Oftentimes, though, there was a piece of equipment on board for delivery to a Flint Creek rancher.
Always, it made folks in Drummond - population 308 - feel just a bit more connected to the rest of the world, said Town Clerk Colette Fadness.
Drummond was, in fact, just one of 267 communities in 18 states across the West and Midwest that lost Greyhound bus service on Wednesday. Among the other victims in Montana: Deer Lodge, Warm Springs, Big Timber, Dillon, Whitehall, Miles City, Three Forks and Glendive.
All that company, though, brought no solace to Drummond, said Frosty Freeze proprietor Linda Smith.
"Mostly, I feel sorry for the customer, for their clientele," Smith said. "I'll make out just fine, but their customers are really losing out."
Greyhound made two daily stops at the Frosty Freeze: at 12:50 p.m. en route to Seattle and at 3:50 p.m. bound for Billings.
Some of the riders used the Drummond stop to make connections with other buses, headed north.
Locals, Smith said, mostly used the bus for freight pickup and delivery.
"The ranchers all used it to get parts for their equipment, or to send parts in for repairs," she said. "They used it a lot."
Rarely did locals actually board the bus in Drummond, Smith said. "In this day and age, people travel so much in their vehicles, we didn't get that many riders."
The Frosty Freeze, of course, got a twice-daily burst of customers. But the business was spotty, so Smith never relied on it to keep her afloat.
"Holidays were the biggest times," she said. "We'd actually have two buses at a time, both of them full."
Now folks are looking to Rimrock Trailways to make up the dropped stations, Smith said.
In fact, Rimrock Trailways officials were on the road this week throughout Montana, trying to establish a new combination of routes and stops.
"We're definitely stopping in Warm Springs, Deer Lodge and Drummond," Susan Carter said in the company's Billings headquarters. "And we're going to run from Fargo into Billings (another of the dropped Greyhound stops)."
"We've got a lot of local Montanans who use the bus for their medical appointments or to visit family and relatives on the holidays," Carter said. "And we know the freight is important to ranchers. It's a combination."
"Of course," she added, "it's not a moneymaking sort of deal. In Montana, you may only have two or three passengers on a bus. We operate some of the routes at a loss, but we know how important they are to these small towns.
"Many times, we've been called and told thank you."
Fadness, in fact, planned to make just such a call. So did Smith.
"We are very grateful for Rimrock," Smith said. "If we lost them, we'd be completely out of luck."
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