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Beginning in the fall of 1916, the Chicago Motor Bus Co. assembled, for
its own use, a fleet of 50 open-top double-deckers. The bodies had been
built by the St. Louis Car Co. and the detachable front-wheel-drive power
plants were assembled in Chicago using Moline-Knight sleeve-valve engines.
Two experimental buses were constructed in 1919, a conventional
rear-wheel-drive type which proved too high for the numerous low clearances
in Chicago and a front-wheel-drive double-decker with a fully enclosed top,
the first such bus in the U.S.
In the process of reorganization during 1920, the operating company
split off the bus-building activity under the name of American Motor Bus
Co., which built 23 closed-top buses in 1922 and then designed and built a
large new rear-wheel-drive open-top bus with 67 seats, later known as "type
K." In 1922 and 1923, 71 of these were built.
Acquisition of the parent company by John D. Hertz in 1923 led to the
creation of the Yellow Coach Manufacturing. Co. (see Yellow Coach) to
succeed American Motor Bus. Chicago Motor Coach Co., as the operating
company was then called, built only one bus itself after 1923, that being an
experimental six-wheel single-decker built in May 1928.
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