Was it deregulation of the industry in the 1980s that permitted the expansion of intermodal services, particularly COFC?
Was it the disappearance of the less-than-carload shipments, i.e. the switch of those shipments to trucks?
All of the above? Some more than others?
I’m just curious to know what brought-about the disappearance of such a common piece of rolling stock. I’ve seen a few that have been converted to storage buildings. The Minnesota Prairie Line has an ex-Katy 40’ box near their engine shed, and I saw a NYC 40’ box in a scrap yard in Cedar Rapids where the old ROCK roundhouse used to be (the box car and the scrap yard are long gone and dang it I never snapped a picture).
Add to the list: The greater weight-carrying capacity of modern cars - trucks - wheels - axle bearings, which transitioned to roller-bearings instead of the old brass friction bearings - and of course, the rails and track. A car that was only 40 ft. long often could not carry as much as these upgraded components would allow - it would ‘cube out’ for load before’ weighing out’ - so that length became a significant constraint in the economics and efficiency of the cars.
Also, the advent of higher-horsepower diesel locomotives, which made it possible and practical to haul loner trains of heavier cars.
I’ll leave it to someone else to post a definitive timeline of how car capacities increased over the years, but over the last weekend I saw an old 40 ft. long or so flatcar with a gross weight limit of 220,000 lbs. = payload of around 160,000 to 170,000 lbs. Since then the gross weight limits have increased to 263,000 lbs. [or is/ was it 265,000 lbs. ?], then 286,000 lbs., and now 315,000 lbs.
Railroaders finally started thinking out side the “box” car. HIghway trucks were getting bigger, loads and products were changing shapes and deminsions, blowing on the thumb till railroads turned blue attitude no longer worked. New ways, new sizes, new markets had to be found and made to work for the railroad as well as the shipper. It was no longer a one size fits all world.
In the Upper Midwest it was simply the advent of 4427 cf and 4750 cf covered hoppers. Most 40’ box cars in this area (Minnesota) carried grain. Simple economics made it cheaper and more efficient for the elevators to demand covered hoppers. Easier to load and unload, cleaner, larger capacity and not as prone to loss as a box car.
Considering the number of 53’ van trailers I see rolling down the highway… They probably carry as much or more than a 40’ boxcar.
Which also brings up the fact that trucks (semitractors, specifically) have also increased the amount they can haul. Semitrailers have been increasing incrementally as well.
Combination of factors. Dereg, plus the construction of the Interstate Highway system, certainly helped. Interstate highways made it possible for truckers to compete head to head for single boxcar shipments. For distances of less than 700 miles truckers seemed to enjoy a competitive advantage. Moreover, single-car shipments are extremely expensive. They involve a good deal of labor-intensive switching, require massive yards to sort single cars into trains, and eat up that one esource that, once consumed, can never be made up: time.
As dereg took hold, several factors kicked into play. 1) Railroads evolved from retailers to wholesalers (think multiple car shipments and unit : trains) wherein their natural economic advantage came to the fore. 2) this helped nudge them away from car shipments of onesies and twosies (and concurrently, spelled the end for numerous light-density branch lines, a winnowing process that continues, albeit greatly abated, to this day. Ditto for expensive local switching operations). 3) Railroad management quality improved sharply as the corporate bureaucrats who flourished under 80 years of ICC regulation were gradually replaced by more, er, able businessmen whose focus was on the bottom line. Managers, armed with much better cost data, began to take a hard look at the costs and revenues of the portfolio of services they offered, and single-car
A boxcar can haul more than a trailer or container. If I remember correctly, the gross vehicle weight for trucks is 80,000 pounds. The gross rail limit for boxcars is anywhere from 220,000 to 286,000 pounds. Also boxcar cubic capacities range from about 5,000 cubic feet up to about 7,500 cubic feet (10,000 if you include the 86’ IL boxcars). A 53’ trailer (assuming 110" IH and IW) is about 4454 cubic feet.
[quote user=“billio”]
Combination of factors. Dereg, plus the construction of the Interstate Highway system. . .
As dereg took hold, several factors kicked into play. 1) Railroads evolved from retailers to wholesalers (think multiple car shipments and unit : trains) wherein their natural economic advantage came to the fore. 2) this helped nudge them away from car shipments of onesies and twosies (and concurrently, spelled the end for numerous light-density branch lines, a winnowing process that continues, albeit greatly abated, to this day. Ditto for expensive local switching operations). 3) Railroad management quality improved sharply as the corporate bureaucrats who flourished under 80 years of ICC regulation were gradually replaced by more, er, able businessmen whose focus was on the bottom line. Managers, armed with much better cost data, began to take a hard look at the costs and revenues o
The question was about 40-foot box cars, but it could just as easily been about 50-ton twin hopper cars, or 8000-gallon tank cars, or older thirty-something-foot semi trailers, or 6.5-ounce Coke bottles. It’s easier to use bigger whatevers less often. Always has been, probably always will be.
Probably the biggest blunder I ever saw on the railroad was Montgomery Ward building a warehouse at Proviso in the early 1970s–it was going to be big business for the CNW: two yard jobs around the clock, probably generating the equivalent of another train per day. They moved other industrial plants around to accommodate its location. There were four stub tracks leading into the building, which had literally dozens of spots for freight cars and hundreds for truck trailers. But the entire thing was built based on 40-foot box cars. Didn’t take long before loading spots were lost because 50-foot box cars became normal. It had its own yard jobs (two per day, not per shift) for a few months. It was later sold; Monkey Wards eventually went out of business. The building (or parts of it) is still there, but no tracks serve it any more (there’s a curious stub of one of the tracks remaining in Global 2).
More importantly is the ‘payload’, or net cargo-carrying capacity of the vehicle. For a conventional Over-The-Road tractor-van trailer combination, the maximum gross vehicle weight is usually 80,000 lbs. (40 tons). Deducting the tare or empty weight of the trailer (roughly 10 to 12,000 lbs. = 5 to 6 tons) - and tractor (18,000 - 20,000 lbs. = 9 to 10 tons), or 30,000 lbs. = 15 tons total, leaves a maximum net payload weight of around 50,000 lbs. = 25 tons. As a practical matter, those weights are often a little higher, so the max. legal net payload for a 53-ft. van trailer is usally more like 44,000 lbs. = 22 tons to 48,000 lbs. = 24 tons. Note
But having said that, during the time frame you are referring too (50’s/60’s?) there was a battle going on within the industry (and in many cases within individual RR companies) over the economics of converting the box car LCL traffic to TOFC(and eventually containers)…From my reading the regulators, at least initially, caused much more impediment to the spread of piggyback services than too the existing lcl and Railway express type operations.
The just in time movement a couple of decades ago also is a contributing factor. Trucking companies became much more effective in their marketing and the pure economics drove considerable amount of business from 40 ft box cars to LTL and even to 53 ft trailers.
The inventory carry cost of shipping by rail vs smaller shipments by truck was a huge decision driver in the 80’s, particularly with interest rates in the double digits.