American President Lines, Ltd.

Agency History

American President Lines, for many years the largest American shipping company in the Pacific, was formed in 1938 from the remnants of the Dollar Steamship Company. Organized in 1900, Dollar spent its first two decades in the transpacific trade as "essentially a tramp operator, whose main cargoes were bulk, low-value merchandise not suitable for the larger and faster passenger-cargo liners of the Pacific Mail Steamship Lines." [1] Both APL and Dollar traced their corporate origins to the famous Pacific Mail Steamship Company (PMSS) formed in 1848.

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