Anybody have any numbers regarding how many miles the average freight car travels in a normal life span?
I seem to recall these two figures: 72 and 74.
During the early 1950s the North American freight car fleet moved, on average, 72-miles/day. By the early 1990s with the advent of bulk commodity unit trains and the growth of piggyback, that same measure climbed to a whopping 74-miles/day! The growth in capital asset productivity has largely been confined to capacity as measured in cubic feet or loaded weight.
Today’s trailer and container freight car fleet alone averages over 200-miles/day.
Of course, these figures include every freight car available for interchange service - whether hauling freight or being moved as an empty, whether placed in seasonal storage or sitting in a siding someplace awaiting a program repair line, whether at a customer or in a Rip track facility.
So 74-miles/day X 365.25-days/year X 40-years = 1,081,140-miles.