In years past (pre-Staggers), when there were more places of interchange between more carriers, how did a shipper go about specifying what route he wanted his freight to take? If I understand correctly, you could list out every carrier & place of interchange (and could make it unweildy if you were in no hurry to actually have it delivered-like when you were looking for a seller and were just going to reconsign it en route) but what if you were only intersted in part of it’s routing? For example, I’m shipping a carload of widgets from Boston, MA, to Sacramento, CA:
Do I have to list out NH, PRR, C&NW, UP, SP? Can I just leave it to the New Haven and let them hand it off to whoever they want?
Suppose I don’t care how it gets across the country but I am a traction fan, so I want it to finish up by way of the Central California Traction Company. Do I have to “spell it out” the whole way or just list “Stockton, CCT” at the end and let the traffic clerks figure out how to get it there?
Finally, what if I don’t care (or have any choice) about who takes it from me or to the receiver but I have some preference about the middle. Perhaps I don’t want it going through Chicago or I want to route it via Memphis and the Rock Island or I want to give the South Shore some line haul? Again, do I have to spell out everything or just part of it?
In the words of Dr. Joe, “If you are going to route do it in detail.” There were two ways to route. One method is to show the full route including the junctions. If you do this you must pay the rate via this route even if their is a lower rate via another route. The second method is to say, “CCT delivery, protect the lowest rate.” Then to origin carrier will route the car.
Switching district boundaries come into play on routings. If you are shipping from Boston to Sacramento and route the car CSX-Chicago-UP it is up to the carrier how they will route the car across Chicago and which terminal road (BRC or IHB) they will use or use direct interchange.
Also pre Staggers, certain terminals had ICC mandated minimum allocations to various roads serving the terminal. For example, eastbound from Ogden UT, there was a minimum freight allocation to D&RGW.
In your example routing, the fact that you specified SP out of Ogden meant that some other freight had to be routed via WP.
I am fairly familar with routing arrangements in the west and do not recall a mimimum for the DRGW. Where can the Commisions order on this be found? Since shippers have the absolute right to route their freight such an ICC order could not be enforced. What you describe sounds like a pooling agreement. Traffic pools were outlawed at least a century ago.
I think you are right - it was about 100 years ago and was part of an anti-trust settlement with UP. Now that UP owns both routes - most eastbound frieght goes through WY.
During WWII, many shippers routing instructions were just ignored. If capacity had been reached on a certain line, and space for cars was available on a trains via a different carrier, the originating road would make the decision to ignore the shippers routing instructions. I don’t know how long this practice lasted after WWII.
In the mid-70s the MoPac SYSTEM originated a regular movement of automobile windshields between P.P.G., Crystal City, MO and southern California. The routing went something like this: Missouri-Illinois - Riverside, MO - Missouri Pacific - Texarkana - Texas & Pacific - El Paso - Southern Pacific delivery. Although the Missouri-Illinois, Missouri Pacific, and Texas & Pacific Railroads ran, for all intents and purposes, as one coordinated railroad system, four railroads, on paper (M-I, MP, T&P, and SP), participated in the haul.
Because the MoPac SYSTEM was keeping three sets of books - one for each of its participating railroads - each railroad earned its I.C.C. regulated share of the haul. MoPac’s aggregate revenue, spread over three systems, was greater than what it would have been as one single road.
In an era of computer-based accounting, the increased cost of keeping three sets of books instead of one was practically negligible and the MoPac System prospered for many years with this arrangement. It wasn’t until around 1980 when the Company was getting serious about merging with Union Pacific that it cleaned-up its books and finally merged the Missouri-Illinois and Texas & Pacific Railroads into Missouri Pacific.