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RE: (erielack) Milk Traffic

Brad, this is one reason why perishables in general almost vanished from 
RR's in the 1970's. Service was relatively slow and unreliable, truckers 
took market share, reduced business meant putting traffic on regular symbol 
trains, degrading service further etc perpetuating the downward spiral. I've 
been examining EL perishable traffic in 1975-76. Until the mid-late 60's, 
you had large blocks, even entire trains of reefers taking perishables to 
market auctions on the East Coast. At the end, it was one or two car lots 
direct to distribution centers and food plants, with at least half the 
traffic being frozen and most of the rest was less time-sensitive, mainly 
spuds.

The exception to mediocre service was, of course, UPS, bacause being a big 
shipper (40,000 trailers annually) it had lots of clout.

Paul B

From: Bradley Butcher <llyengalyn_@_hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: (erielack) Milk Traffic

Thank you Rusty( and everyone else as well), that was very informative.

I had just thought that milk was basically a bulk product. I didn't think 
that it would be shipped in small quantities. I figured local farmers would 
accumulate it somewhere much like a grain elevator for shipment to cities. 
And not all urban areas have milk production near them so in some cases I 
believed it could be a pretty good haul. But it sounds like milk on trains 
suffers the same problem vegetables, meats and other perishables do. They 
need to get over the rails in a short amount of time and railroads seem to 
have trouble doing that. To have something like a whole days layover in a 
yard everytime a car needs to be switched is unacceptable for time sensitive 
things like this. They need switching time something more like an hour 
<laugh>. It would seem inprobable that milk could be shipped by dedicated 
unit trains like grain to make it more feasable.

It seems ironic that loads like coal, which are not time sensative at all 
(power plant just needs it before they run out), can be shipped in a quik 
manner. Coal logically moves well in unit trains that never need to be 
switched. load at the mine, run to the powerplant, dump unload , turn around 
headback empty, wash rinse repeat. The empty haul being the only downside.

Brad


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