When did Less Than Carload Shipments End?

[Kisatchie]

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


Hmm... I'm retiring
tomorrow...

[Hyperion]

It's not one of those things with a hard date, per se.  And it wasn't so much the railroads 'phased it out' but that motor carriers became much more competitive in that market, so they got the business.

Anything not going by truck already with the advent of cheap trucking, and still going through some sort of railroad freight house, containerization took care of.  There was no reason to put it on a truck, then offload that at a freight house, load that onto a car, offload that at destination, load that back into a trailer, then deliver -- when you could just drop the trailer onto a train.

Any stubborn remnants were probably taken care of with deregulation in the early 80's, when railroads could control their own rates and weren't required to take any traffic offered to them, and could then price undesired business higher and force it onto trucks (and then take the business that way).

[Puddington]

Well; my personal expereince in the paper/corrugated containers industry in Canada was that we finally stopped LCL shipping two major clients in Ontario by rail LCL loads in June of 1985. Up until then they insisted on rail LCL because they had limited truck dock space that was busy 24 - 7 and corrugated containers, even KDF (knocked down flat) are space hogs so we shipped them half boxcar loads and less every 3-4 days, a pallet of this sku, two pallets of that etc.......I believe the 50' cars were shunted to another supplier for further loads but having seen the cars arrive at one client I can attest to the fact they were never full, and that another clients goods were also on the car......for what it's worth.... and it was CN who was the carrier.

[MichaelWinicki]

At one point our city, like many others had a very vibrant freight station.   There were multiple tracks serving it.   But from my understanding, talking to someone who started working for the RR in 1955, LTC work was absolutely hated by the workers of the RR.  They hated dealing with it and were "thrilled" that the local freight house closed around 1960. 

I do have pictures from the early 60's that show a fleet of REA trucks parked in front of the passenger station (which was across the tracks from the freight house) that seems to indicate that what was left of the LTC business was done through the passenger station, after the demise of the freight station.

By the time I was interested in trains in the early 70's, I can tell you that there was no identifiable LTC business in this area.  My layout is from August 1970 and I am not modeling any active LTC operations.

Talking to the "old-timers" of railroading, one finds out that not all the business that was "lost" by the railroads was grudingly lost.  A lot of it was willingly given up because the RR's didn't want to deal with it.

[Kisatchie]

Thanks for the replies. I just wondered if team tracks, for example, would be out of place on a 1971 layout.


Hmm... I'm gonna be out
of place tomorrow...

[MichaelWinicki]

Thanks for the replies. I just wondered if team tracks, for example, would be out of place on a 1971 layout.

I wouldn't think they would look out of place... They just probably wouldn't see the same activity as say they would have 30 years earlier.

I would weather them (the tracks/ties) very heavily... probably with a lot of rust and depending upon what area/time of the year you're modeling– a lot of weeds and not much in the way of ballast.

[Zox]

Hmm... I'm gonna be out
of place tomorrow...

So where's Dee going?

[Kisatchie]

So where's Dee going?

I'm going to retire her. She's been toiling away here and on the Atlas Forum for at least 10 years.


Hmm... does that mean
my termite rations will
increase...?

[Hyperion]

Thanks for the replies. I just wondered if team tracks, for example, would be out of place on a 1971 layout.


Hmm... I'm gonna be out
of place tomorrow...

Team Tracks aren't necessarily LCL -- that's more the domain of Freight Houses.

Team Tracks are just places for railcars to be spotted for customers that don't have rail service at their facility.  It was not necessarily the domain of LCL traffic and often wasn't.  Team Tracks while not terribly common, exist even today as spurs on the outside of major yards or sometimes even docks in the middle of industrial parks.  Shortlines in particular are fond of them as a creative means of getting traffic away from trucks, as that level of customer micro-management typically isn't favored by Class 1s any longer.

[jmlaboda]

To a considerably less degree than what it use to be some LCL shipments still take place today, though no longer overseen by the railroads.  There are companies that use trucks to bring in and deliver freight in major cities whose long distance forwarder is a railroad between their end points, usually operating out of a track side warehouse with little to no mention because folks do not know that they exist, except that the are involved with shipping within a company that uses them... as I once was.  And now that there are more operations involved in this sort of transportation what with all the trucking companies that have gone to rail to ship trailers long distances... many of the trailers and containers that you will see from the trucking companies on intermodal and stack trains are consolidated shipments of a number of customers being sent between end points.

As for team tracks, there are many that still exist today in many places even though their original purpose had long ended largely because of the railroads' use of such tracks for various purposes, sometimes community related while most of the time because of the need to spot maintenance-of-way equipment during periods when various types of maintenance would be performed.  While major lines have gone to maintenance blitz's where a main may be shut down for roughly a week while an entire subdivision is rebuilt there are always a need for that extra siding that isn't regularly used... even if it may not come all that often.

[eja]

I'm going to retire her. She's been toiling away here and on the Atlas Forum for at least 10 years.


Hmm... does that mean
my termite rations will
increase...?

Nooooooooo ... First the Atlas Forum and now Dee ?  This is just too much to take.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Grafon & Upton, had a freight house and team track on their 1/4 mile long empire as late as 2002, I would see a boxcar docked along side.

So Ed's rule applies here as well.

[RWCJr]

The end of LCL business did not spell the end of team tracks. Team tracks (for the few that may not already know, were named so because teams of horses and their wagons were able to use the space in between tracks to offload or load cargo onto freight cars).
I worked for the Santa Fe in the Texas panhandle from 1972-1977, and there were plenty of times that flat car loads of farm equipment would be spotted at the team tracks of different towns.

[FrankCampagna]

At one point our city, like many others had a very vibrant freight station.   There were multiple tracks serving it.   But from my understanding, talking to someone who started working for the RR in 1955, LTC work was absolutely hated by the workers of the RR.  They hated dealing with it and were "thrilled" that the local freight house closed around 1960. 

I do have pictures from the early 60's that show a fleet of REA trucks parked in front of the passenger station (which was across the tracks from the freight house) that seems to indicate that what was left of the LTC business was done through the passenger station, after the demise of the freight station.

By the time I was interested in trains in the early 70's, I can tell you that there was no identifiable LTC business in this area.  My layout is from August 1970 and I am not modeling any active LTC operations.

Talking to the "old-timers" of railroading, one finds out that not all the business that was "lost" by the railroads was grudingly lost.  A lot of it was willingly given up because the RR's didn't want to deal with it.

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

[nkalanaga]

I'll add my comments to those saying that team tracks didn't disappear with LCL.  Any receiving customer without a siding of their own would get their loads at the team track.  Thus, they probably handled more carload than LCL, which would more often go to a freight house or station baggage room, unless the local delivery company met the LCL car with a truck at the team track.