Just wondering, and not sure how to even search for this on-line.
As the thread title asks, in Present day (or within with a few years at most), what would be the relative ratios of 45’, 48’, 53’ and 57’ (box) trailers in North America in:
a) interstate commerce (OTR) - here I’m guessing is mostly 57’ nowadays
b) Intermodal service (TOFC) - not sure here - can splines take 57’ trailers?
c) Local delivery (here I figure would be the last major stand of 45’ and 48’ trailers) - i.e. warehouse to big box retailer, home center, supermarket, etc.
I guess I have never seen 57’ trailers. 53’ seen to be sort of standard around here(Rochester, MN). Most intermodal stuff is set up for 53’ or 48’ containers and trailers. The 45’ trailer is sort of a ‘DoDo’ for most use. In the past recession, a lot of spline units set up for 45’ were scrapped and a lot of ‘well’ cars set up for 45-48’ were cut down for 40’ marine containers. In Minnesota, you need a special permit to use a trailer over 53’ long. I have not seen a 48’ trailer here locally(except for the used ‘trailer’ dealer north of town.
45 foot trailers - all but gone. Very few left in service, and most of those as long term storage, rarely if ever out on the road.
48 foot trailers, still a few in local and storage service. Probably less than 2% (guess) on the road.
53 foot trailers - the mainstay of OTR companies, and many smaller ones. Probably 98% (guess) what’s on the road.
57 foot trailers - only legal in Texas and (I think) Hawaii (up to 59 feet in Hawaii, IIRC), elsewhere you need a permit (and usually they have to move empty, rendering them useless as freight carrying vehicles)
Note that the mix of TOFC equipment depends on the era you model. The use of different length trailers by the RRs reflects the max length, height and width permitted on the highways.
The RRs tended to lag behind the trucking industry as a whole in adopting equipment to meet the increased standards in use by the trucking industry. Most trailers have useful lives of ten years or less, as tax depreciation rules and wear and tear take their toll. One the other hand, RRs also need to adopt longer flatcars to carry the trailers and containers. RR cars have longer useful lives, so this accounts for the lag by the RRs, as they have to adopt both new rolling stock and new trailers/containers. This means that shorter, smaller equipment tends to hang around longer in RR service.
There’s a good discussion of this in a Model Railroader book, The Model Railroader’s Guide to Industries Along the Tracks 3, by Jeff Wilson:
45ft trailers I figured are now (present date) hard to find in revenue service.since they stopped making them in numbers a while ago (at least in the US/Canada).
The 48ft is surprising since to me 53ft don’t seem to fit all that well in many kinds of local delivery service. Don’t know when they stopped making 48ft domestically.
This is an artifact of the normal turnover/replacement/useful life of trailers. There are likely still a very few 48’ trailers built for specialized services even to the present, such as for local delivery when it’s absolutely necessary because of route restrictions or facility limitations. Otherwise, fleet managers tend to want to maximize return on investment of their assets. One way to do that is to use the maximum size trailers, so the vast majority of trailers ordered and in service over the last decade are now to 53’ standard for over the road operations.
RRs tend to lag behind trucking-only competitors in this changeover, as noted already. However, that same decade has also washed away most of the 48’ containers and trailers even in RR service.
I won’t say it’ll never happen, given the incentive for truckers to increase ROI by going with bigger dimensions rolling stock, but I think this increase is hitting a natural limit. Fuel cost and driver availability have driven lots of road traffic back to the RRs. Bigger trucks – having been in the industry, I know of what I speak – won’t happen because of road infrastructure limits and the uncertain safety issues of mixing with smaller vehicles on the road. Combining long haul rail with short haul road movement is hitting a sweet spot of efficiency and effectiveness, so there just isn’t much incentive to go bigger on a national scale. Western states and specialized road ops may bring on limited numbers of oversize rolling stock, but the ideal mix provided by the RRs and the 53’ container seems likely to be a stable standard in intermodal equipment for some time, now that it’s here.
I’m a civil engineer working, unfortunately, in mostly highway design (I’d rather be doing railroads), on behalf of primarily PennDOT, DelDOT, Maryland SHA, and the PA Turnpike.
The standard design vehicle in use for most of the U.S. (the “worst case” for highway design) is still the 53-foot single trailer. We use Autoturn software to model truck turn movements (in CAD) to be sure that newly designed intersections of applicable state highways are adequate for these vehicles. Unfortunately, in PA, many of the lesser state highway intersections cannot adequately accommodate even the 53-foot single trailer, but are designed for older ones. To make these turns the larger vehicles must encroach completely across opposing lanes of traffic on lesser roadways. If the traffic volumes are very low, that is considered “acceptable”, but for high volume roads (say greater than 5000 vehicles per day) that is usually considered to be unacceptable within the design industry.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike wants all new interchanges, and reconstructed existing interchanges, to be designed for larger vehicles that are coming but currently are not legal in Pennsylvania.
The challenge with this is that once you get anything with more than a 53’ trailer off the Interstate Sytem, or roads such as the PA Turnpike, the local roadway infrastructure is totally, completely unequipped to handle either longer trailers or the longer double trailer combinations.
In my humble opinion, at least in the “legacy” highway states in the eastern U.S. (that have very old road alignments), it will be years before the road network “catches up” to facilitate movement of anything longer than a 53’ single trailer and the shorter double trailer combinations. Out west–it’s a completely different story–they h
UPS is a big user of RR service, but one that is specialized and restricted solely to UPS use. I know in the past, UPS set-up their equipment so it couldn’t even be used with non-UPS rolling stock, i.e. hose connections on opposite from industry standard, odd-sized containers, etc. While they are part of the mix, they’re otherwise an outlier and I presume not the subject of the OP’s inquiry, which seemed oriented toward non-private, non-“pup,” common-carrier rolling stock.
Having been a truck driver,owner and union driver,most of my life,starting in the early 60’s… East to West coast, North, South,including,Canada… I’ve seen and experienced,a lot info on what state laws are,regarding,length, weight and permits,for unusual,loads…In Texas and Oklahoma,57ftr’s are allowed,all over Texas,in Oklahoma, only on the turnpike, You can see double 57’s on the turnpike,along with triple,45’s… The East coast,53’s are restricted,in certain states and banned in others,for obvious,reasons,along with roads,you must consider the bridges, as far as weight and length is concerned. There is a law, in states,that is called a ‘‘bridge law’’ that means, there has to be so many feet,in between,the load bearing axles, in order to cross,or be on that bridge, you don’t want to pay that fine…I could go on ,but my fingers are getting tired…