A staple along the roadways and paths of Tamaulipas and Southern Texas, the Cholla Springs Coach Line serves as the main avenue of transportation for those not lucky enough to own a horse or be even luckier to have some kind of pre-war vehicle up and running. Beyond moving people they also transport goods, packages and anything else a person can stuff into one of their stage coaches, but no matter what the cargo the sender can rest easy that the shipment will make it to it's destination.
History[]
The Cholla Springs Coach Line was founded by its current owner and manager, Mavis Townley in 2255 in response to the increased need for some sort of delivery service within the town of Cholla Springs. It was also created as a reaction to the continually agressive price increases by the local courier services who were soon forcing townsfolf to pay gouge level prices to move something as small as a letter from one town to another. Mavis set out at first to only make a small time transportation and delivery service that was built in partnership with the local carpenters who made a killing off supplying the Coach Line with new Stage Coaches, but it rapidly progressed to a regional entity as people paid for rides aboard their comfortable, but secure stage coaches going from town to town. Soon they were running coaches as far North as San An and as far south as the Royal Protectorate of Tampico.
Activities & Services[]
Beyond moving people from town to town the Coach Line also moves cargo. Part of their sales pitch is that they don't ask questions about what they're moving and thus over the years they have moved weapons, corpses, chems and even at one point a shipment of stolen silver ingots. Thus over the years the security the company has placed on their stage coaches has gradually increased, at the very start of their business it consisted of a man with a shotgun riding next to the driver, nowadays there is someone riding shotgun, another man posted on the roof and a third sitting on the back of the stage coach. All three of these men are usually heavily armed with anything from a Coach Shotgun to an M16 to a .30-30 rifle. All this armament is meant to keep the Comancheros off the stage coaches, who at the start of the company used to waylay coaches almost daily.
However a new threat has now been introduced to those seeking to use the service of the Coach Line; imposters. Although there are a few small time coach lines that run out of some of the border towns, the biggest issue is criminals building using stage coaches to kidnap, rob and in some cases molest unfortunate townsfolk who either don't look to see if the coach looks legitatmate or are in too big a hurry to really care. Either the coach line has had to deal with this problem for awhile and no matter how many times they warn riders about imposters some still fall victim, causing issues for the company and a headache for local law enforcement, who in some cases have simply banned Cholla Springs Coaches from their town as a whole.
Special Services []
As stated before the coach line doesn't ask about what it transports, whether it be a shipment of cactus whiskey out of their home town of Cholla Springs or a box full of armaments headed towards the Northwestern Corridor. However for customers who want something valuable moved each coach has a small safe for storing valuable items like gold, silver, jewelry and so on. Although the rate for carrying such items is steep, the security and piece of mind the customer has is more than worth the 300 cap security deposit. When a special shipment is being moved in a coach, they only take at most four people in the coach, they then usually hire escorts from the local populace and head out. Usually when Comancheros
and other bandits hear about there being a shipment of gold and silver moving through an area every bandit within that area will usually try and waylay that coach, thus necessitating extra security and of course speed, hence many special shipments will use Carretera 101 when moving such shipments.
To add they post their best men to these sorts of shipments, men like Cheyenne Valverde, the hardened mercenary who's service with the company stretches all the way back to 2260 when it's most valuable commodity was the shipment of Cactus Liquor. Beyond the best guards the coach line has to offer, the local coach agent usually has made him or herself knowledgeable about the local mercenaries and who are the best in terms of hiring, many a time that answer is simple; the Executive Solutions Mercenary Company, yet in order to avoid having to sub-contract out to such a firm the talent agents usually look for freelancers and can usually come up with a decent stock of good, hardened mercs to act as escorts. If reliable mercenaries can't be tracked down then the company simply asks for help from the local law enforcement Bureau. Lastly, anyone making the trip on this certain coach who isn't involved with the shipment usually has to pay a little extra due to the hazard they will be exposed to.
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