Ok I have been away for a while. With all the containers on the rails today what would you see shipped in box cars to ware houses or factorys? I modle the early 80’s to pres.
Made in China.
Toad
Ten years ago Made in Mexico
Thirty years ago Made in Japan
fifty years ago . . .MADE IN THE U.S.A.!!!
Whatever is needed at said warehouse or factory. That is what I’m guessing.
Norman…
Hi!
I’ve just had my morning coffee so I will not be sarcastic…
The vast majority of containers are filled with imports - primarily from the far east - or are enroute back to their origination as empties. Of course a percentage of those could be filled with exports. Boxcars tend to contain North America products.
Mobilman44
Containers are import/export business.
Containers are business that is unloaded at a truck dock or is rubber tired to the plant.
Since it travels via the road it has to be subject to road weight restrictions and the size restrictions of a trailer.
Boxcars haul the stuff that is heavier, or bigger than you want in a container, where you want more of it than you can put in a containers and that goes directly to the consignee. Most of the shipments within the N American continent go boxcar. In reality the same types of commodites go in both, its just how many and from and to where that makes a difference.
Dave H.
Let me try to redirect this question I under stand the inport/ export part of rail traffic I will try to keep this along the lines of KISS method What I would like to know what would be made in the US and be shipped to our warehouses so I could come up with two to more locations for my box cars to be moved
Paper from paper mills is shipped to printers. Auto parts used to be in the 70’s/80’s. Don’t know if they still are. Tires were shipped in box cars. Booze.
There are several hundred thousand commodity codes. Probably 2/3 of them can move by boxcar.
Short answer: anything that is less than 8-10 ft wide, 10 ft tall and about 8 ft wide can be moved in a boxcar.
Anything. Its like asking what types of commodities are shipped in a cardboard box.
What do you want to move?
Dave H.
A lot of general freight from scrap cardboard to diapers…From lumber to bagged sugar and flour.From foodstuff to alcohol products. From tobacco products(including bulk tobacco leafs) to tires.From pet food to hides.From scrap rubber to scrap plastic.
Not much as changed over the years as far as what is hauled in boxcars.
Auto parts are still shipped in 86-foot hi-cube boxcars (and other sizes, including 60-foot and 50-foot cars, too), though coming into Detroit you’ll see trains of RoadRailers carrying them, too.
Other boxcar loads include some amount of canned food, as well as other palletized goods, particularly brick and bagged salt.
I used to work for a Drugstore chain at their warehouse and we used to get boxcar loads of Christmas wrap, bagged Charcoal and loads of Baby Milk ( formula ). I can’t remember anything else offhand because after ownership of the company changed Approx. 12 years ago, the rail shipments stopped.
Craig
Sun Maid Raisins ships a great deal of their product by rail (boxcar), as do many other food processors in the San Juaquin Valley in California. And this rail activity has been continuous since the early 1900’s. A lot of their product is shipped by rail from their plant in Kingsburg to Kellogg’s in Battle Creek, MI. You could probably see their plant on Google Earth: they are located on the east side of the mail line, north of the town of Kingsburg, CA about half way between Kingsburg and the city of Selma, CA.
Wayne
How old is this information? I have been by that plant countless times and have never seen a car there.
By the way, in the article about UP’s then new Express Lane service that appeared in the 11/2001 issue of Trains, the author wrote that UP was hoping to get 10% of the perishable business. Unfortunately all of the Express Lane trains I have seen in the past couple of years are shorter than a few years ago, if one does not count the empty grain hoppers, coil cars, ethanol tankcars, etc that they have now added to these trains. Therefore, I doubt they have got up to that 10% yet.
During tomato season, there are large quantities of boxcars at most tomato processing plants. I have seen XM boxcars at creameries that produce whey or dry milk.
Places where I have seen reefers are at creameries, cheese plants, citrus packing plants, a citrus processing plant (the largest one does not even have a spur), carrot packing plants, potato packing plants, a plant that makes carrot products and various fruit and vegetable based drinks, and cold storage warehouses.
The vast majority of packing plants do not have spurs, others have spurs but I have never seen anything on them. Ice cream plants are another example of plants without spurs.
Other commodities shipped in boxcars are lumber and lumber products (plywood beinging an example), paper rolls being shipped to box plants to be made i
I can guarantee the accuracy of my statement up to the mid 1980’s. I used to work at another raisin plant in Selma, a little north of Sun Maid, and we typically had 2-3 boxcars spotted by our loading dock everyday. (We also shipped a lot by truck.) In fact, part of my job at the time was to fumigate the raisins in the boxcars with something called methyl bromide (probably outlawed by now) or another fumigant named Phostoxin.
I just did a Google Earth search and the raisin plant is located east and right next to Golden State Blvd, and it looks like a rail spur is still there. I haven’t been in that area for some time now and I don’t know if Sun Maid, or other raisin plants, still ship their product by rail. But in the mid 1980’s many did, as did other types of food processors. If you live in that area and travel up and down HWY 99 you should still see many industries using rails to ship product and/or receive raw goods. Traveling between Sacto and Bakersfield you will see many industries utilizing railroads on a daily basis.
I’ve attached a copy and paste of the Google search and one can easily see the raisin plant. The large rectangular building with a white top is ca
That would have given SP a decade to chase off the business. The article I mentioned in my previous post has this, “Shippers fled - the Sunkist cooperative, for example, stopped using Southern Pacific in December 1994.” Remember that citrus processing plant that does not have a spur, you guessed it, it is a Sunkist plant.
As far as I know, Sun-Maid still has two spurs.
Refering back to that article, it says that “98.5% of CA grown produce moves by truck.”
Where is there an example of such a plant? I’ve looked at all the auto plants I could think of on google earth or live maps and all of them seemed to only use rail for shipping out finished cars. A few of the older ones I could find where spurs used to be but they were long out of service.
In the 1980’s you would have seen alot of lumber and building supplies being shipped in boxcars as well as appliances,manufactured goods and food products for both humans and animals. Also alot of paper and cardboard. All of those could be easily modeled on a layout.The auto industry has always been a big shipper in boxcars,although this is harder to model do to the size of the cars and the factories that receive them and most travel in dedicted trains.
The Automotive Components Holding Co. plant in Saline, Michgan on the Ann Arbor Railroad ships out plastic moldings (instrument panels) to Ford plants in boxcars, as does the simlar plant in Plymouth, Michigan on CSX. Some of these cars end up at the Ford Wayne Assembly and Dearborn Assembly plants.
Ogihara in Howell, Michigan ships to the Ford Oakville, Ontario assembly plant in hi-cube boxcars. I’m not certain as to the current status of the former NS into the St. Thomas Ontario assembly plan, but last I heard, they were still getting parts in via hi-cubes.
While I’m not quite as familiar with Chrysler or GM, Chrysler’s Sterling Heights Assembly in Michigan gets parts in boxcars, as does its Warren Truck Plant.
Hi-cubes don’t linger at the plants as long as empty auto racks, and a lot of the unloading occurs indoors, so this is not often evident from satellite photos.
One of the things which has greatly driven down the number of hi-cube cars being used is the Class I railroads’ unwillingness to deal with short-hauls and with the shortlines that still serve some of the communities that have parts plants.
A case in point is the situation