Born in Clinton, Iowa, Allen E. Paulson was on his own at age 13, supporting himself selling newspapers and doing janitorial work at local hotel until he moved to California in 1937. There, he worked on a dairy farm to pay his way through school. After finishing high school in 1941, he took a 30-cent-per-hour job as an entry-level mechanic for TWA. In 1943-45 he served in the US Army Air Corps and spent a year studying engineering at the University of West Virginia. After the war, he went back to TWA, this time as a flight engineer, and used his GI Bill to get his pilot's license. He then began flying commercially for TWA. Using his TWA travel privileges, he began flying to Chicago to buy cars that he drove back to California to sell. Soon, he had a van and was transporting a number of vehicles on every trip.