Years before the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled over whether or not trucking companies could grow by merging with other carriers there was a large consolidation of 17 trucking companies. In the end after the dust settled the firm had one-ninth of the combined freight revenues of all highway transportation companies. The newly created firm had over 1,000 miles of routes and more than 200 pieces of equipment. Don’t be impressed with the number of units in the fleet as that would have been an average of 11 per company. I’ll get into more of that later.

Southern California Freight Lines was formed in January 1931 by consideration of the following 17 companies:

Coast Truck Line, Motor Service Express, Triangle Orange County Express, Harbor Freight Transit, Borderline Express Company, Rice Transportation Company, Glendale and Verdugo Hills Express, Los Angeles and Compton Express, Inglewood and Los Angeles Express, Redlands and Los Angeles Express, Donovan Transportation Company, Burbank Transfer Company, Hemet Transfer Company, Anza Trail Truck Line, Direct Delivery System, Valley Trucking Service and United Truck Service.

Triangle Express was apparently the larger of all the companies involved with the merger. Triangle had several offices and served the majority of the Los Angeles area as per the below full page advertisement in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory.

S Brice Cowan operated several trucking companies from 432 South Alameda Street. Among them were Brea Express, Burbank Transfer, Los Angeles & Compton Express, Redondo Express, Redlands Express and Yoruba Linda Express. My suspicion is that these other companies existed only on paper since all were accessible by the same phone number at that address.

Another trucking company listed at 432 South Alameda Street was Rice Transportation Co. Same phone number but RB Cleaveland is listed as the manager.