I have several questions regarding PFE Reefers.
After delivering their commodities to east coast cities, would the reefers make the return trip to the west coast as empties or would they occassionally or regularly be used to ship perishables from eastern seaports to destinations in the midwest and west.
Would they be returned west in express trains or would they be sent back to the west on general freights.
When I worked in the Canadian Pacific yard in Windsor ON during the early sixties, PFE reefers would arrive from Toronto and Montreal and all points East as empties on a regular train. They were usually sent to Detroit by ferry along with other cars returning to the USA. What happened after they arrived in Detroit, I don’t know.
Hope this helps…Ken
…would the reefers make the return trip to the west coast as empties or would they occassionally or regularly be used to ship perishables from eastern seaports to destinations in the midwest and west.
You might want to check out the forum “Citrus Modeling”. It may require joining the group (not a big problem) to have access to the messages and files. They do have a lot of good info.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/citrusmodeling/
They’ve had some discussion regarding this question. If I remember correctly they said that the majority returned empty, but that there were a number (certainly less than 50%) that returned loaded. This could be reefers used to ship perishable items westbound (normally in insulated boxcar type service, rather than iced fruit). But it also involved using reefers for lcl (less than carload) freight.
Also, during peak fruit shipping season, PFE and it’s competitors were more anxious to get their cars returned. Outside of the rush season they weren’t as fussy, as they got paid for the use of their cars and they didn’t need the excess capacity.
Regards
Ed
The MTs would generally be returned scattered in westbound trains. At least 1 exception I had personal experience w/ when I was working the 3 trick opr job at Venture on the SP was a PFE reefer that had been returned loaded w/ Montgomery Ward catalogs (one of the duries of the opr was to drag mail sack from the set-out xp box car to the door for the USPS truck driver to load into his truck) On this occasion we got 2 set-out cars, the regular xp box and the catalog reefer. Never say never