It’s simple enough:
“Piggyback” was built using railroad owned or controlled trailers. The railroad kept a supply (or tried to) at a “ramp”. A shipper would dispatch a “drayman” (local trucker) to the ramp, get an empty, load it, and return it to the “ramp”. The railroad then moved it to the destination “ramp” where another drayman took over.
This type of TOFC service, known as Plan 2 1/2, was once the foundation of railroad intermodal service. (Transcon traffic west of Chicago/Danville/St. Louis/Memphis/New Orleans was Plan 4, but that’s another story.) Just about everything else was Plan 2 1/2.
It was a really bad plan. It was the result of regulation, not market need. It was the best the railroads could do under regulation. The railroad couldn’t do the pick up or delivery (by hired drayman) beyond the “Commercial Zone” of the “ramp”. To get rates “approved” that were truck competitive the railroads had to get two trialers on one flatcar. The regulator’s costing system dealt with carload costs, not trailer costs.
Since the railroads had to sell two at a time, while most shippers shiped one at a time, this lead to some real problems. A whole industry marketing/operating structure was built around middlemen who “mated” trailers at the origin “ramp”. These middlemen got themselves between the railroad and the customer, and the railroads lost their direct customer contact.
And now Plan 2 1/2, or Plan 25 as it has become, is being euthanized after an inevitable decline. You don’t change an entire industry structure quickly. It took a while. But now the “Bad Plan” is going away.
The railroads will still haul trailers. And they’ll have equipment available (containers) for customers. And there will still be railroad owned trailers. FEC