Railway Express Agency (REA): Signs, Trucks, Logo & History
Last revised: September 24, 2026
By: Adam Burns
Railway Express Agency was how a package moved when the passenger train was still the fast freight. It was not a railroad. Eighty-six Class I railroads owned it, put its cars on the head end, and took what was left after the bills were paid. The red diamond and the dark green truck were as ordinary as a depot. The company was incorporated on December 7, 1928, and it began work on March 1, 1929. Regular express stopped on November 7, 1975.
Union Pacific 4-6-6-4 #3708, formerly #3975, westbound past the depot at Sidney, Nebraska, about 1958. The truck at the platform is Railway Express. Richard Wallin photo. American-Rails.com collection.
On this page: At a glance · Before the Agency · American Railway Express · The railroads’ company · Signs and trucks · After the passenger train · Sources
At a glance
The red diamond. The words inside it stayed “Railway Express Agency” for the life of the railroad-owned company. Author’s work.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Company | Railway Express Agency, Inc. A joint facility of the railroads, not a carrier with its own main line |
| Headquarters | New York City. For years, 219 East 42nd Street |
| Incorporated | Delaware, December 7, 1928 |
| Operations | March 1, 1929, taking the property of American Railway Express |
| Owners | 86 Class I railroads. 1,000 shares, allotted by each road’s share of the express business |
| What moved | Parcels, money, produce, auto parts, animals, and the odd shipment, in baggage cars on passenger trains and in the green trucks |
| Trade name | REA Express, from November 1960. Corporate title became REA Express, Inc. in 1969 |
| Last express | Chapter XI on February 18, 1975. Adjudicated bankrupt November 6, 1975. Regular service stopped the next day |
Before the Agency
Express, as Americans came to mean it, is a man who will take a parcel farther and faster than the mail, and stand behind it. William F. Harnden started in Boston. In March 1839 he carried letters and packages to New York, part of the way on the railroad and the rest by steamboat, because there was still no through rail line between the two cities. The business became Harnden & Company. He died on January 14, 1845. Alvin Adams’s Adams Express, another Boston house of the early 1840s, grew into the large eastern company. Henry Wells, who had worked for Harnden, and William G. Fargo built the western house that still carries their names, though the bank and the express company parted long ago.
By the early twentieth century the national express business sat in four companies: Adams, American, Southern, and Wells Fargo. A few railroads ran their own express on the northern transcontinentals, among them the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, and the Western Express. The Hepburn Act of 1906 put those companies under the Interstate Commerce Commission. Parcel post, which began on January 1, 1913, took the small shipments the express companies had lived on.
American Railway Express
When the United States Railroad Administration took the railroads at the end of 1917, William G. McAdoo would not keep a separate express contract on every line. On May 28, 1918, he approved one company. American Railway Express was organized in Delaware on June 22. June 30 was the last day the old houses employed their express clerks. On July 1, 1918, the new company took the wagons, the trucks, the horses, and the refrigerator cars. Adams, American, Wells Fargo, and Southern put in the property. So did the railroad-owned northern express companies. Wells Fargo kept its express business in Mexico and Cuba. The domestic map was one company, and for the duration the Director General set the service.
The Transportation Act, signed by Woodrow Wilson on February 28, 1920, handed the railroads back to their owners on March 1. The express business did not go back to four competing houses. American Railway Express kept running, owned by the old express companies, under contracts with nearly every railroad. Those contracts ran to midnight on February 28, 1929, and they gave the railroads an option to buy the property. On September 1, 1927, still under American Railway Express, the company opened an air-express service with the airlines. That business came with the rest of the property when the railroads took over. In 1921 the trucks and cars had gone to a deep green with red, the colors the later diamond made famous.
A colorized American Railway Express photograph from the 1920s, before the railroads’ agency took the business.
The railroads’ company
The railroads did not renew American Railway Express. On June 21, 1928, a committee of the Association of Railway Executives recommended a separate agency the carriers would own. Agents of the railroads incorporated Railway Express Agency, Inc., in Delaware on December 7, 1928. The Interstate Commerce Commission, in Finance Docket 7322, approved the control and the securities in February 1929. On March 1, 1929, the Agency took the express business of the country.
The capital stock was 1,000 shares, without par value, sold to the railroads at not less than $100 a share. Eighty-six Class I railroads took them, in proportion to the express business each had handled, using the average of 1923 through 1926. Together they did about 98 percent of the gross. Short lines signed the uniform operating contract and shared in the traffic. They did not hold the stock. The purchase of American Railway Express property was fixed at $30,313,000. The Agency sold $32 million of 5 percent serial gold bonds, through J. P. Morgan & Co. and Kuhn, Loeb & Co., to pay for it and for working capital.
