Mayflower Transit Company

In 1927, trucker Conrad M. Gentry, formerly of Red Ball Transit Company, and International Harvester truck salesman Don F. Kenworthy started the Mayflower Transit Company in Indianapolis with two trucks. Within a year, the company desperately needed capital, and investors Burnside Smith and Parke Cooling helped reorganize the company as the Aero Mayflower Transit Company. By 1932, despite the Great Depression, Mayflower’s business topped $500,000.

In 1940, Mayflower became the first trucking company in the industry to receive operating rights in all states. The company’s revenues reached $10 million by 1947 and $45 million by 1958. Mayflower went public in 1976, and, three years later, the company began moving electronic, computer, and trade show exhibits.

Seeking to stabilize the cyclical profits of the moving business, which peaks during the summer months, Mayflower began operating buses for schools, companies, and transit authorities in September 1984. Two years later, after fending off a hostile takeover bid by Laidlaw Transportation of Canada, Mayflower management took the company private in a debt-laden leveraged buyout. In 1990, Mayflower Transit formed a joint venture with Sovtransavto, the largest trucking company in Russia, to become the first moving company in the former Soviet Union. Mayflower filed for bankruptcy in December 1991, emerging from bankruptcy reorganization in early 1992.

The Unigroup transportation company purchased the reorganized Mayflower in 1995 and moved its headquarters moved to a suburb of St. Louis. Mayflower operates as an agent-owned cooperative. Locally owned agents, including some in Indianapolis, coordinate their own local and intrastate moves, while the Mayflower cooperative conducts interstate and international services. Many Indianapolis residents know the company best for its role in the midnight move of the Colts from Baltimore to the city in March, 1984.