I’m sure there are entire books written on this topic, but I’m looking for some very general information.
At what point (decade?) did the trucking industry begin to pose a threat to freight rail? When and how did the railroads respond? Did any railroads attempt to get into the trucking industry, either by having their own fleet of named trucks, or by buying stock in trucking companies? Would the latter have been viewed as a conflict of interest?
Any information is appreciated!
We have had some threads, at least one quite recently, on aspects of this issue. It is not possible to address it without looking at the parallel history and ‘evolution’ of railroad regulation and other Government legislation and policy toward railroad institutions.
I personally think that many railroads recognized the value of trucks, both as adjuncts to and practically as replacements for unprofitable service, almost in step with the evolution of trucks from motorized drays to high-speed freight vehicles. The history of containerization from the mid-Twenties on is a particularly rich framework to look into … notably including its virtual outlawing in the East just at a time many railroads would have benefited from its distinctive advantages.
Look also at the evolution of what started as the Good Roads movement and became first the idea that a network of improved roads should be ‘free’ and then that it should be open to trucks of adequate capability far below the pro-rata cost or wear those trucks caused. In this connection there is a different ‘railroad parallel’, the general history of the Pickwick Nite Coaches and their follow-on designs being nipped almost in the bud, one great example being Missouri closing its highways to long or heavy combinations early. I have not studied the ‘push’ up to the official registration requirements for motor carriers with the ICC by 1935 … but it will likely pay you to look into it.
Be sure to stock up on your blood-pressure meds before looking at the history behind the ‘Big John’ cases.
Check out the Spring 2018 issue of “Classic Trains.” There’s an article in it called “Railroads, Motor Carriers, and Superhighways” by Professor H. Roger Grant of Clemson University.
It’ll tell you a lot of what you’d like to know without “majoring” in the subject, if you know what I mean.
That sounds like a very interesting article. I’ll get the magazine and read it for sure.
I’ve been quite interested in this subject since I was a grad student in transportation. Way back around 1975.
From what I’ve determined motor trucking became a competitive force to be rekoned with in the 1920’s. No, there were not transcontinental trucking operations then, but most freight moves shorter distances and the trucks began to take a bite at that time. That’s when trucks that could carry a decent load, 10,000 pounds, first became available.
The railroads initially saw the new trucking technology as simply a more efficient way to move freight in certain situations. So they acquired, or contracted, trucks to replace local freight service in those situations.
Most importantly, there was a movement lead by the New York Central to establish intermodal container services that combined the best elements of trucking and rail into one through service. This dramatically improved the efficiency of freight movements. Most of the savings were passed through to the customer, but the railroads were able to hang on to some of the savings. So the customers were getting better service, at lower prices, while the railroads improved earnings. Sounds great.
But.
The then new motor freight techology was destroying the existing rail rate structure while creating a new system of moving freight. (This is a normal economic process called “Creative Destruction.”) As a competitive response to the new trucking the rail container systems also departed from the existing rate structure. This upset established commercial patterns and caused gov
And, without getting into all the details, just think, without the government in the way 100 years ago, or even 60 years ago, we might have a vastly different freight transportation system today.
Way more intermodal, better intermodal, faster intermodal. And, fewer, smaller, safer trucks (not that the trucks are inherently unsafe, but many of the car drivers around them are…) on the highways.
If we had better rail/truck intergration would we really need 53’ trailers and rigs that weigh 20 times what a LARGE car weighs?
But of course mother government always knows best…
Who pays for the roads the trucks use? Road use taxes on motor carriers are pretty high compared to what you pay to register your car… It would have been interesting to get an opinion from Henry George on the topic…
But the trucks are not the only ones who use the roads to make money. I go to my construction job on them, people commute to their cubicals, and so on…
Sheldon
I’ll add in response to the OP’s post that yes, railroads did own trucking companies. Unfortunately, these trucking operations fell under the 30% of trucking that was subject to economic regulation by the damn government.
Examples that I can name off hand are Santa Fe Trail, Rock Island Motor Transport, and Frisco Transportation. The one I did the most work with was Pacific Motor Trucking, owned by the SP. PMT was government restricted to only serve points served by the SP, on routes served by the SP. Unless it got special dispensation from the dopes in Washington, DC it couldn’t serve Houston to Chicago because the SP didn’t go to Chicago. That only makes sense if you’re a government lawyer/bureaucrat. We (ICG) would establish through routes with them with an interchange in E. St. Louis to get to Chicago. This drove the accounting department bonkers because the interchange was with a motor carrier and not another railroad.
Niether PMT, the ICG or SP could deliver or accept a truckload in a place such as Beardstown, IL. (Site of a major pork plant.) Since our rails didn’t go there our railroad controlled truck wasn’t allowed to go there. This makes no sense at all, but it was the way the government regulation was. Once I was more than ready to violate the stupid regulations. They were still assembling cars in Kenosha, WI then. We had a TOFC load of tires that was a “Shut Down” load. If the assembly plant didn’t get the needed tires they would have to shut down. I wasn’t going to just shrug my sholders and allow that to happen. I was going to authorize, demand, and put my name on an “Illegal” truck transportation run from Chicago to Kenosha. We did find a trucker with government “Authority” to haul the trailer.
