(erielack) re:A&P facility

["Janet & Randy Brown" <jananran_@_mymailstation.com>]

Schuyler, Tom, et al --

Tom desribed the concept perfectly.  However -- as with so many things -- there are qualifications, refinements, definitions and ramifications.

In railroad transportation, it was (is?) called "transloading." Cars loaded with products 1, 2 and 3 [ onions were not a good choice: they smell and were seldom mixed in cars with other stuff ] would leave destinations A, B and C routed to destinations X, Y and Z via transload point M.  At M, what Tom described would happen, and the same cars would leave for its destination -- X, Y or Z -- but now each car contained some of products 1, 2 and 3.  This occurred mostly with canned goods and staples, where time was not such a factor.

M was a central point -- Kansas City had several -- established BY THE RAILROAD and run as a commercial enterprise.  That way, liability for damage lay with the carrier all the way and you simply filed your claim with the railroad  And they paid it.  Otherwise, you'd have A&P, at the first stop, shoveling all the damaged stuff into the car (or truck -- right, Tom?) and sending it on to the next stop for them to worry about.

As well as time, rates were a factor:  it took longer and cost more.
Still, if X, Y and Z didn't need full carloads, it was cheaper to transload than pay higher truckload rates.

And . . . since the supplier (Lipton, say) was usually paying the freight, they would take the opportunity to mix customers and send cars to the A&P at X and Y but to Grand Union at Z, all filled with Lipton products 1, 2 and 3.

All this was a development from the older scheme of having Kansas City be simply a distribution warehouse, where Lipton, say, would pile stuff in from all their plants and wait for orders from their customers and then send the stuff out in mixed or solid car- or truck loads.  As Tom said, inventory is money, both in storage and handling, and in non-sales.  As they say in the food industry, "You can't sell tonight's supper tomorrow."

The "father" of transloading was a traffic manager at American Cyanamid, headqurtered in Wayne but with plants all over the country.  It worked well for chemicals and pesticides and building materials.
(Yeah, Schuyler, a couple of years there, too.)

This was an impelling force for the development of load restraining and compartmentalizing devices, which meantthat cars in that service were specialized and usually "assigned" by the origin or destination railroad -- captive to the service and returned when empty via reverse route.  Not sent on somewhere else.

A&P, at Horseheads, was trying to be all things to all stores and ended up with the most impressive half-empty warehouse in the industry.  The privately held view was, " Whadda they - nuts?!?"

I would opine that outbound carloads were rare from A&P because they wouldn't want to take the time or pay the freight.  They didn't own the stuff until they received it at their dock, so an outbound would be a local move at local, very high, rates

Tom experience with Wal-Mart differed in that probably buys FOB origin; that is, they own the freight.  And they are dealing truckloads, not carloads.

Of  course, if piggyback rates could be driven down --by competition, negotiation or deregulation -- you'd would, did and do get three trailers from A carrying product 1 to X, Y and Z . . . and so on. You can see the picture, I am sure.  You can see Hunt trailers on the Southern Tier full of WalMart stuff, I'd bet.

Randy Brown

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