I have a pretty good idea on how car routing was done in the 60’s. However, as I build my car fleet, I plan on having several TOFC cars. With boxcars, hoppers, etc, one would expect to see a preponderence of home road cars. However, what would one see as far as the trailers on the TOFC cars? Would it be normal to see competitor RR trailers? Were there any rules governing the movement of RR owned trailers?
Thanks
Rick
naturally, home road trailers would never be out of place. if the trailer was loaded outside the home road field of service, then you might find a foreign line trailer. they were interchanged at most principal gateways like st louis and chicago same as regular freight cars. sometimes the interchange trailer would come overhead (still loaded on the flat car) or on rubber. (highway interchange was usually a lot faster than via rail) shipper owned trailers were relatively uncommon but they did exist. most common trailers seemed to be the “free runners” owned by the trailer leasing companies such as xtra (xtrz reporting marks), vermont railway (vtrz), realco (reaz) etc. these trailers earned money for their owners when utilized and were considered at home wherever they were made empty. railroad owned trailers were pretty much subject to a modified version of the car service rules and were sent back home loaded or empty as soon as possible. the leasing company trailers were not subject to those restrictions and as i said above were held for loading at destination when made empty. of course, if one location had a surplus of empty trailers, they would be sent to another location where they were needed. the post office in st louis would use anything they could get their hands on when i worked in intermodal. united parcel service used pretty much their own equipment but would load other leased trailers as needed. as i recall there was something different about the air brake and/or electrical connections on ups trailers so no one else could cabbage onto them and use them during periods of extreme equipment shortages. when i started working on the nyc, we ran a lot of flexivans and of course they were all nyc owned boxes.
now for a little folk lore, once upon a time when business was extremely heavy there was great competition for empty trailers. one of the st louis based drayage companies was crying for empties and we could not com
The railroads offered several "plans’ for TOFC. They varied by who provided the trailer (the railroad or the customer) and who did the draying (over the road pick up and delivery) on either end. So it could be any number of options. Many railroads had “rubber tire” interchange. They would run a TOFC train into a major gateway city (Chicago, St Louis) ground all the trailers, then deliver them via highway to the connecting carrier who would reload them and steel wheel them to destination. Rubber tire interchanges were common through the 1990’s. So therefore a longhaul shipment certainly could be a competitor’s van.
Thanks for the info. I model the CB&Q in the mid 60’s so the blocking info will come in handy. I know that there is virtually a prototype or exception to everything, now I feel better about running some of the nice trailers from the different companies on my (near future) layout!
Rick
Hi Rick, in the 60s here in the Far West 40’ trailers were typical. Most TOFC trailers were owned by the railroads or rental companies and had to be built for railroad use. That said, I recall NYC FlexCars with NYC trailers coming into WP at Oakland, CA. (believe the moved NYC, CB&Q, DR&W, WP) and Bud (lettuce farms) trailers trucked from Salinias, CA to WP Oakland, loaded and sent East.
Rob
Rick,
Most of the ‘manufacturered’ goods came for the Eastern part of the country back in the 60’s. Thus, the trailers many times were provided by Eastern railroads. Very few ‘private’ trailers were railroad certified at that point. Most trucking companies did not want to spend the money to ‘stiffen’ them and that extra weight was of course a fuel penalty in their eyes(even back then).
When I worked for the CB&Q in the late 60’s, 3M company shipped material from St Paul to a plant in Prarie du Chien, WI. The CBQZ trailers would be loaded in the afternoon and trucked down to the ‘ramp’ at the Daytons Bluff Yard in St Paul. The trailers were ‘ramped’ immediately and placed on a hot train like #82, a St Paul to Chicago through freight. The TOFC flats were set out at North La Crosse Yard, and then went via a ‘PDC Turn’ early the next morning for delivery to the 3M plant in Prairie du Chien.
I remember the Milwaukee Road had a pair of dedicated overnight ‘piggyback’ trains between Mpls & Chicago known as ‘The Roaring 90’s’ - trains #98/99. Most of the flat cars being used even in the late 60’s were the 85’-89’ TTX cars with railroad trailers on them. There was some Flexi-Van equipment and the converted 50’ flat cars as well. And like other have mentioned, no trailer over 40’ long!
Jim
Not to worry, no trailers over 40’ on my roster:) The Q had Flexi-Vans as well.
Rick
By the way, speaking of routing, piggyback cars were billed to the destination of the trailers, they were billled to the ramp where the trailer would be grounded.
Speaking of billing there was some controversy where customers wanted billing to be for moving a trailer loaded on a flat car, while railroads wanted billing to be based on the goods in the trailer. I don’t know how that came out.
Rob
Rick,There was a lot of run through pig trains using TTX flat cars.The CB&Q/PRR had several daily trains.
This link should help you.
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/42/TTX-Company.html
B&O had their “Jet” trailer tain…
There was a lot more trailers then just the home road trailers.
most common commodity for billing purposes when i worked was mixed freight or lcl (ltl) 5 item mix rule. no less that 5 different items and no one item to exceed 20% of the total with a minimum of 25,000 lbs. this was to get the freight forwarder customer’s business in competition with truckers. we also offered a plan 5 mini-train service that required a minimum of 10 trailers to the same destination within a given time period. the shippers really played that one. a guy would be short 1 trailer so he would “borrow” one from a competing company. like, " i’ll trade you 3 Kearnys for 1 Philadelphia and 2 Bostons."
and by the way, when we tried to weigh a trailer, the shipper often said, go ahead, it will be your last one. i’ll give everything to another railroad if you do. and you thought wall st was full of thieves.
grizlump