There were other times when I pushed past the insane regulatory limits, and I’m proud that I did so.
To the degree bureaucracy is needed, it’s got to have safety valves. Glad you served as one.
After some unfortunate difficulty subscribing to digital Classic Trains, I was able to read this article by H. Roger Grant. I find it to be totally misleading and grossly inaccurate.
Grant blatantly misrepresents the government’s hindering role in rail-truck coordination. He ignores one of the most, and probably the most, important government actions. That would be the blockage of intermodal service in 1931 by the ICC with the decision in “In the Matter of Container Service.” He also ignores the severe restrictions placed on the railroads’ use of trucking by the government.
He further misrepresents the diversion of LCL traiffic to trucks as a good thing for the railroads. In actual fact, the rails fought hard to improve and keep the high revenue LCL. It was only after the government continually blocked their efforts to improve their service to compete with the truckers that they were forced to give up and let it go as unprofitable.
This is a bad article written by someone unknowledgeable in the subject. I don’t care if he is a professor of history at Clemson. He’s wrong.
I did write my Masters Thesis on “The Transportation of LCL/LTL Freight by Railroad.” I did disagree with some professors along the way. And I did document these things. Those professor types, they ain’t always right. Grant sure proves that with this awful ar
Goes back to the old saying - Those that can, do! Those that can’t teach.
While I never took a Masters ciriculum, I did take a Transportation speciality in my degree path. The Profs were so far off what I had observed as day to day reality that it was laughable.
I was fortunate to have been exposed to front line operating conditions in both rail and trucking after obtaining my undergraduate degree in Business Logistics, but to say it was a bumpy ride would be an understatement.
It needs to be understood first that the trucking industry is extremely diverse – from the never-regulated (save for safety regs) movement of agricultural goods, to private carriage, to specific commodities via irregular routes, to the movement of general commodities between specified points; the last were considered the upper crust of the industry, but they were very restricted as to where they were authorized to serve, and had to interchange with other general commodity carriers – in a manner very similar to a railroad.
The reputation of the industry as a breeding ground for organized crime via the Teamsters’ Union was legendary, but seldom much of a factor in day-to-day operation. My instructors at Penn State mostly stressed that the real money was to be made in “industrial logistics” within the corporate structure of the manufacturing, rather than the transportation industry. A handful of carriers, most notably Yellow Freight, drew praise, but the rest, including major players like Consolidated Freightways and Roadway Express were dismissed as stagnant, even if not “mobbed up”.
But I wanted a slice of life at the time, and got it during a little over two years in the Central Dispatch office of the suburban-Philadelphia-based Jones Motor Co. I saw a lot, but the movement for deregulation was just beginning at the time, and ravaged the industry in earnest after 1977. Of the 100 largest carriers listed in Chilton’s Commercial Car Journal in 1971, about 4 out of 5 were out of business ten years later. Yellow and Roadway, the industry’s two “glamour girls”, ended up merging, and are still struggling as YRC, Inc.
During the years 1975-1990 the trucking industry experienced a decline, shake-out and rebirth
Just remember to thank a teacher everytime you read one of these posts.
Actually, my daughter was reading before she ever made contact with a teacher. She was usually in an advanced reading group of one in elementary school…
I’d brag on myself, but I don’t remember…
I kinda skimmed through that article. I’ll have to go back and re-read it with a more jaundiced eye…
Well thanks for that critique Greyhounds, I appreciate your first-hand knowledge of the subject. I would never have known.
It’ll be interesting to see what “Letters To The Editor” Classic Trains gets over this subject in the next issue.
Greyhounds, I hope you have communicated with Classic Trains and pointed out the fallacies in the article–and that there is a published response to your communication.
However, I hope that there will be a better response than the one I received from Trains after I pointed out the fact that the standard warning as a train approaches a public crossing has no connection with the Morse (actually International) code for the letter “Q.” I was asked permission for my information to be published–and it never was published.
That’s more than I got from them. I wrote a letter about this, too. Even pointing out that Trains, or maybe Classic Trains, once had an item about how the grade grossing signal came about, illustrated by an old Southern Ry. (IIRC) whistle post displaying two longs and two shorts.
Jeff
Jeff, maybe we are both outsiders–I never had any official relationship with a railroad, and you never worked for the Southern?[:)]
I can still see, in my mind, the Southern whistle post with two broad stripes and two large dots–even though it is close to seventy years since I first saw it.
Just a guess - but I’m guessing that the last dot eventually morphed into the long blast carried over the crossing. It’s possible other railroads did the same thing (ie, two longs, two shorts) but someone found that it didn’t provide enough warning, especially if finished too early.
But I’m guessing. Oftimes changes like this aren’t documented as such (ie, on June 1, 18XX, we’ll all change to…) and slowly make their way through the system until everyone does it.
The changes happened in the 1920-1930 era. Rule books before the 20s have the two long-two shorts. Rule books from the 20s onward tend to have the two long-one short-one long signal. No definite date covers al