Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company

The Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company (later Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company, informally Yellow Coach) was an early manufacturer of passenger buses in the United States. It was founded in Chicago as a subsidiary of the Yellow Cab Company in 1923 by John D. Hertz. General Motors purchased a majority stake in 1925, changing its name to 'Yellow Truck and Coach Manufacturing Company. They then bought the company outright in 1943 merging it into their GM Truck Division to form GM Truck & Coach Division. During its twenty-year existence, Yellow Coach built transit buses, electric-powered trolley buses, and parlor coaches.

Its car rental subsidiary (known both as 'Hertz Drivurself Corp' or 'Yellow Drive-It-Yourself') was purchased back by John Hertz in 1953 through The Omnibus Corporation and floated the following year as The Hertz Corporation.

Yellow Coach Manufacturing Co was founded in 1923 as a subsidiary of the Yellow Cab Company.

G.J. Rackham, whose career had commenced with the London General Omnibus Company after the First World War, spent four years in the U.S. from 1922–1926 and recognised the advantage of low swept chassis frame for bus development while employed by Yellow Coach in Chicago. It is likely that he was recruited by Hertz to help start up the bus building business. In 1926, he returned to England to join Leyland Motors as Chief Engineer and was responsible for the groundbreaking Titan and Tiger models.

General Motors purchased a majority stake in the company in 1925 and changed the name to the Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company, with the factory located at Pontiac West Assembly in Pontiac, Michigan.

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