the (second) Central GL, the Safety Motor Coach Lines, had been founded (with the backing of Wickman) in 1924 by Edwin (Ed) Eckstrom, an accountant, born in Ludington, Michigan, and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota. [Eckstrom in -17 had become an investor and participant in the Mesaba Transportation Company, based in Hibbing, the first incorporated firm (which replaced the Hibbing Transportation Company, a partnership consisting of Eric Wickman, Ralph Bogan, and others) which led to the founding of the Greyhound empire.] In 1926, after the Motor Transit Corporation (MTC) came into existence, its first purchase was Eckstrom's Safety Motor Coach Lines, and Eckstrom became the first president of the MTC. [When the MTC bought the Safety Motor Coach Lines, Eckstrom's company contributed to the MTC not only the name Greyhound and the image of a greyhound dog but also the blue-and-white livery (color scheme) used on Eckstrom's coaches. Eckstrom is said to have proposed the use of the name of the Greyhound Lines even before he left (with the support of his associates in Minnesota) to go back eastward. For more details please see the article about the Great Lakes GL.] In 1929 the Safety Motor Coach Lines (as a subsidiary of the MTC) took over the Interstate Stages (which had used the brand name of the Oriole Lines and had named its coaches as the Oriole Flyers), the Southwestern Michigan Motor Coach Company, and the YellowaY of Michigan (a part of the YellowaY-Pioneer System, bought from the American Motor Transportation Company), all three of which firms Greyhound had acquired through a related company, named as the Automotive Investments, Inc., based in Duluth, Minnesota. In 1930 the Safety Motor Coach Lines became renamed as the Eastern Greyhound Lines (EGL) of Michigan, then in -35 (briefly) as the (third) Central Greyhound Lines (CGL) of Michigan; then in -36, it merged into the undenominated main (second) Central GL. [In 1948 Greyhound transferred all the Michigan routes of the (second) Central GL (formerly those of the Safety Motor Coach Lines) to the Great Lakes GL, which had begun in 1941.] The second major part of the (second) Central GL, the routes between Chicago and New York City via Cleveland, began in 1923, when Clark McConnell, a lawyer in Cleveland, founded the Cleveland-Ashtabula-Conneaut (CAC) Bus Company, running about 71 miles from Cleveland to Conneaut (both in Ohio), reaching to the east-northeast on the way toward