In 1910, Thomas Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture, and the Henry Ford Company was selling its Model T vehicle.
And in the little town of Owosso, Mich., Wayne and Cora Taylor founded the Phillips-Taylor Livery Service, which specialized in moving passengers and freight from the Durand Union Train Depot to points around Shiawassee County.
Over 100+ years, that mom and pop business evolved into Indian Trails, Inc.—Michigan’s first and largest privately owned bus transportation company, with more than 180 employees. Currently, we have an eco-friendly fleet of 80+ buses—more than 50 of which are deluxe motorcoaches—that carry passengers throughout Michigan, the United States, and Canada.
Daily Inter-City Routes
A big part of Indian Trails’ business, which is still headquartered in Owosso, involves operating buses over 38 daily, scheduled inter-city routes throughout Michigan and into Chicago, Milwaukee and Duluth. These routes offer over 100 boarding points, and direct connections with both the Amtrak and Greyhound national transportation networks, and the Detroit and Flint international airports.
Michigan Flyer
Our subsidiary airport shuttle service offers 12 roundtrips daily between East Lansing, Ann Arbor and Detroit Metro Airport (DTW), connecting two great university towns with one another, as well as with upwards of 700 daily nonstop flights between DTW and the world. Launched in 2006, Michigan Flyer transports more than 220,000 passengers annually with 98 percent on-time reliability. Since 2012, it has also operated the Ann Arbor-DTW segment of its route as “AirRide” in partnership with the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority.
Custom Group Charters
As you may know, we also operate a large group charter business specializing in custom transportation solutions for corporations, K-12 schools, colleges, sports teams, trade associations, non-profit organizations and others. Customers include Girl Scouts of America, Michigan Education Association, Detroit Lions and Detroit Red Wings, Walmart, Quicken Loans, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, U.S. Army, Ford Motor Company, United Auto Workers, and our state’s great public universities.
A group can charter one or more Indian Trails motorcoaches to leave from anywhere in Michigan, northern Ohio or Indiana, for travel to any destination in the continental U.S. and Canada.
Pioneering from the Get-Go
From the start, the leadership of Indian Trails embraced challenges and change. Circling back to our indomitable co-founder Cora Taylor in 1914, she applied for—and was granted—a chauffeur’s license, becoming the first woman in the United States to be issued one. (She is also recognized as the nation’s first woman taxicab driver and was inducted into the Michigan Transportation Hall of Fame in 2006).
When Cora Taylor helped build the company by driving auto workers to new factories in Flint, the company became known as the Owosso-Flint Bus Line. By 1930, it had a terminal in downtown Lansing; 30 diesel buses serving Lansing, other cities across Michigan, and Chicago; and nationwide connections with railroads and other bus lines.
Then we became Indian Trails, Inc., when the company renamed itself after its first inter-city route along U.S. 12, which locals called “the Old Indian Trail.”
In its history, the company has only had five presidents — Wayne and Cora Taylor, their nephew Bill Himburg, his son-in-law Gordon Mackay, and now Chad Cushman, who succeeded Mackay in 2016.
Along the way, Indian Trails has quickly adopted customer-centric innovations such as reclining seats, air conditioning, and two-way radios. We were the first bus company to install video monitors, stereo sound systems, WiFi, and hearing loops in its fleet.
Today, 108 years after it was founded, Indian Trails is co-owned by our late president Bill Himburg’s daughters (who are the Taylors’ great nieces): Mary Ferguson, Billie Maier, Linda Mackay, Harriet “Honey” Biondi and Winalee Zeeb. They continue our tradition of quality, excellence and innovation in transporting customers to their destinations.