The Hemphill Brothers found out at an early age they could pool their money and buy nicer things than if they bought them individually. "We used to buy everything together," recalls Joey. "We bought our first stereo and our first car together." For the most part the benefits of owning things together seemed to make good sense and it only natural that when it came time to start their own business, the two would become inseperable and equal partners.

The two coach leasing pioneers inherited a rich heritage of the coach industry from their family. In the late 1960s, their father, Joel W. Hemphill, Sr., was one of the pioneers in the bus leasing and servicingbusiness. Joey, whose given name is Joel W. Hemphill, Jr., relates a little of the family history, "Trent and I grew up riding buses with our family, The Hemphills, singing Gospel music. The first bus I remember my dad owning was a 1962 Flexible, and in 1974 he started his own bus company as a sideline to the music. He got out of the business in 1980 and sold his shop and nine buses."

In 1980 Joey was 21 years old and Trent was 19. Having grown up in, on, around and under buses all of their lives, they thought it would be a good idea to ask their father if he would sell them 2 buses. "There were two buses he couldn't sell to anyone else--so he sold them to us," laughs Joey. "He gave us his Rolodex with his contacts and in October 1980 we started Hemphill Brothers Coach Company. We didn't really take over his business, but he helped us get started. We were still on the road singing at that time and a lot of the time we were running the bus business from a hotel room. When we were home we spent most of the time working to keep the buses on the road. We had a small gravel lot and a barn on Dickerson Rd. (near Nashville) and that's where Hemphill Brothers started.

In 1989, Joey and Trent bid farewell to the road as singers and musicians to focus on their business. "In 1989, we really decided to go for it, " Joey states. "At that time, we were running 6 coaches, and had built up a number of clients. We were providing transportation to acts in Pop, Rock, Country, Contemporary Christian Music and Broadway Shows. It was also about that same time that Country music started to take off, and we realized it would be a good time to start building our fleet. Trent and I knew we couldn't build our fleet without a bigger facility, and more people on our staff, so we built a four-bay garage and new offices about a mile from our original lot. We had already beencontracting out some of our own interiors and decided we also needed to do our own maintenance work so we hired a maintenance crew and shop foreman. We also added more office staff at that time."

By 1991, Hemphill Brothers had doubled their fleet to 12 coaches and their business continued to grow. It had grown so much that in 1995 they built an impressive 28,000 square foot office-shop complex situated on 7 acres of land just outside of Nashville that is mainly devoted to the service of their fleet now at more than 50 coaches.