I was reading on-line about how the Omaha livestock market was the largest in the world from 1955 to 1973. Wow.
I always wondered why so many railroads went to Omaha, and now I start to wonder if the cattle & meat business was a big part of that. If I remember right, some of the companies that served Omaha included the UP, CB&Q, Rock Island, C&NW, Missouri Pacific, IC, and Milwaukee. Who did I miss?
Does anyone know, was the cattle & meat business a major reason for the railroads to go to Omaha?
Attached are some photos that show the impressive scale of the Omaha stockyards. These photos are from the 1920’s.
I think Omaha became a major hub b/c it was the gateway to the west via UP and CB&Q. The various Granger lines connected there, or in nearby Council Bluffs. I believe the Wabash also went as far west as the Omaha area, along with the CStPM&O (CMO) and CGW. Until 1955, the Chicago stockyards were the largest.
The UP started west from Omaha and of course other RR’s would want to interchange with them, but from the pictures I would say that that stockyard was a serious incentive for RR’s to want to do business there.
They didn’t call Calgary “Cowtown” just because of the Stampede, and our stockyard was nowhere near that size judging by the photo of the head office building. And until the advent of reliable mechanical reefers we could generate a train a day of stock cars heading east to central Canada.
I bet you Omaha could send out a train a day in all four directions way back when.
There were six “Iowa Roads” – C&NW, Rock Island, Milwaukee Road, Illinois Central, CB&Q, and CGW. Wabash, MP, and the Omaha Road were “back door” entrants that did not participate to a significant degree in the Council Bluffs interchange with UP or in the Chicago-Omaha traffic. (The principal UP interchange occurred at Council Bluffs, but IC, MP, Omaha Road, and Burlington all had significant trackage on the west side of the river.)
Initially the rail traffic between Omaha and Chicago was livestock, but in the 1880s the major meatpackers (Swift, Armour, Morris, Wilson and Cudahy) began building “advance” packinghouses west of Chicago at locations such as Omaha, Sioux City, St. Paul, Austin, Minnesota, and Kansas City. These were attractive locations because:
There was multiple rail routes from these points to Chicago, driving competition for the transportation and lower rates than if the packinghouse was captive to a single line.
As rates became regulated through the Iowa Pool and later through the ICC, most of the points became rate territory divisions and thus rail rates were lower on the dressed meat than if the packinghouse was located inside a rate territory
There was a large supply of livestock local to these packinghouses, thus transportation costs on the whole animal were minimized.
Farmers wanted to take their animals to a large market to get a better price, rather than a small market.
The rail hubs such as Omaha thus attracted stock sales yards, which attracted the meatpackers, which attracted more farmers, which attracted more rail lines, which attracted more meatpackers. The formula worked for nearly 70 years until the maturation of mechanical refrigeration, good highways, large-scale commercial feedlots, and direct-to-grocery packaging upended the old system and replaced the union stockyard with the feedlot, the old vertical top-to-bottom unionized packinghouse with the single-level non-uni
In the fifties, my wife’s parents lived on the west side of Omaha (think of 5500 on Dodge), and if the wind was from the southeast, - - - well, let’s say one did not stay outside long.
Pick up any American History book I hope from 3rd grade on…doesn’t even have to be about railroads… and you’ll know know the answer. Railroads were built west to tap the natural resources and potential agriculture production. Those in NY and Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. all wanted more meat and wheat. That’s what the railroads were designed to carry. Good American Railroad histories from American Heritage, The Smithsonian Institution, and National Geographic. Also look at specific western railroad histories: Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe; Union Pacific; Rock Island; Burlington; Northern Pacific; Great Northern; Milwaukee Road, CNW for instance.
The smell when flying into Omaha in the 1970s was overpowering when descending thru 3000ft MSL. It was especially bad whenever there was no wind as the smell would just sit in the valley.
Interesting thread to read; not only because of RWM’s gifted insight on the subject but also because I’ve been fascinated by the industry’s movement of livestock back in the day, and, also because I received a wonderful collection of Omaha Steak Products for a Christmas gift (burgers, sirloins, and my fav, filet mignons!). I think it’s a damn shame the industry can’t find a way to somehow recapture SOME of that traffic even though the basic parameters and elements of the business have changed significantly from those times.
Nah, will never come back that way. Used to be to have fresh meat on the east coast, you bought the live animals in and slaughtered them and butchered them for market there. Today, slaughtering and butchering is done back closer to the range and the meat packed and frozen; handling and shipping is much cheaper that way. Cleaner, too. So much technology has changed processing, changed our lives.
In the 1970’s (? timing) the Illinois Central attempted to ship fresh beef TOFC from a major slaughterhouse at Dakota City NE. The truckers complained to the ICC who found technical violations of their regulations and ordered the service discontinued. Perhaps Greyhounds or another of our experts in food transportation could tell the details.
The shipper was IBP (Iowa Beef Processors), now part of Tyson. Two of IBP’s plants were at Dakota City, NE and Luverne, MN. The IC could handle the Dakota City production over the Sioux City TOFC ramp and the Luverne production over the Sioux Falls ramp. Luverne is now closed.
IBP owned a truck line called Processed Beef Express which had contract carrier authority. This allowed it haul freight for a limited number of shippers under long term contracts. Another type of regulated truck line had common carrier authority which allowed them to solicit business from anyone. Both contract and common carrier truck lines could only go where they had “authority” to go. Yet another type of for hire trucking was the unregulated interstate carrier. Agricultural products, such as lettuce, were expempt from economic regulation when moved by truck in interstate commerce. They were not exempt when they moved by rail. Railroads were always considered common carriers and were forbidden to contract with customers.
In a U.S. Supreme Court decisiion, noted for containing the memorable words: “A chicken that has been cleaned and dressed is still a chicken.”, processed chickens were rulled an exempt ag commodity. Unfortunatly, processed beef and pork transportation remained regulated. Go figure.