The board had fifteen seats: six named by the eastern roads, five by the western, three by the southern, and one director at large. The largest holders sat closest to the votes. These are the opening allotments long published for the twelve biggest:
| Railroad | Shares |
|---|---|
| New York Central | 144 |
| Pennsylvania | 126 |
| Santa Fe | 45 |
| Southern Pacific | 45 |
| New Haven | 44 |
| Baltimore & Ohio | 39 |
| Chicago & North Western | 33 |
| Illinois Central | 29 |
| Burlington | 27 |
| Milwaukee Road | 26 |
| Erie | 25 |
| Union Pacific | 25 |
The point of the structure was in the money. Railway Express paid its own expenses out of the charges. What remained was paid to the owning railroads as rail transportation revenue, in proportion to the business each had handled. The Agency was not left with a profit of its own. The railroads furnished the baggage cars, the station rooms, and the trains. A head-end car lettered Railway Express Agency was ordinary on a passenger consist. The uniform agreements that opened the business ran to February 28, 1954.
Signs and trucks
The public face was simpler than the stock book. A red diamond, the words Railway Express Agency inside it, and a dark green truck. Almost any town with a depot had an express office, sometimes one man and a truck, sometimes, in New York, a building full of clerks. Shipments carried two labels, so one torn tag did not lose the parcel. The company would take produce, time-sensitive auto parts, animals, circus equipment, and freight that included explosives. The advertised standard was delivery anywhere in the country within about five days. An expressman would also drive out and pick the shipment up.
The dark green delivery truck. Author’s collection.
More of the green fleet. The side often carried a monthly advertisement as well as the diamond.
A depot placard. Author’s work.
Another version of the same placard. Author’s work.
A safety poster from the years when the diamond was on every platform.
The country was divided into four territories, Northeastern, Southeastern, Central, and Pacific, each under a vice president, with the headquarters in Manhattan. Air express, inherited from American Railway Express, stayed in the business. It thinned as the airlines built their own freight.
After the passenger train
The original operating agreements ended on February 28, 1954. A new term was written. Fewer railroads were willing to keep a business whose traffic was leaving the passenger trains. United Parcel Service, in business since 1907, and the Post Office parcel service were taking the ordinary package. The head-end car depended on a passenger train still running.
In 1960 the New York Central, the largest shareholder, sold its shares. Alfred E. Perlman, the Central’s president, called the express arrangement an outdated way to move a parcel. That November the Agency took REA Express as its working name and kept the corporate title, a way of stepping back from the words “railway” on the door. William B. Johnson, the president in those years, cut the company hard enough to show a profit in the early 1960s. He later left for the Illinois Central.
The later mark, REA Express. Author’s work.
In 1968 the railroads sold the stock. The company was no longer their joint facility. In the summer of 1969 the corporate name became REA Express, Inc. Trucks and cars carried a red diamond with the letters REA and a large white X, and an arrow pointing up at an angle. By then most of the traffic was on the highway. Amtrak took the intercity passenger trains on May 1, 1971, and only a small share of REA’s remaining business was still in a baggage car. Federal Express, started in 1971, was in the air-parcel market before the older company failed.
On February 18, 1975, REA Express filed a Chapter XI petition in the Southern District of New York and kept operating as debtor in possession. The losses continued. On November 6, 1975, Judge John J. Galgay adjudicated the company bankrupt and ordered it liquidated. C. Orvis Sowerwine was appointed trustee. Regular express stopped the next day. The trustee later sold the operating authorities. Judge Galgay’s order of July 16, 1976, accepted the Alltrans bid for those rights, the customer lists, and the names. The green trucks and the diamond signs are what is left on depots, in collections, and in photographs like the one at Sidney.
Sources
- Interstate Commerce Commission, Finance Docket 7322, Securities and Acquisition of Control of Railway Express Agency, Inc., 150 I.C.C. 423 (1929). Delaware incorporation December 7, 1928. Eighty-six railroads, 1,000 shares, operations March 1, 1929. Joint facility. Purchase price and the bond issue, as reported with the Commission’s approval in February 1929.
- Wells Fargo corporate history, for June 30, 1918, as the last day of its domestic express employment, and July 1 as the morning American Railway Express took the property. Director General McAdoo approved the consolidation May 28, 1918. The Delaware company was organized June 22, 1918.
- In re REA Express, Inc. The railroads held the stock from 1929 until the 1968 sale. Chapter XI petition February 18, 1975. Adjudicated bankrupt November 6, 1975. Regular express ceased November 7. Alltrans order July 16, 1976.
- Klink Garrett and Toby Smith, Ten Turtles to Tucumcari: A Personal History of the Railway Express Agency, and V. S. Roseman, Railway Express: An Overview (1992), for the life of the offices, the trucks, and the men who ran them.
Related reading
- New York Central · Pennsylvania · Baltimore & Ohio · New Haven
- Santa Fe · Union Pacific · Milwaukee Road · Illinois Central · Erie
- Amtrak · Passenger car types · Freight car types
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