For 1955-57, would it be appropriate to have tractor trailers with 40 ft trailers? I know that early piggyback service around that time was geared towards 32-35 footers. Thanks for any help.
Pennsy TrucTrain Service: An Overview at Keystone Crossings is a really good place to start! One little quote: “In 1958, the 40 foot trailer became legal and most production of long haul trailers switched to this length.”
Excellent, thats just what I was looking for!
One thing to consider, just because 40 foot trailers became legal in 1958 doesn’t mean that shorter trailers disappeared over night. There would be a transition period while the truckers “wore out” the shorter trailers.
40’ trailers became interstate commerce legal in the lower 48 states in 1958. It took nearly a decade for them to become universal.
I also model early pggyback, 1954 in my case. Piggyback started pretty strong right after WWII and by 1953 most major railroads had at least some kind of TOFC operations.
While we all think of the two 26’ vans on the 53’ flat, or the single 32-35’ van on a 53’ flat, some other equipment was developed. The DL&W rebuilt 40’ box car frames into piggyback flats for their 32’ vans, and they were the first railroad to build “hitches” and experiment with reducing the number of tie-down chains. They also experimented with a number of different bridge plate designs.
The 75’ PRR TrucTrain flats were first built in 1953, and carried two vans up to 35’. Wabash also bought some of those right after the PRR. On both roads they could also be seen carring 3 26’ vans, especially before the modern hitches were installed.
Another note about the trucking industry at that time, open top trailers were much more common then they are today, and were commonly seen in piggyback service.
I do not know of any railroad owned 40’ trailers before 1959-1960. Every thing they had bought was only 8-10 years old, not really ready for replacement. But by 1963/65, railroads and the trucking industry was going full speed into longer trailers.
Sheldon