OTA Summer 2016

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Issue 3, Summer 2016
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
continues
1952 married Dolores Morgareidge,
one of Pierce’s office staff. At Pierce
Freight Lines and their successor,
Valley Copperstate, Bill was,
consecutively, driver, dock supervisor,
salesman, and General Sales Manager.
In late 1970, Bill and Dolores
separated from Valley Copperstate,
and in 1971 they purchased the
Reddaway Truck Line, a short-line
carrier in Oregon City, from the son
of the founder. Limited by their
Oregon PUC, Reddaway had only a
few trucks doing primarily short-haul
work in Clackamas County.
Bill found ways to make operations
more efficient and profitable, but
potential in Clackamas County was
limited. Bill began looking for a way
to expand his business. He could
either apply for authority to enter a
new territory and face delays and
appeals from businesses already in
the area, or he could purchase a firm
with authorities already in place.
Reddaway’s first expansion was the
acquisition of Salem Navigation
Company. “The Salem Navy” had
given up their sternwheelers in the
1930’s, holding onto their trucking
business but never bothering to
change their name. The trucks had
done a little less business each year,
and by 1972 the company was looking
at the end. Bill liked the name and the
history, but most of all he liked the
Portland-to-Salem authority, 44 miles
in all, that he would acquire with
the deal.
It didn’t happen quickly. That 44-mile
authority was held up for more than a
year. Carriers with more clout than
Bill were not interested in having
competition in their territories and
found ways to obstruct the process. It
took a visit to Senator Mark Hatfield
in Washington, D.C. to expedite the
situation. As a result, Bill remembers
Reddaway’s first “long haul” trip, from
Portland clear to Salem, as a huge
milestone in his business.
He might be gloating just a little as he
points with pride to another feature
of this transaction: saving the jobs of
every single employee of Salem
Navigation Company. He is proud of
that, because employees were a big
deal with Bill. “I wasn’t successful all
by myself,” he states. “I had great
employees—union and non-union—
over the years. I always felt a
responsibility to them, and I couldn’t
have had better people around me.”
By 1975, the Interstate Commerce
Commission was losing its chokehold
on the trucking industry, and
Reddaway was able to establish a
terminal in Seattle. Oregon’s PUC was
slower. They created additional
authorities in the Salem-Eugene-
Roseburg areas that Reddaway
obtained, and with the acquisition of
Paradise Transfer in Medford in 1985,
Bill finally had border-to-border
authority in Oregon. Reddaway was
on a roll.
The rest of the story is about
innovation and growth of an LTL
(less-than-load) operation to regional
stature, and its eventual sale to TNT.
1. Dolores Call is usually camera-shy, but here’s a
shot of Dolores and Bill taken from a Reddaway
newsletter.
2. Salem Navigation Company’s Northwestern called
at farms and landings along the Willamette until the
early 1930s, leaving service the same year Highway
99E was completed into Portland.
3. That’s Bob Call on the left, with Bob Jr., at the
Morgan Truck Line terminal in Cloverdale. The year
was most likely 1927–1928.
4. As the old guy on the block, Bill gets requests to
identify what’s going on in historic photos. He
was surprised to recognize his sister (Maxine Call
Whitehead) rowing this boat among the SE Portland
freight terminals during the flood of 1948.
5. That’s Bob Call, Bill’s dad, with one of the Pierce
Freight Lines trucks.
6. Reddaway’s Truck Line was founded in 1919. This
picture from the Reddaway archives is undated.
7. Father and son, second and third generations
involved in the trucking industry: Bill and Todd Call,
in front of one of the murals at Bill’s Place.
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