When did Less Than Carload Shipments End?

[Leggy]

LCL never ended in Aus, infact one of our major east-west intermodal operators built their business off it...

[cv_acr]

Yeah, there's still "LCL" type truck to rail freight sheds/warehouses in North America, but they're run by freight forwarders and consolidators. As far as the railroad is concerned it's pretty much carload traffic.

The old railroad-run LCL freight sheds are a thing of the past.

[MichaelWinicki]

Express (as in REA) and LCL are/were two different things. LCL was not a big profit center. Many railroads reasoned that is you handled a customer's small shipments, it could lead to them using you for bigger shipments.

Frank

Oh I know they were different entities Frank.

I've just always felt it was odd that they (REA vehicles) were not seen by the station until after the freight station closed.

Maybe just a coincidence kind of thing.

[Chris333]

 





Kiz. You'd be OK with a team track. Lets say there is a hardware store 5 blocks from the nearest RR tracks. If they got a shipment of lumber they would just leave it at a nearby siding. Stuff like this still happens today.

[pogopod]

Team Tracks are in use in a lot of places.  Minnesota Commercial has one in the town of Hugo, Minnesota. It is share by a lumber yard receiving lumber in centerbeams and 60' High cube boxes and a scrap yard which transloads scrap from trucks to gondolas. Anice little piece of track to model.

[randgust]

First and most important..... Please, Vincent, don't retire Dee.   Your humor is one of the better things preventing too many people from taking themselves (and this hobby) WAY too seriously, and it's a welcome addition, break, or whatever.

Second.... if the object is a Team Track, it just evolved to the term "transload" and it's going gangbusters even today, just as full carload rather than LCL.  Back in the 70's one of my favorites was the inbound traffic to a local mental hospital up until 1985....(THIS IS NO JOKE).  It kept a 2.5 mile branch alive WAY too long.  The traffic came inbound in refrigerator cars .... can you guess???   

BUZZZER.    Government cheese.  It had to come inbound to a 'state run' facility that had direct rail, the only one was the mental hospital.  The irony was that it was unloaded directly into a truck and then trucked to the local schools, food pantries, etc.   The same truck COULD have unloaded in the yard, but the designated 'team track' that had survived on the branch kept it going for another decade, thanks to bureaucrats and cheese.  Seeing a Santa Fe MDC mechanical reefer dispatched to the State Hospital....in Pennsylvania?   

Vincent, if you can't call Dee out to work on THIS ONE, shame on you!  I'm HANDING it to you!

[MichaelWinicki]

  It kept a 2.5 mile branch alive WAY too long.  The traffic came inbound in refrigerator cars .... can you guess???   

Ah, must have been a remnant of the old NYC Valley Branch.

[Kisatchie]

First and most important..... Please, Vincent, don't retire Dee.   Your humor is one of the better things preventing too many people from taking themselves (and this hobby) WAY too seriously, and it's a welcome addition, break, or whatever.

Vincent, if you can't call Dee out to work on THIS ONE, shame on you!  I'm HANDING it to you!

Ah, I don't know what to do. I'm tired of paying gandhi to keep my bayouline.com page going. The only thing I use it for was to keep Dee's presence going. I let it expire today, but Dee still is appearing (my son is hosting her), so I don't know what's going on. I don't understand much of how the internet works... just the basics. Hmm... did that make any sense?


Hmm... I'm quitting and
going back to Borneo, or
maybe it was Sumatra. In
any event, I'm leaving for
political reasons. Can't say
any more, or I'll get banned...

[Brakie]

I was wondering when railroads phased out less than carload shipments. Any info/etc. is appreciated.

Maybe we need to rethink LCL?

A shipper could ship(say) a half boxcar load of lumber to Warp lumber.

Now with intermodel and Triple Crown LTL shipments has LCL returned but,in a new form?

[randgust]

Your signature image is still referencing back to bayouline.com rather than the new site.   If you update the signature line image to the new home of the image (wherever that is), should work just fine.

It won't show Dee on all the old postings though, just any new ones.

[Kisatchie]

Your signature image is still referencing back to bayouline.com rather than the new site.   If you update the signature line image to the new home of the image (wherever that is), should work just fine.

It won't show Dee on all the old postings though, just any new ones.

I don't have a new site. All I know is my son is doing something with Dee that is beyond my comprehension. And since bayouline.com expires today, I'm surprised Dee is showing up... she could go just like that (snap) any minute now.


Hmm... am I still here?
Still waiting for all my
presents to arrive...

[Brakie]

Yeah, there's still "LCL" type truck to rail freight sheds/warehouses in North America, but they're run by freight forwarders and consolidators. As far as the railroad is concerned it's pretty much carload traffic.
------------------------------
Allow me to ask this.

Where does it say a shipper has to fill a freight car or triple crown trailer?

I have seen 1/2 loads of lumber on a centerbeam..

I have seen 2 coils on a coil car.

I've seen partial loads of sheet steel on bulkhead flat cars..

So,in modern terms LCL shipping may still be around but,in a different form.

When I was working in a warehouse I unloaded a boxcar that was half loaded-the skids(pallets) was on one level instead of the normal 3-4 skids per stack.If you stacked the pallets you would have filled half the boxcar..

[Bruce Bird]

Isn't any double stack container car really just an LCL?  Especially if the 'car' has 5 wells to fill?

Bruce

[PAL_Houston]

I don't have a new site. All I know is my son is doing something with Dee that is beyond my comprehension. And since bayouline.com expires today, I'm surprised Dee is showing up... she could go just like that (snap) any minute now.


Hmm... am I still here?
Still waiting for all my
presents to arrive...

That's OK.  Everybody has those "existential moments" every now and then.....

For me it's like when my son was born or my dad died.

[randgust]

Yeah, there's still "LCL" type truck to rail freight sheds/warehouses in North America, but they're run by freight forwarders and consolidators. As far as the railroad is concerned it's pretty much carload traffic.
------------------------------
Allow me to ask this.

Where does it say a shipper has to fill a freight car or triple crown trailer?

I have seen 1/2 loads of lumber on a centerbeam..

I have seen 2 coils on a coil car.

I've seen partial loads of sheet steel on bulkhead flat cars..

So,in modern terms LCL shipping may still be around but,in a different form.

When I was working in a warehouse I unloaded a boxcar that was half loaded-the skids(pallets) was on one level instead of the normal 3-4 skids per stack.If you stacked the pallets you would have filled half the boxcar..

Some commodities like steel sheets, etc. can be heavy enough that they'll take the car up to weight capacity way before volume capacity.  On some commodities it is just the opposite, which is where oversize cars (think auto parts boxcars) come from.

Either way, you're paying by the carload up to the capacity of the car, not paying by the weight of the object like UPS.  Old railroad LCL worked just like that, you pay for a shipment from point A to point B by weight.  Railroad's problem how to get it there, so they mixed everybody's stuff in boxcars on scheduled routes.  Which created railroad freight houses.

Piggybacks and containers still charge by the box, not by the carload, so you'll see half-loaded intermodal cars all the time.

So 'short loads' may be due to weight (steel sheets) or just because it still works, for whatever reason the shipper is usually paying full price per unit (carload or box).