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

Pre-deregulation just about every state had a large mostly intrastate carrier protected from competetion and ran almost as utilities,cool video Riv17!I can almost hear the ticking of the movie projector in homeroom watching these,when I was a kid the California trucking associations used to put out a lot of these films hopefully they still exist.
 
Coles Express

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Coles Express

Finally here we find the Viking influence in this Coles truck with Viking specs. This is probably a 1995 KW T800. The first thing you find on the left side is the huge air tank (looks like a fuel tank) for the air starter. Also you see the truck number 1300333.
The 13 denoting a three axle truck and 33 being the actual truck number with the last 3 digit there for good looks.
Also the paint scheme follows the Viking lines except that this one is orange instead of blue.

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Here is the same truck showing the 150 gallon fuel tank on the right side. I wonder if these trucks finally found their way to Denver or Salt Lake City.

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I want to thank David Faust for these great pictures.

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Coles Express

Here we see a Viking specd Ford city truck with the Coles colors and a Viking specd 28" pup with Coles colors next to a Viking trailer in a Coles terminal in Westminster, VT. 1996.

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I want to thank Tim Stevens for a great picture.

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Coles Express

Here we find Coles Express trucks and trailers in 1992 in Vermont before the Viking Freight influence.

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I want to thank the Tim Stevens Collection.

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esarde said:
Since I worked inside the office, I liked the sophisticated machne used to get the D83 revenue splits...
Click to expand...

esarde :clap:

We have come a long way from the days of the sliding rules. Even the computers we have today have come a long way compared to what we had back in the mid 1990s.
Integrating 4 different dispatch systems and back offices was a huge head wind when Viking Freight went nationwide in 1996.

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Coles Express

Here are a couple of pictures from 1996.

First one we see a Viking Freight truck pulling a Coles trailer, a Central Freight trailer, and a Viking Freight trailer.

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Here we have an old Oregon Freightways WhiteGMC (Volvo) with Viking Freight colors pulling a couple of Coles trailers and a Spartan trailer.
Viking bought Oregon Freightways in 1991 to expand footprint to the Northwest.

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I want to thank the David Faust Collection.

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Coles Express Inc.

Here is a link with the entire story for Coles Express, Bangor, Maine.

From 1995

Coles Express Inc. -- Company History

Address:
P.O. Box 918
Bangor, Maine 04401
U.S.A.

Statistics:
Wholly Owned Division of Roadway Services, Inc.
Incorporated: 1917
Employees: 400
Sales: $41 million

Company History:
Coles Express Inc. is a comprehensive motor transportation and trucking service operating in the New England region of the United States. The company was purchased by Roadway Services in 1993, as a part of that company's efforts at geographic and service expansion through acquisition. In 1995, Coles Express was providing trucking services throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and along the Atlantic Coast of Canada.
The company was founded in 1917 by Allie Cole. Cole had left his home in Lowell, Maine, at the age of ten, realizing that his widowed mother could not support him and his several sisters and brothers on her washer-woman salary. Cole found employment as a farm hand, a stable boy, and, in 1910 when he was 17, as a baggage and freight handler at the Enfield, Maine, railroad station. According to Galen Cole's Allie Cole: A Maine Pioneer, one day Cole found himself helping a businessman lower a 600-pound load from the dock of the railroad to a horse-drawn wagon. Since this was against the normal operating rules of the railroad, the young man was harshly reprimanded. Bristling at the rebuke, and especially irritated at the railroad's attitude of not encouraging good customer treatment, Cole decided to quit his job and start his own company.
An opportunity presented itself when the U.S. Mail contract offered a bid for delivery between the railroad station at Enfield and the adjacent towns of Burlington, Lowell, Saponac, and Grand Falls. Cole won the contract and established his own firm, Coles Express. The new business venture blossomed, and by 1919 Cole had made enough money to purchase a Model T Ford for the delivery of mail and other packages. This modernization greatly impressed his customers since the delivery time was reduced to a fraction of what it took using horse transportation.

Coles Express Inc. -- Company History

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Years later I still see Central trailers that are still wearing the old "Viking style" colors...I guess they'll get around to updating them one of these days.
 
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