Besides the colors and name, what was the difference between a reg rr 50' boxcar and the railbox boxcar. Same question for railgon. And why not an autorack, and hoppers too?
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Railgon and Railbox are owned by TTX. TTX is owned by all the major RR's.
BNSF, UPRR, KCS, CSX, NS, CN, CPR, TFM, Ferromex, and a few other participants.
Each RR put money in to the pool of TTX monies and TTX goes out and purchases Boxcars, Gondola's, flats, Autoracks. (that is most of the product line. TTX also has heavy duty flats in their fleet too to move heavy or special movement loads.) Then, the Boxcars, Racks, Flats, Gons, etc are entered into the Nationwide Boxcar Pool. hence, a TTX car loaded in
Boston, off loads in Texas a week later, all the while, TTX gives another car to the Boston shipper and the empty in Texas gets loaded in Texas or there of and heads to Chicago, then that Chicago car gets unloaded, may end up in Calgary with a load, then onto Wherever.. the pool keeps rotating around.
Auto racks are also a RR participation and the flats are mostly owned by TTX and the racks are a single participant by each RR. FEC, and P&W RR's are also Rack Participants.
Last I remember, A TTX flat can be had for US$17,00 per day. That costing was a few years ago.
RR's owned cars pretty run the same way in the pool. Also, RR cars can be used in return service. Ex, the 86' boxcars, ref the auto industry, that may have run between a stamping plant and assembly plant for 20 years…
Private cars have some advantages to a lessee/shipper too. less demurrage issues. The lessee gets the car back all time and can waybill the car themselves. They can take control of auditing bills and maintenance.. a pool car, you pay for the use of the car in the freight rate.
I hope this helps? if you need anymore information, you can email me at
dan@boxcarco.com
Take care,
Dan
good explanation Dan, kind of a pooled resource of boxcars shared by various railroads.....
Mark
From what I can remember off the top of my head, I recall there were some political issues in the 1970's about shortages of railcars needed during seasonal traffic peaks. So some tax incentives were established to encourage investment in privately owned pools of railcars of different kinds.
Eventually the balance went the other way and long long strings of surplus cars were stored in many places, sometimes clogging entire shortlines that had lost their traffic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railbox
The Wikipedia article mentions that railroad owned cars were often routed back to their home road empty, and this tended to cause inefficiencies in distribution of cars as compared to private pooled fleets.
Thanks Mark..
Have a great day!
Dan
