It’s too bad Jim Wrinn’s “From the Editor” commentary isn’t a full blown article. There’s much more that needs to be discussed for the container’s 50th birthday. As it is, the commentary simply muddles the vast differences of ISO containerization vs domestic containerization when it comes to analyzing relative factors of “competition”, “truck vs rail” vs “truck + rail”, short haul containerization vs short haul TOFC.
In the whole “undercutting boxcar traffic” talking point, Wrinn mentions a paraphrasal of Marc Levinson in that railroads thought containerization was undercutting their boxcar traffic, when the railroads’ collective resistence to containerization was pushing business to truckers. If Mr. Levinson had taken the time to discern between international containerization and domestic containerization, would he have been so quick to discount the fear of undercutting boxcar traffic if the analysis was soley focussed on domestic containerization? Certainly ISO’s don’t undercut boxcar traffic - but one can’t use the same talking points when pertaining to domestic containers.
Hopefully Mr. Wrinn will be willing to devote a more in depth article on the relative effects of domestic containerization on traditional boxcar traffic/TOFC/trucking’s share of intercity freight, et al[?]
I’ve read your first posting three separate times and it reads like you slept through English Composition and Rhetoric in your freshman year. I don’t think you really said anything.
Well,perhaps we haven’t got the big party that the folks conspiring to put midwest grain farmers out of business have going, but we’re a tight knit bunch and we have fun.
Alwrite… somebody here is using some BIG words-- y’know, the ones ending in ‘ization’ and ‘ainers’ and ‘ing’ and such. And I don’t even know what language of english ‘et al’ is. Or freight.
So lets just keep it simple for us simple folk, ok? A con-TAIN-er is that old fridge out in the front yard thats got thes naybors dog in, now. stupid dog.
An International is a durn tractor-- not some consternization in some wild galaxy.
But it is important enough for you to take the time to post a response, albeit a response with no reasonable contribution to the topic at hand.
Typical.
Don’t fret too much, chessiewitch. Someday, if you apply yourself, you may yet rise to the level of rate clerk, or whatever it is to which you aspire. Until then, you can learn from the master.
What’s to discuss? The domestic containers are set up to stack properly with ISO containers. This is one of the other advantages of the container over the full trailer, even if they are built longer, they can still be stacked on top of the shorter containers that the well cars are designed to handle. However, if the truckers start using longer trailers, you need different rail equipment to haul them. And rail equipment has a longer life than highway equipment.
