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FedEx Freight | (1971) Coles Express: Maine's Uncommon Carrier trucking film

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imported_River17

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Coles Express lives on today as part of FedEx Freight.

Coles Express was bought by Roadway Services and was part of the Roadway Regional Group along with Spartan, Central Freight, and Viking Freight. In 1996 they were all merged to form Viking Freight with a national footprint. In less than a year the national operation was closed and Viking Freight is all that remained in the 10 Western States. This was just a precursor to joining with American Freightways that had the other 40 States covered.


This is a great video that shows how trucking was done 40 years ago.

Question to any city drivers out there.......Did you ever do a residential delivery of a live parrot??:biglaugh::biglaugh::biglaugh:

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1970 Coles Express film - Cole City: Dedication to Progress

And here is yet more historic footage of Coles.


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Winter of '31 about Coles Express - Cole City Credits


padsattic (1 month ago)

This song means allot to me, My mother use to stay with Mr Cole and his family at the farm in Enfield, in the winter of 1924 so she could attend the new High School in Howland.
Enfield is where it all started for Mr Cole with a buck board and a team horses.


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1963 GMC Tank Van Tadem Axle Dromedary of Coles Express

Here is a short video going over the features of Maine based trucking carrier Coles Express unique invention, the Tank-Van. It was a 1963 GMC COE ...


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1920 International Oil Truck delivered to Cole Museum

Here is a short video of us unloading a new artifiact to the Cole Land Transportation Museum. It is a 1920 International Oil Truck originally owned my Merrill Transport of Portland, ME. Probably ...


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River17 said:
Coles Express lives on today as part of FedEx Freight.

Coles Express was bought by Roadway Services and was part of the Roadway Regional Group along with Spartan, Central Freight, and Viking Freight. In 1996 they were all merged to form Viking Freight with a national footprint. In less than a year the national operation was closed and Viking Freight is all that remained in the 10 Western States. This was just a precursor to joining with American Freightways that had the other 40 States covered.
Click to expand...

RIVER. Appreciate you postin these video's, I did'nt even now they existed, I guess I gotta surf you tube a little more. THANK"S
 
Coles Express is really a sad story of the demise of a great company. Surviving the hard times of the depression, Coles Express merged as one of the major carriers for the state of Maine. Like Viking they were known as a carrier who took care of its customers, and its people. After an 18 month Teamsters strike, Coles closed all its terminals outside of the state of Maine, and went back to doing what it did best, servicing the state of Maine as a non union carrier. They eventually open terminals in Massachusetts, but with the threat of deregulation hanging over their heads they sold out to Roadway Express. Roadway Express expanded the operation from two states to eleven states, never turning a profit. Spartan Express was divided into two regions but still never showed a profit. Central Freight Lines was just breaking even but was in drier need of new equipment. Viking Freight was the only carrier who was making money. Roadway put the whole thing together making Viking Freight a national carrier. An 18 month experiment that was doom to fail. 18 months later and 168 million dollars of red ink the experiment was shut down. Coles and Spartan were closed. Central Freight Lines was sold back to its management team, and Viking Freight spent the next year licking its wounds. We spent some long nights that year trying to survive. TP
 
Great video, you didnt see too many pallets...did ya? And yea, it sounded like an old V8 671 Detroit to me...screaming demon. You could get a lot of stops in those old bobtails, Ive had 18-20 on mine back in the day....all hand freight. If you were lucky to have a pallet, you had to carry a rope and a hook to drag it to the back, that was an easy stop!! Tandems with no power steering or AC, that was the "good" ol days.......
 
If I'm not mistaken we have a coles trailer sitting at the end of our dock in LVS. We use it for storage. Thanks for the videos. I always wondered about that trailer.
 
Coles Express 70th Anniversary

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