#739 History

PD-4501-0739 was delivered to Pacific Greyhound Lines where it ran as K2302. Later, it was part of Western Greyhound Lines as P-2301, then 8002. Finally, Greyhound added an extra row of 4 seats on the upper deck, bringing the seating capacity to 47, in order to make the run to and from Travis Air Force Base. It became 8002t and a history attributed to Ron Madaglia, President of the Pacific Bus Museum, follows:

"Converted to 47-passenger configuration and renumbered with small letter 't' suffix, and used exclusively for special service from San Francisco Airport/Terminal to Travis Air Force Base at Fairfield (Calif), late 1960s thru end of service. Greyhound added 2 more 4501s to the Travis pool, 8008 and 8009 about a year later. Also of note: 8000T-8007T were the first 4501s reseated to 47 passenger capacity by Greyhound. This was done at WGL's big SF shops around 1966. They needed high capacity buses for this route because of all the G.I.s that were going overseas and returning from Vietnam and other countries in the far east during the Vietnam war. They operated hourly service on the route 24/7and even with 47 passenger buses many times they still had to double many of the schedules, usually with mainline 4104s or MC-5s. Travis AFB was a MAC (Military Airlift Command, which was in effect the government's own scheduled airline) terminal back then and may still be. What is even more interesting was the Travis-SF-SFO route was the biggest revenue route for WGL back then and it was not a Greyhound route. For the hound to reach Travis AFB from I-80 they had to operate through Fairfield over territory of Vaca Valley Bus Lines which had exclusive rights to serve Travis AFB. Greyhound made an agreement with Vaca Valley to pay them a commission for every passenger transported over that route. Vaca Valley had a charter business in addition to their local transit routes in Fairfield, Suisun City and Vacaville and with the significant revenue they received from Greyhound soon began buying newer and then new GM buses for their charter fleet." (Background courtesy of Ron Medaglia)