Thought I asked about this a few years back, but it turns out I was asking about another modeler favorite, crates made out of planks (vs plywood or reinforced fiberboard).
Anyway, I realiize that for various alcoholic beverages (wine, whiskey, beer, etc), barrels are still used (and new ones manufactured, as episodes of “How Its Made” from a few years back show). But outside of that usage, and decorative purposes (e.g. garden planters), I can’t think of many places wooden barrels are used.
So, when did wooden barrels become, as the How It’s Made episode stated, “Obsolete” (for revenue shipping and storage purposes, outside of alcoholic beverages). A 1940 general merchandise warehouse would definitely have stacks of wooden barrels, while a 1990 warehouse scene would probably have none at all. Sometime between those two points, barrels faded out en masse, but when?
As a sort of baseline, in the mid-1980s I worked in a fastener warehouse for a summer job, and while most fasteners came in carboard boxes or steel/fiberboard drums, once in a great while we’d get some stock from Bethlehem Steel (well, more likely a reseller of Bethlehem stock) in really old, beat up wooden kegs (the fasteners were OK, though). Those were pain in the…necks to get open, even when using a hammer to, well, stavein the barrel…
I can’t say with precision, but this transition seems to have occurred between the two world wars, probably closer to WWI. I don’t recall seeing steel barrels/drums in any significant numbers in WWI pics, but they’re all over by WWII.
Which is not to say that steel drums weren’t in use earlier or that all wooden barrels went away before WWII. There are still a few commodities that appear in some form of wooden barrel.
Not that this is terribly relevant to your question, but they still age Tabasco in white oak barrels that were previously filled with bourbon, if recollection serves. The Tobasco plant on Avery Island would actually make a pretty unique industry on a seaside (or gulf-side) layout.
I don’t think you can nail down a specific time, in a general sense, for when wooden barrels became obsolete. It really all depends upon what commodity you’re dealing with. Just as a couple examples;
I have been an antique dealer for 44 years. My area of specialization is glassware & art glass primarily from the late 1800’s through the depression era years. During that time frame the majority of the glass manufacturers in this country were centered in the Ohio River Valley area. They shipped their products via rail & riverboat and the bulk of it was packed in wooden barrels packed with straw. In fact, most glass factories in that area, like H.Northwood & Co, Imperial, Fenton, Dugan & others had barrel making operations included in their complex, as well as storage facilities for the straw, called “Haysheds”. When retailers & wholesalers purchased glass from these factories, they bought it by the barrel. The glassware was packed in assortments comprising several dozen pieces per barrel. The customer paid for the assortment, which also included a 25 to 50 cent charge for the barrel itself. By the 1930’s, with the advent of automated packaging machinery, the practice of shipping glassware in barrels faded away in favor a boxes.
I grew up during the 1950’s/1960’s in Aroostook County in Northern Maine…potato farming country. My family were all potato farmers. During the 1950’s, mechanized harvesting was just starting to creep in up there, but the majority of farms still harvested by hand and the potatos were loaded, transported and sold in wooden barrels. A barrel held 165 lbs. of potatos & that’s how they were marketed, by the barrel-weight. I remember that back then the price the farmer got for his potatos generally bounced around between $6. to $8. per barrel. At harvest time, flatbed trucks would drop off empty barrels along the rows of patatos. The crew would dig the potatos (backbreaking work), fill the barrels, then th
There are still some industries that use wooden barrels for fermenting or pickling, even if they don’t ship the end product in wooden barrels.
Some old movies I have by W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and others show pickles and other products stored in wooden barrels in grocery stores at the time the movies were made around the early 1930’s or '40’s.
During World War II lubricants and many other products were shipped in steel barrels by the U.S. military, so the use of wooden barrels seems to have ended around the time of WW2.
Thank you all for your responses so far, I believe AVRNUT has come closest to what I was thinking of, wooden barrels as general purpose shipping containers, much like cardboard boxes today (you have to admit that wood barrels are extremely common in historical freight images prior to WWI , prior to the widespread adoption of other types of containers like steel drum and cardboard boxes). Wood barrels were a good mix of strong, mobile, water-tight, and versatile for their time
A number of responses indicating barrels were on they way out for general usage by WWII, which seems reasonable to me. Can we say that by, maybe 1960, wood barrels were pretty rare for general shipping usage, then?
Brakie, I mentioned seeing wood barrels of fasteners (more bolts than nails) being received in the mid-1980s, but I cannot state how old that stock really was at that date (late 1970s? 1960s? - bolts really don’t go bad if packed and sealed properly). Nails and other such thing (including track spikes), I would have expected to be one of the last non-alcoholic sort of items to be shipped in barrels (Tradition, or maybe inertia in changing work practices)
cacole , the “old fashioned” pickle barrels and cracker barrels (hence the brand name), definitely in real-life usage in the 1930s & 1940s, but nowadays I guess they’re only used to give that old-time country flair in a store display.
I can’t give dates, but a couple of things to think about:
Wooden barrels generally have to be hand packed. Wooden barrels are also most efficient where handling of the container is done by hand - because wooden barrels can be rolled, steered, and carried on a shoulder (in smaller sizes). But their shape is inefficient for use with fork lifts, pallets, conveyors, and roller beds.
Bottom line is that the infrastructure for wooden barrels is much different than for boxes and rectangular containers. Both infrastructure and associated containers would have to change at the same time.
I think Fred makes a good point. When warehouses and factories had freight cars being loaded and unloaded by hand, tipping a barrel on it’s side and rolling it to where it had to go would be common, but it would be one man / one barrel at a time. Once forklifts came along, rectangular containers would become much more desireable as you could move multiple containers at once via forklift.
For bigger barrels, the forklift interaction and changes in logistics network things work pretty well. And big barrels were the ones in which steel and other material barrels had the biggest economic advantage over wooden barrels, I suspect, thus encouraging early adoption.
However, small barrels and pallets mix just about as well as any other box or container on a pallet. You can go to any big box store and see barrel-like containers up in the racks today.
I’d still emphasize the adoption process is very commodity specific and discontinuous. I know I’ve been surprised to see nails, candy, and other items shipped in barrels in the recent past. However, this may not be an accurate guide to continued use, because I suspect some of what I saw involved more of a desire to invoke the barrel image for marketing purposes, rather than because it was the most economic and efficient container for a specific use.