Re:Milk Traffic; was: (erielack) More EL in Massachusetts!

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

It's a little misleading to compare the labor intensity of rail milk trsffic with truck movement, when a 20-car milk train with a crew of five was replaced by 40 or 50 trucks with an crew equivalent of 40 or 50 men (drivers), even accounting for the handling at origin and destination, because much of that handling happened anyway.

As has been mentioned time and again, a major factor was our decision as a culture to tax the railroads for their land and improvements and then funnel that revenue into highway improvements which fostered truck transportation, to the railroads' detriment.

And -- the image of the slow, plodding "milk run" wasn't fully accurate, either.  Once assembled, the milk train was often one of the fastest on the road because of the perishability of the lading.  Today's milk was expected on tomorrow's breakfast table hundreds of miles away.

I wonder how the economics are holding up in this day of $5.00 diesel and the need to repair or replace the Interstate Highway System.  The milk still moves, after all.

Randy Brown
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Brad, there were several reasons for the demise of RR milk traffic. It was  perishable, labor-intensive, short-haul and uni-directional. In the 1960's,  RR's were emphasizing high-volume, bulk commodity long-haul traffic that  required minimal labor. Proliferation of good highways allowed trucks to  largely take over the under-500 mile market for high-rated commodities.  Plus, the secondary passenger and M&E trains that handled this traffic (the  proverbial "milk run") disappeared.

Fresh milk traffic lasted on the EL until around 1966, the final shipper  being the Queensboro Dairy in Steamburg, NY. It probably survived that long  because at approx 400 miles, it was unusually long-haul for milk. There was  another move out of western upstate NY that has been discussed here: canned  evaporated milk from the Carnation plant at Dayton moved as COFC to Port  Seatrain in Weehawken enroute to Puerto Rico in 1973-74. I believe this was  a special situation because the containers exceeded highway weight limits.

Paul B



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