even competing
against each other for both freight and passenger business.
The Way to a Passenger's Heart
Whatever their other faults, the railroad entrepreneurs were not
quitters, and they finally began to fight for their share of the pas-
senger business. They competed by claiming faster trains, more